Blue Sky Riders

Back in the saddle again. Tonight we played the Strand Theater in York, Pennsylvania and it felt great to be back and doing our full opening show. We have been in NYC for the last few days but we have been semi-retired. Kenny had two nights at the City Winery but they don’t have opening acts at that venue so Georgia took another gig in Austin on Monday and flew away. I haunted the city like a sad lonely ghost and had a day and night of being a wandering tourist. I went to the 9/11 Memorial and looked up the name of a friend who died in the first plane. Later in the day (to go from tragic to ridiculous in one paragraph) I went to a terrific place in Soho that sells a million different favors of rice pudding, and I sampled several hundred thousand of them. (more…)

Last night we played in Atlantic City, the first show of the last leg of the summer tour. That’s a very complicated description. I have never been to the actual Atlantic City… the beach and the boardwalk. I have been to the casinos before. My first publisher, Irwin, was quite the gambler in his day. He would arrange for a helicopter to pick the two of us up at a landing strip on the West Side Highway and we would zoom to AC and I would watch him gamble. As an apprentice electrician and part time songwriter I did not have a great deal of discretionary income to risk on the vagaries of the playing cards. (more…)

In case I forget to tell you while I ramble in this blog… (oh yes, I feel a ramble coming on!) our last show was at the State Theater in Minneapolis and it was yet another sterling example of high level, medium energy popular entertainment. Beautiful venue, great sound, enthusiastic crowd. Other than being sad that we were leaving in the morning… it was an A plus evening. (more…)

Being in a band on tour is a lot like golf. Golf is an insidious game. When you play a round of golf, you hit the ball approximately one hundred and twenty times in about seventy five different directions, cursing and swearing that you will sell your clubs and never play again… and then the last couple of shots are amazing. The ball flies straight and true to the hole and you start making plans to join the tour and make millions. Suddenly it was all worth it and you can’t wait to do it again. That’s what tours are like. (more…)