People ask "Why are you called Coyote Dave"? I
lived on the road for 13 years buying and renovating fixer uppers. I spent evenings around campfires playing guitar
and singing - howling at the moon. Nowadays my chihuahua "Monkey Mouse" joins me - singing the blues. The coyotes
seem to approve. They join in too. For the first time in my life I've been hearing coyotes bark. I guess
they figure if a chihuahua can sing the blues, they can bark. I have four dogs - three in addition to the blues
singing chihuahua.
Anyway at most campgrounds there seem to be several "Guitar Daves" so I adopted
the name of my co-singers - the desert coyotes.
But the most important thing about me is that I have been playing, singing and writing
songs for 35 years.
I've added 7 Mexican songs to my English repetoire of about 200 songs. People
ask what kind of music I do. The answer is just about anything except "rap" and not much "country". The key to
my repetoire is not the type of music but the fact that I avoid sexist songs altogether. And I lean towards songs that
celebrate MOTHER EARTH. I end every performance with a Navajo song I learned by listening to a Sharon Birch album
of native songs called yep "MOTHER EARTH". I sing it the way that Sharon Birch does which makes Navajoes laugh because apparently
"I sing like a woman"... oh well! Give a guy credit!!! Over the years both Alida
and I have learned to carry on minimal conversations in Spanish - if folks are patient and speak slow and in short sentences.
I've added my own quirks to the interesting border Spanish in which English words like car and lunch turn into "carro" and
"lonche".
In 1994 my partner of 25 years, Alida Reyenga, and I moved to HOLTVILLE. In
1998 we purchased the Klassy Karrot Kottages. We fell in love with the rural, hacienda look of it. We've been
renovating in such a way as to maintain that look. (This was written in 2004 so by now Alida and I have been together
for almost 29 years)
After 13 years as "fulltime RVers" I've settled down
in HOLTVILLE and am helping create HOLTVILLE'S future. I hope to see very slow, limited growth, possibly in
the same path as Solvang and Cambria - towns with few if any franchises like McDonalds or Walmart. Towns of
small businesses. I even dream of residential growth that comes from selling lots and letting individuals build unusual
homes instead of identical tract homes. Please check out my NEWSLETTER for updates on HOLTVILLE ISSUES.
All those years on the road, Alida and I always camped near a natural hot spring. She wrote a news letter
called "Friends of Primitive Hot Springs". We chose HOLTVILLE as our home not only because of its hot spring but because
it is next door to wonderful Mexicali - a city in Mexico of over one million. Few people realize that the American
side of the border is a suburb of Mexicali. I do most of my shopping in Mexicali. I am only 17 miles from
my favorite auto mechanic in Mexicali.
