Seventh Day in America....

And it was in Salida that we met the wildest, drunkenest, most anarchic country band we met in all our time in America: Two musicians and their driver, Dee, who was hanging on to the bar-rail just managing to stay up-right when we came across them in the Horseshoe Tavern after Irving's show.

They were from Yorkshire, over for the guitarist's daughter's wedding in Las Vegas.

I said we were going to New Mexico and South into Texas. The guitarist, already red-faced with the sun and the beer, became even redder with emotion and put the back of his hand to his eyes to stem the tears.

As soon as he could speak again he said, "If you go to Texas, you have to go to Lubbock. There is a Buddy Holly Museum there and in a glass case they've got the glasses he was wearing when he was killed in the plane crash. I wasn't prepared for it. And even if I had been I don't think it would have made any difference. I was holding onto that glass case and crying like I haven't cried since I was a baby."

"He was," said the Driver. "Holding on and crying like a baby. Couldn't stop him. Got us all going. You've never seen anything like it."

And we did go to Lubbock. We couldn't not go. Even without their story, too much music has come out of Lubbock to not go and see where it was born.