Red and Blue
Photo by Matt Callahan from his Flickr stream.
San Diego
Yesterday I changed the set list again, and it was quite an improvement! Everything flowed much better, and our performance at Humphrey’s was a blast. A full house, a guitar that stayed in tune, a great audience, a well-oiled professional venue, the improved set list, and a band that stayed creative throughout the concert. Great fun! It was our twentieth anniversary of performing here, as we opened at Humphrey’s for the late Michael Hedges in the Summer of 1990.
I love this shot by Matt:
You can find more pics from tour in Matt’s excellent Flickr photostream.
Yesterday’s set list was:
New Untitled
Cedar Smoke
Dancing Alone
Santa Fe
Empty Fields
Tokyo After Midnight
Snakecharmer
(Intermission)
Garden at Dusk
Heart Still/Beating
Sixteen Hours
On the Road to Shiraz/2 the Night
La Luna
Backwards Firefly
Jump
(Encore)
Future Green
Barcelona Nights
Monday Cold
I am sure I’ll feel better tomorrow. At least I can look forward to no more flights for three weeks…
Several concerts were quietly added to our 2010 schedule, including the beautiful Gusman Center for the Performing Arts in Miami on January 6th and the lovely Infinity Hall in Norfolk, Connecticut, in May. More dates were added if you want to take a look and many more are still to come.
Here is a photo from last Thursday in Manhattan. It took me a moment to figure out what’s going on here. The projected image from Tibet is reflected in a Window that is to my right.
More images can be found here.
Majestic-DMV
I cropped these vids to the same 3:2 ratio that my still images have. That is the ratio of 35mm film, 36mm wide by 24mm high. Play one after another or start them all up! (((in that case it is best to press play and immediately press pause, so the video can load fully before you start them all up!)))
The link in the first comment leads to this Drunken Master video.
Sunday
Check out this timelapse on Flickr: Sailing on the Nile.
This morning I walked to Caffe Italia for my morning coffee. Nice!
The first show at Anthology in San Diego yesterday was great. We had a lot of fun and everyone played well. I really enjoyed playing my solos. (((I wrote soli, but spellchecker didn’t like it… cactus-cacti and solo-soli, isn’t it?)))
By the way, I did like the food at Anthology, especially a plate of rectangular columns of yellow and red water melon next to an arugula salad. Wonderful combination. The gnocchi were excellent as well.
I still don’t know what happened during the second show. About a third into our set the stage became a heat inferno. Either the air conditioning broke down, and I did hear that the whole club became quite hot, or the lighting director went home and left the lights up at 100%, or they compromised the live performance to record some video for the club. (((or maybe it was a Genie?!))) Option 1 – that’s life, things break down. Option 2 – the LD should get fired. Option 3 – it is unacceptable to compromise a performance because your cameras need more light – unless you tell the audience (((and the band))) that they are part of a video-shoot. The stage looks horrible with that much light and the heat makes the musicians extremely uncomfortable. We played well, considering the circumstance, but it was rough…
Speaking of rough, I went to the merch-stand after the concert in Newport Beach to sign CDs or tickets, but instead almost everyone wanted a photo with me. Mostly cellphone photos!! And several inebriated folks were holding cellphones upside down or were looking at the lens instead of the screen!! I was being pulled this way and that way, and I mean pulled by the arm or even by my shirt. People were quite aggressive about it. NTS (((note to self))): no more signing in Newport Beach! Enough is enough. The price of admission entitles a person to a seat from which to experience the concert, not to pushing me around.
PS: It’s Sunday night. I signed after the concert and people were very nice. Not a single request for a photograph, by the way. Go figure. There has to be an interesting social study in this… I think there are two separate issues. There is location-specific behavior: people in one place are mellower than in the next place. And also, any group takes on a specific group-character. A few aggressive people can turn a gaggle into a pack. Anyway, it was a nice experience for me, tonight. Oh, and tonight the stage was a nice temperature again – like the first show last night. Good playing, smiles all around. No, we didn’t figure out what happened during the second show yesterday.
