It’s late September 2015 and I’m off on my US Roadtrip – starting out tomorrow in Greenwich Village, New York and ending hopefully in Preservation Hall, New Orleans sometime in late-October.

As you’ve been kind or perhaps foolish enough to show a scintilla of interest in hearing about my trip I’ve included you in what will be some irregular notes from the trip. Please don’t feel compelled to reply, acknowledge or even read these e-mails… in truth they are part of my own record of the trip for writing up later and possibly including in the book (you did know I was writing a book didn’t you?).

This is my proposed route… a couple of days in New York visiting some classic NY guitar stores and their owners before heading East to Nazareth, Pennsylvania and the oldest guitar company in the US. Hopefully I’ll have time to sweep through Gettysburg (unlike the Confederates… Gettysburg was as far North as the rebel army got 150 years ago) before looping up to Philadelphia where I jump on a plane South to Charlotte, my gateway to the South proper and where I’ll start my drive up into the Appalachian’s and the Smoky Mountains – bluegrass country.

From there I’ll drive West to Nashville for more interviews before what I’m anticipating will be a disappointing tour of Graceland and a stay at The Heartbreak Hotel in Memphis. From there it’s a long meandering drive due South alongside the Mississippi and into the Delta, the land where the blues began – towns like Clarksdale, Tupelo, Oxford, Helena, Beulah, Dockery and Tutwiler…. all place names that appear in songs or that I’ve read about for years but never seen – until now.

My final stopping point is New Orleans where jazz, ragtime, Dixie and the Southern blues threw their influences into the pot to give us popular music as we know it today.

So as I pack my organic face-scrub, cucumber eye-mask, Neroli hair gel and nasal hair clippers you’ll be delighted to know there is no sponsorship link to Just Giving… but do remember that ‘Two Guitars – a true story of obsession, addiction and deception’’ would make a wonderful gift for those you love.