Blue Sky Riders

Mark Twain famously said, “Writing a blog for the Internet is like riding a bike. You never forget how to do it.”

Except when you ride a bike and fail, you don’t have a bunch of people standing over you telling you “how funny you used to be.” Oh well, here goes. (more…)

While we’ve got you listening to our new Christmas record ….

Georgia and I are on our honeymoon. I try not to let too many personal facts taint the flights of imagination my blogs have become but I am going to break my hard and fast rule today (or tonight… how the hell can I predict  what time of day you are reading this? I am not Kreskin). I am going to tell you what we are doing (no… not THAT) and where we are doing it (no….definitely not THAT).

Thanks to a friend with powerful and far-reaching connections… Georgia and I are currently sitting on a beach in Anguilla. Now prior to this week I am not sure I could have SPELLED Anguilla… much less gone there. Geography was never my strong suit in school. (do you think in the days when men wore armor they referred to them as their “strong suits?” … is that where the expression comes from?)

See, when Georgia and I got married, right after the ceremony we ran to the bus and climbed on to go off on tour. Picture the last five minutes of The Graduate. Except Dustin Hoffman is wearing a tux… and Georgia is a bit more Jewish-y than Katherine Ross… and Kenny is sitting between them on the back seat. And the theme music is better.

We had a great summer. Great but exhausting. We played everywhere from Atlanta to Zanzibar (which I believe is a suburb of Detroit. Geography is truly not my suit of armor). Many of our shows were outdoors in 105 degree weather. Heat like that will make you lose pounds AND friends. No one wants to hug someone that sweaty. Yes, Kenny and I sweat and stink. Georgia simply glistens and smells ever so slightly of cinnamon.

Yes, for one week we are living like rock stars. Be kind. The actual rock star business does not pay like it used to in the days when Mick could buy the island of Mustique simply to put an Orange Julius stand on it’s beach. We are here due to the kindness of others. We live on tropical hot dogs and piña coladas with the brand of alcohol that advertises “now with REAL rum flavor!”

Anguilla has little bugs that start biting you when you step outside and continue biting you when you slip under the covers to sleep at night. Gas is very expensive. Quite hot. The Protestant guilt in me from my Connecticut roots impels me to downplay this week and find things to complain about. But still… it’s friggin Anguilla! Oceans… sand… amazing food… Georgia and I actually wrote a song about the island while we’ve been here. We are going to try to get Kenny Chesney to record it. It would be a terrific stretch to him to sing about being on a island. He should be made aware of how beautiful this lifestyle is.

Back to reality soon enough. In a few days we leave here and fly to NYC to play the Today show. We did not have the room for November clothes in our honeymoon suitcase so we shipped them all to NY ahead of us. We thought  we were so clever. When our little plane got loaded up to fly us here from San Juan, they needed to remove two suitcases for weight concerns. You guessed it. Our two suitcases came off and we spent the first two days with no shorts, bathing suits or sandals. That may not seem like a hardship… but Georgia and I are old fashioned. We like to dress to fly. She wore a full taffeta ball gown and I chose a vested seersucker suit with a straw boater on my head. Poor choices once we got in the island heat. It was like being on stage in Zanzibar all over again.

Tune in the Today show on Monday. Georgia and I will be tan and rested. We will  be eager and ready to dive back into all things BSR. If you notice us scratching while on camera… it’s the bugs. The damn bugs.

Now that Georgia and I are safely home from the tour it’s a good time to reflect and appreciate just how much fun we had this summer. Our last show (Just for a while. We’re not going anywhere so stop panicking. It’s embarrassing.) was in Baltimore and Baltimore made sure that we finished up with the proverbial “bang.”  There’s something about a last show that has great energy. You sing a little harder cause you know that you don’t have to sing for a while so if small bits of your larynx comes flying out on the high notes… you have plenty of time to fix it. You run around the stage a little more because you know you have the next day to sit on a plane and rub your knees and say to yourself “What am I? Ninety?” (more…)

One of the most fun parts of all this hullabaloo is being onstage and just riffing with the audience. Mostly we have no idea what we are going to say between songs. I really love that. The problem is that we occasionally say something that really kills the audience and then it’s hard not to want to do that “bit” every night in the same place. I always remember I saw a famous star perform and he screwed up the lyrics in a song and made a joke and everyone laughed and enjoyed the moment. Then a month later I saw the show again and he forgot the same lyric and made the same joke in the same place and the little boy in me that believes in spontaneity died. Then the audience applauded, and just like Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, that little boy came to life again… only to die tragically later that same night in an industrial accident. (more…)