“Judge not, lest ye be judged” Who am I kidding? I’m a judgin’ fool.

At least I try to only judge myself. This may sound just a hair shy of OCD… but I really try to do each show perfect. You leave a little room for spontaneity, of course… but mostly you shoot for perfect. I am usually happy to hit 80% but tonight… I was, dare I say, a bit flawed. Yes, folks… there were flaws. Tiny, nearly imperceptible flaws… but like wrinkles on Christie Brinkley… you gotta look close, but they’re there.

The sound on the stage where WE are is totally different from what YOU hear. We have speakers at our feet and in your ears to try to make it sound as good as it can, but fate plays with us like a cat with a musical mouse. We worked very hard at soundcheck to get it right (we have an amazing crew of sound engineers who know their complicated shit) but there was a great temperature drop between sound check and the show and it did something to my sound on stage. I looked at the thermometer by the stage in the afternoon and it was 360 degrees Fahrenheit. No lie. By show time it was only about 75 degrees and everything sounded different to me. Once we hit the downbeat of the first song it’s hard to adjust without stopping the momentum so I just try to deal with it… but, Lord, it sounded Thumpy (the eighth dwarf). I will blame a portion of my drop in perfection percentage to that fact. Damn you, Thumpy!

The venue was beautiful. Unfortunately, it’s one of those places where the concession stands are in a different zip code from the seats so when we start, there’s a whole lot of people who are still ordering their beverages. They know there’s an opening act but they don’t know that Blue Sky Riders is a life changing, lip smacking, soul stirring forty minutes of pure ecstasy, so they saunter to their seats instead of running like their butts are on fire.

We played two new songs tonight. We are trying stuff out because we have some new material for the next CD and it’s fun to play them and get a head start figuring them out. The first one, “What Went Right,” sounded pretty darn good for this stage of the game if I do say so myself. The other one, “Thank You For Reminding Me,” needs a few tweaks to get it in the pocket but we’ve got plenty of time to get it perfect. And I’m all about the perfect. Look at who I married! (She’s looking over my shoulder as I type this.)

But I mean it.

Anyone reading this who was at the show in Paso Robles… I apologize for butchering the name of your beautiful, albeit hot town. It totally prepared us for our show next week on Mercury.

The great thing about a tour is every night I get a new chance to be perfect. I want to walk off knowing that I did everything right. I want to walk off with every note nailed. I want a puppy. I’m not getting THAT either.