I'm over half way through my fall tour and wanted to jot down a few memories before they all slip away into the ether. This whole trip has been amazing, I'm so blessed with friends and people I've met along the way, experiences. I figure I'll gaze back in reverse chronological order here for a bit to give myself a few of the memories for later. Right now I'm on the Amtrak "Coast Starlight" train from Seattle to Eugene. The train is stopped for a moment just outside Olympia WA and the trip so far this morning has been quite pretty, as we make our way down along the Puget Sound.

My friend Bess Sullivan dropped me off at the Seattle train station this morning around 8:30am on her way to work. The station is right next to the Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Mariners stadiums, a really cool section of town. I had a little over an hour to kill so I checked my two suitcases and walked around the business district for a bit, walked to the post office but it was closed until 10am. I looked into upgrading to a sleeper car for tomorrow night's trip to Santa Cruz and was quoted a price of $142 but I hemmed and hawed about it for 15 minutes and when I went back to buy it had already been sold and the only one available cost $379, ouch! Oh well, roughing it in Coach I guess. :-)

This weekend in Seattle was so freaking great. Mmy friend Bess Sullivan treated me like royalty and let me stay at her house in Seattle for three nights. Last night she took me to see Raphael Saddiq at the Shadowbox and it was a REALLY fun show. The whole band dressed in dark suits, Saddiq in a red one, fun choreography with a singer on each side of him, super energetic and uptempo, I danced like crazy. He has star power for sure, so comfortable on stage, confident and charming. The show was really good and I think it will only get better in the years ahead as he tinkers with the choreography and pacing. He's a pro, it's so clear he understands that you need to entertain visually as well as sonically. Highly recommended you see him if you can. Bess is a union sound tech in Seattle and she suggested the monitors may have been overpowering the house speakers so the mix got a little tinny and sharp on the high end at times as the house tried to figure out how to get a clear sound over the monitor system, but all-in-all Shadowbox seemed like a really nice venue. I guessed 1200-1500 people were there and tickets at the door were $28 cash only, so a pretty good night for the band I think. The most diverse cultural crowd I have ever seen, so cool. Asian, hispanic, black, white, young, old, a really cool mix, no really dominant flavor, just perfectly diverse. Seattle feels really awesome that way.

Sunday afternoon Bess and I went to Costco and bought some Ahi Tuna that we made for dinner later with some vegetables from the corner produce market, and she dropped me off at John Sindelar's house for an afternoon meeting on Filemaker unit testing. John has designed a calendar template in Filemaker that I'm working to implement in the next Indie Band Manager and it was great to meet with him again, especially at his house, felt like a bit of a pilgrimage. :-) He answered a few questions I had and I must admit I walked away a bit depressed about some of the answers, but it's all good. He has a new version he's releasing later this month and he promised me a screen share tutorial once I had some time and internet access. He said it's a LOT faster. He's such a good programmer, it was cool to speak with him in person again.

The train just stopped in Centralia for a minute and I looked to see if any wireless connections were available. There was one named "McMenamins" and it reminded me that I'm supposed to look into booking a bunch of dates at a series of McMenamins locations all over the northwest the next time I come through. Earl Patrick took me into one in Portland and showed me brochures of other locations all over the northwest. Cool small clubs, brewpubs with food, musician friendly, small stages set up, looked like perfect places for me.

[Some time later...]

I've been walking up and down the train a bit and met Aaron the cafe car attendant. He's also a working clown in LA apparently, and has a spectacular announcer's voice and shtick when he announces specials in the snack car and such. Very fun. We started chatting about the tour and telling jokes and he gave me a complimentary cup of coffee. He also said I should call Amtrak about sponsorship (which I was already planning to do after this tour).

I wish I knew more about the rivers we're driving along here. The one to the west of us right now is huge, has to be half a mile across right now. Not sure if it's dammed or what, but it's a significant stretch of water. We're just south of the Kelso station now... a ways north of Vancouver/Portland.

OK, back to the recollections...

Monday morning Bess and I woke up a little late and we made another breakfast of eggs, bacon, coffee, Trader Joe's apple muffins, and Bear Naked granola with soy milk. We lollygagged around quite happily until we finally left for Costco to buy the fish for dinner. At one point I walked three blocks down to the corner to buy some fruit at the market.

The previous night (Sunday) another high school friend named Sheila Strobel set up an impromptu party at her house and invited 15-20 of her friends over for a house concert. It was really fun, lots of food and drink, good conversation, and I played two sets accompanied by one of the attendees Kim on percussion using a cheese grater, whisk, coffee cup, and my guitar case. She was great! A total gamer and super fun to play with. I also met the woman who wrote "The Book of Answers" which is sort of a cool magic-eight-ball in paperback form. She was super cool and fun to talk with. Another woman named Adele offered to host a concert on May 2nd at her house when I come back through, probably in her back yard where she's planning to build a yert.

In any case, the whole afternoon/night was really fun. I got there about 4pm and helped Sheila get ready for about an hour before anyone else showed up. She cooked up some roasted potatoes and boneless spare ribs, put out a bunch of vegetables with dip, opened a few bottles of wine, and people brought other stuff too. I sang a lot of call-and-response songs to get everyone involved. It was the first time I'd ever done "She's Made For Sunshine" as a call-and-response and it worked REALLY well. Bess came for the 2nd half after she finished striking the set for the ballet at Seattle Center and she drove me back to her place around 9pm. I sang her a bunch of songs in her living room once we got home as well, when we could relax and have a beer, which is one of the reasons we woke up late the next morning.

Holy cow, we're crossing over a steel bridge on what must be the Willamette River between Vancouver WA and Portland OR and there are big tanker ships on the river. I'm getting a little sleepy... might be time for a quick nap. Oh wait, wow, there's Portland coming into view down the river. The city of bridges. I had a gig here last Friday night, I'll detail that a bit later.

Friday Nov 20th, 5:30pm
It has just gotten dark here on the Coach Starlight as I make the trip down to LA from Salinas. I spent last night in Santa Cruz with my friend (and accountant) Mark Greenfield. The sunset out on the ocean as seen from the observation car for the pasty hour or so was plenty gorgeous. Looks like we must be wheeling into Santa Barbara around 6:15pm. It would have made a lot of sense to stop there for me, my friend Joe Weiland lives there. Looks like we're arriving early, they just announced we'll be there in 5 minutes.