Tour Blog 2.0

Alright, where were we?

Ah yes...the Windy City.

I got to Chicago on Saturday night just in time for dinner at my friends' house-warming party. They live in this great new condo somewhere on the north side of the city (I know next to nothing about the anatomy of Chicago). They've got a rooftop patio type area that came in handy later in the evening. Songs may or may not have been played and a sing-a-long probably ensued. It was fun.

Sunday was a lazy day. On Monday I got to go to the Art Institute of Chicago where I finally saw some Magritte's live and in person. I also saw some really great Japanese pieces, but unfortunately they weren't showing the Hokusai wave that I love so much. They have an extensive collection that is enjoyable even if you don't know shit about art (which is a category that I pretty much fit into). Lots of the big famous names (i.e. Monet, Manet, Picasso, Van Gogh, etc.). What's nice about it for non-art people is that there's a lot of stuff there that you'll recognize whether you're an art enthusiast or not...so it makes it fun.

This all leads us to the reason that I'm writing any of this and was in Chicago in the first place, my show at Uncommon Ground on Tuesday (July 10 for those of you keeping score). I had been trying for about 2.63 months to get a gig in Chicago and had accepted the fact that it wasn't gonna happen this time around when I checked my email after the Cafe Classics show to find one from UG inviting me to play there on the 10th. The place is pretty much a three room restaurant/cafe with one of the rooms being the Music Room. It's a cool place with nice people, good sound, good looking and smelling food (I can't vouch for the taste at this time) and is very artist friendly.

I played the show with this cat named Gordon Wright who I thought was really good and is worth checking out. He played with a keyboard player who was pretty great and really helped fill out the sound. The keyboardist also played accordion on one song which pretty much makes him 100% awesome in my book. It was neat.

After Gordon did his thing I went on and was surprised at the amount of people in the room. Friends and friends of friends started coming out of the woodwork towards the end of Gordon's set and gave this show a good turnout. I played for about 45 minutes mixing the old with the new. The smallness of the room and proximity of the audience made the show seem quite intimate and I feel like the performance went well.

UG makes a CD of every performance and gives it to the musician/band at the end of the night, so the whole show was documented on "tape". I'd like to go through the CD (read: have Nels go through the CD) and clean it up a bit if possible to see if we can get something manageable out of it. If I feel comfortable with the way is sounds I'll probably make it available one way or another. Either on myspace, my website, both...something, so keep an eye out.

So, to sum up, Chicago was fun and the show went well. I can't wait to go back and hopefully I'll have a booking there late this fall.

To be continued..........