Tour recap

OK:

Baltimore: after a 1.5 hour shutdown of the NJ Turnpike, we flew into XandO and set up in lightning time for a good set — lots of nervous energy translated into good stage presence and big book sales. Paper Moon Diner afterwards for good food, good talk; we stayed with Chris August who helped us solve a potentially rough car problem and fed us well.

Newark: only venue where we did the entire “Jim’s Fall” suite. Small crowd but again, lots of merch sales and good conversation, both at the venue and the Eagle Diner afterward. (I love the Eagle, by the way.) Then, staying for the next two days with Nigel, Matt, and Hannah.

Also: I strayed and smoked a bit, but I’m back to being a non-smoker — no worries.

Wilmington: a stage, a disco ball, a bar — what more do you need? We did a good set if a tad mellow — our linkage between pieces and our comfort level onstage really gelled here. After that exhaustion and panic set in when we read that there was a potential of an ice storm in NE — briefly considered driving home at 1 AM, but thought better of it and left at 5:45 instead, in cats and dogs buckets of rain all the way up the coast.

To respond to our own critique of the show and the reasonable thoughts of Matt and Liam, we decided to get a tad dangerous for the last gig in Cambridge — on the way home, we developed (a cappella) a bass and poem version of “Punk” to give us another high energy dynamic piece. If you saw it in Cambridge last night, you were seeing it for the first time — seriously. We’d never even tried it before with the bass.

The Cambridge show — well, Adam Stone opened as only he can with the Trio behind him; Faro and I did the rock and roll poetry show and felt good about it (great acoustics and sound system, by the way); Iyeoka Okoawo was her sterling self and the band smoked; Marc Smith did some amazing renditions of Sandburg poems and his own work (LOVED the bebop stuff).

And if anyone wants to know what it’s like to perform onstage in a freeform poetry jam with Marc Smith, Regie Gibson, Richard Cambridge, Adam Stone, Iyeoka Okoawo, and Michael Brown, all backed by the Jeff Robinson Trio (Jeff Robinson/sax, Jerome Deupree/drums, and Blake Newman/upright bass) plus Faro tearing it up on the 5-string electric bass with all of us tossing in added percussion and stuff…

it’s not bad. Hell of a way to end a tour, I’ll say that.

Afterwards, off to Cambridge Commons with the gang to drink and shoot shit…and then home.

Now it’s worky-work stuff for a day or two then off to Toronto for a job.

Later, all…and thanks to all who supported us and took us in.