Harrisburgh, PA & NYC (Oct 19 & 20, 2007)
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It rained and sprinkled and poured and rained some more, all day. A dreary way to start this run of dates. Harrisburg tries hard, but too much has been sucked out of the Pennsylvania economy in the past thirty years for the city to have fully recovered….but it’s not a bad little town. The city has taken to putting up “Hometown Hero” banners on downtown lampposts, pictures of Pennsylvania soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past six years. It is sobering to see the face of a dead 19 year-old staring down at you. I suppose, in some, it evokes a patriotic feeling, pride in the countries youth, their willingness to give their life when their president calls: in others, like me, it evokes feelings of anger and a horrible sense of loss and waste.

The show tonight was in the Whittaker Center which is a very beautiful state of the art facility in downtown Harrisburg. We had a slow start to the show. It took us a handful of songs to shake off the rust, but thanks to an excellent audience, we ended up having a very fun night.

*****

A beautiful fall day in mid-town Manhattan. I walked through Central Park where, remarkably, the ice rink was up and running: ice skaters, rollerbladers, toy-sailboaters, full–on rowboaters, joggers, speed walkers, horse drawn carriages, baby strollers, baseball, soccer, football…it was all going on in The Park. There are few places as vital as Central Park on a warm autumn day. I also, checked out the Gustav Klimt exhibit at the Neu Gallery. It was a little light on paintings for my taste.

Tonight we played at Carnegie Hall…well not exactly. We played in the basement, or sub-basement of Carnegie Hall, also known as Zankel Hall. It has all of the petty union rules that the big hall has, with none of the prestige….still, it’s not a bad little space. In the big hall tonight was Ravi Shanker, performing with his daughter Anoushka. We snuck in and watched the end of their soundcheck, which was very thrilling. Ravi is 87 years old, he’s been performing for 70 years and is still going strong….amazing…by the way, his daughter is 26 (you do the math)…amazing. After our show we were hanging by our bus which was parked by the stage door shared by both theaters. We watched Anoushka being whisked away in her limo with Lenny Kravitz in tow and later saw a very frail, but ambulatory Ravi sneak out the side door with his very small entourage. The waiting fans were absolutely reverential in their respect for the master. Very, very cool.

Our show was exceedingly disappointing. It was one of those shows in which no-one was able to connect with another. A completely disconnected band in a situation that was ripe for an excellent evening of music. It’s hard to figure out what goes wrong on nights like these, but it happens every now and then...and it is always frustrating. The audience struggled to keep us focused and it was only through their efforts that the whole night didn’t collapse….yech, it left a bad taste.