posted Tuesday, September 29, 2020

In San Francisco, if you're prepared to walk a couple blocks east from where the tourists take their photos from the highest point of the cable car, you'll come to the end of Vallejo Street. You'll have to hunt for it, but there's a small plaque there in Russian and English, at the site of seven Russian graves discovered by 49ers. The plaque says they died in the 1840s, but no one really knows. It's round the corner from the OA house, if you have any idea what I'm talking about....
When I was a kid, I used to read whatever books I could get my hands on about the Northwest Passage and the north Pacific. Kamchatka, Bering, the sealers, all that stuff. Stayed with me; the house is still full of them. I'm fascinated by what these guys did. That some of them ended up on a hill in San Francisco is unreal.
I wrote a version of this song a few years ago, actually gigged it a couple of times when I had the pleasure of playing with Chris Penman up north; reworked it in lockdown. I wrote a new tune for it, and rewrote most of the lyrics as three letters home (to Voronezh, on the other side of Russia). I knew this song would be on Lost Stars; SF is one my favourite places in the world, who knows when I'll see it again. I've been looking forward to recording the song, it's always been one of my favourite things I've written, in all its various incarnations. I knew I wanted to do it last, every time I played it in the workup, I could hear what the guitar wanted to do. No use me sayin' different. So yeah, I saved for the end
.... which means we're done. Lost Stars is about finished. The last song is the... eponymous title song. It'll be along shortly, mixing it now. Still a few bonus tracks, they'll appear over the next few days. Stay tuned