Hello fellow Terrestrials,

Let's be logical. With the onset of winter, my therapist says the most logical place for me to tour is... the Midwest.

Why?

Because I was RAISED there, and my therapist says for me to fully transmute the trauma of my childhood (that I inflicted on others) it's critical I retrace my steps and COVER them so I don't get busted this late in the game.

That's why I'll begin with Milwaukee, where I'm playing this Thursday at Shank Hall. All I remember of Milwaukee is an ice storm, and a frozen hillside, and me and several beautiful naked women rushing down the hill in card board boxes. We were sliding ! Except it may have been one box, and those were hobos, and only I was naked.

See? My therapist was right, this is working!

Next up? Madison. My memories of Madison revolve around some mushrooms, then its foggy, then I'm sneaking into a harbor, then I'm boarding my yacht, wait, I don't own a yacht, OK I'm breaking into it, but only because I needed to steal... a SAIL. See, I have an attachment disorder, and "I can't breast feed unless I'm enveloped in silken cloth", I told the busty officer who asked my why I was wearing a sail. Well, that plush luxurious sail kept me warm til morning, when I woke in its folds to realize I had inexplicably travelled from the squad car to a frat house across town. Explain? Can't. Just listen to Christopher Cross' 'Sailing' - it will all settle in your bones by the time you hit the chorus.

I play Madison Friday night and you'd better believe I will be re-enacting that scenario.

Saturday I play Rockford. And suffice to say, a few years of my therapy focused almost entirely around events which occurred up and down State Street. Suffice to say some of the most important relationships of my life were created and dissolved on that road, often in a few short hours. The White Box? Billy and Earls? And of course... Kryptonite??!! The scars on my body, the bruises on my mind - a corporeal cartography of libidinous brouhahas strewn through a decade. The plan? Heal the past, injure the present. They don't call it ROCKford for nothing muffuggaz!!!

There's only one place to go from there, and that's Chicago. The locus of my loopy circus. Do you know that you can't swing a dead cat in Chicago without hitting someone who is ready -RIGHT NOW- to buy you a drink and another five and put you up at their place and take you to breakfast and lend you their shirt and loan you their car and help you look for your dead CAT?! Cuz where the hell is 'Swinger', my stuffed party cat? Last I remember, I was gripping his paws, whirling at an incredible velocity on the corner of Belmont, the city blurring around me in a kaleidoscopic flood of every emotion a person might have if they weren't Scandanavian and Lutheran and Introverted. The final image, those tiny, stiff paws slipping, a look of terror on his taxidermy-ed face, then a horn, more horns, a cacophony of metal on metal...

Next?

The City of Iowa City, Iowa (City). NOW you know where you are. The Berkeley of Eastern Iowa. The Santa Cruz of Corn Fields. This is honestly one of my favorite towns in America, and it's because of the people. If they take the people out of this place, I'm not going back. I've met them, I know them, and I love them. It's a mark of their resilience and magnanimous natures that they continue to allow, nay, welcome me back after so much history and DNA has passed between us. When I think of Iowa, I think of Iowa City. When Iowa City thinks of Stuart Davis, it thinks of the dead painter.

Last, but not least, is Des Moines. I'm not playing Des Moines, it's playing ME. Like a pair of brass finger cymbals, and the World is dancing, my friend, dancing like a hobo in a card board box racing down a hill with a naked Dane betwixt the legs. Des Moines is pronounced "day-MWAH ! " by the way. I know, because I was born in Des Moines. And I'm going to be re-born in Des Moines. After the show, we're all going down to the river, and I'm going to be baptized anew. Unless it's cold, then it's off to my hotel for skinny dipping in the pool. Like true aquatic Olympians, we're gonna smoke pot and break records ! Yeah! LP records, those long-play recordings! We're gonna bust 'em over our knees and throw 'em in the pool til the whole thing looks like a liquid tile mosaic.

And with that, my therapy session will be concluded, and I will remit $250 to each of you for having cured my recalcitrant Stuart-ness.

I can't wait!