Tour Diary February 2, 2008

Florida in January? Why haven’t we thought of this before?

Well probably because once we’ve slept in our own beds for the first time in weeks/months after slogging about the Midwest in rain and snow during the Christmas tour, the last thing we want to do is leave the house.

January being a good month for us to catch up on the bills, paperwork, red tape and taxes, is also a great time to catch up on some much-needed deep winter sleep.

And of course Linford and I tend to prioritize some quality tail-wagging time walking the dogs, Frisbee throwing with the Wiemie and rope-a-dope with the Big Guy.

(Good metaphor there. I use and re-use the idea of playing rope-a-dope with God.)

I look forward to writing during the first month of the New Year. Something about those concrete skies, long black ice nights…

Everything that I’ve been thinking about, experienced, or felt over the past few months is piled in a big messy heap in the dark back corners of my brain; I like to sort through the laundry of it, then mix and match a little bit with the soapbox jingles I’ve documented on my handheld digital recorder. And I have cassette tapes like spools on which many threads are spontaneously spun throughout the year. My favorite recording tool is a fairly primitive 1984 Sony boom box. With these things I piece together whatever comes out in the wash – a musical crazy quilt.

It’s one method I have for writing. And a very fun one for me.

But here we are in sunny Florida. No quilts necessary. And it’s not so bad. It’s obviously warmer and drier. That’s a good start to the year knowing what some folks are having to deal with up north. Although I couldn’t personally live here during the summer months, Florida has its perks in the bleak midwinter.

We stayed on the beach in St Augustine. Nothing fancy, but you can’t beat being able to walk on the shoreline when the mood strikes.

And we embarrassed ourselves a little when we discovered this odd little lounge at our hotel in Stuart. The owner must have had some ‘emotional ties’ to his former life in the Big Apple and had this strange and frankly off-putting mural painted on a wall adjacent to the side bar. It featured gravely unidentifiable and amateurish likenesses of some remarkable and legendary talents — Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennet, etc. Sometimes celebrity is merely a curse. Yikes.

The cover band played into the night and reminded the septuagenarian set of their youth.

Yeah, we thought, we’re young and healthy and a bit above it all as we observed coolly from a back table.

So eventually Nick joins Mickey, Jake, Andy, Linford and I. And he can actually dance the Salsa. So, Nick strolls out on the dance floor smooth as glass. Twirling those old birds around on the parquet.

I gave everybody the royal nudge, and there we found ourselves twisting again like we did last summer.

We all had chest pains after about ten minutes and had to sit down. The septuagenarians did not and danced til long after last call.

Hmmm.

Thank you so much to John Loesser for having us back to the Lyric Theater. He’s a natural ambassador for Stuart Florida bringing in singing coal miners from Nova Scotia and dancers and performers from well beyond to the lovely yet unassuming beach town. 300 days a year. Well done. It’s a lovely venue and at least we’ve agreed upon making the Lyric an annual event. See you next winter, John, if not before. And thanks again for the wonderful opportunity. And hospitality.

From Café Eleven to the Lyric to the Bamboo Room to…

See you somewhere warm.
k