Giant Sand
Is All Over The Map

I have been to the desert. You haven't.

That time I was driving along Interstate 10 that leads from Benson to Tucson (Arizona). I was leaving New Mexico behind. And space. The one described by John Carpenter in his first feature film (note, Dark Star) in the seventies. In Benson, I had surfed among the stars with four hallucinated astronauts and an annoying alien pumpkin. In El Paso, Texas, I had gotten quite drunk until the morning.
It must have been eleven thirty, maybe twelve. My old automatic watch had stopped showing the correct time since, a few nights before in Juárez, I had danced cheek to cheek with a dancer from Santa Bárbara. It was time to get my feet back on the ground.

I was driving along Interstate 10 in my old car, a seventies Ford Escort, a third-hand sedan, gray, when I found myself with an empty tank.
Now, you have never run out of gas on Interstate 10. I have. Well, believe me, when you run out of gas on Interstate 10 and the sun beats so hard on your head that you feel like you're in hell, there's nothing left to do but down the last sip of whiskey left to refresh your throat and start walking. Before you become food for the vultures and sand for the desert.

Anyway, believe it or not, that was the time I met Howe Gelb.

Howe was sitting on a chair in front of an old wooden house with walls painted blue. In the shade of an old wooden porch that, honestly, was leaking everywhere. But in Arizona, it never rains. He was slowly strumming some of his songs. And a few other dusty old classics from his repertoire. A hundred red ants feasted in the sun on the remains of an old lizard carcass that, until a few hours ago, I imagined, had been calmly sunbathing along the decrepit walls of the house.
Now and then, Howe would put the guitar aside and take a sip of tequila. That trash, which would have awakened even the deadest reptile in all of Arizona, is oxygen around there.
That's when Howe saw me. He smiled at me and invited me to join him. I rinsed my mouth with tequila and, with the sun in my eyes, we talked about cars. And the price of oil. We told each other that everything in America is going to hell. Then, if it's true my name is Carlo Cimmino, we wrote "Napoli".

I haven't met Howe Gelb again. A few years ago, he left Arizona (well, he still sets foot there occasionally) and, orphaned of Joey Burns and John Convertino, who are now fully committed to Calexico, he took a piece of the desert with him to Denmark. He reformed, truthfully for the umpteenth time, Giant Sand and in 2004, assisted by the impeccable production of John Parish (with whom he had already worked on the excellent "Chore of Enchantment"), recorded and released "Is All Over the Map".
That time Howe told me that the desert isn’t just an American thing. In "Is All Over the Map", among more or less important guests (John Parish, Scout Niblett and the great Vic Chesnutt), some high-intensity electric blues, ballads worthy of the best American songwriters (above all, the beautiful Hood) and old dusty pianos (Rag, Drab, Play), he has a chance to dust off "Anarchy in the UK" by the Pistols and write a song in French (Les Forcats Innocents). Most of all, the beautiful "Classico" (later excellently covered by our Nada Malanima in "Tutto l’amore che mi manca" - produced by John Parish, of course) and the already mentioned "Napoli" are two of the best songs ever written by Howe Gelb and his band.

As for me. I haven’t been to the desert again. But now I always carry it with me.