Tour Diary
September 13-14, 2007

Alright folks, what’s with the rainy reputation in Seattle? I mean seriously. It seldom, if ever, rains when we play this remarkable American city. My father (a Californian) used to say that the rumored rain was all a ruse to keep the northern Californians from coming any closer.

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law both assure us it’s not a ruse, but a fact that the rain comes down more often than not in Seattle and that we are just, well, lucky.

It’s one of my favorite cities in which to take a walk. I covered a few miles from the hotel to the public market on Pike Place and back again and took in the sights and smells, the dollar dahlia’s and fragrant buckets of sunflowers, delphinium, lilies and roses.

Then juxtapose the troubled, career, homeless street person - one of many here - off his schizophrenia meds, protesting wildly how they took away his art, his livelihood when they stole the job of painting the lines in the crosswalk and delegated it to the road crews with their automated trucks and sprayers.

I like my job and I’m glad I still have it. And for the two sold out nights at the Triple Door, I am equally grateful.

Could this be our new favorite room in the country? It’s absolutely gorgeous. And the candle and table atmosphere doesn’t in any way hinder the audience from participation. No sleepy punters here. This is a town that knows how to celebrate music. Thanks Scott and Will and Christian and all the staff at the TD. What a great way to kick off the west coast leg of the tour.

We walked out the front door of the venue and saw these words engraved in the wall of an adjacent building where among other things, the orchestra performs:

So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning. Aaron Copeland


Thank you to Christina for the flowers – 17 per vase, one for each recording we’ve released, and one vase for each night in Seattle. Beautiful.

September 15.
We got our first flat tire out of the way this morning. We did a little curb-jumping downtown, trying to take a tight turn or two and the trailer objected.

I’m counting that as a good omen. Get the bad stuff out of the way early and run.


Karin
Dahlias in my hair
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car wash
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public market
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street people?
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flat tire
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