New York
I suppose playing Carnegie Hall is about as good a way as one could think of to kick off the bands 20th year. I’m sure you’ve heard that old showbiz saw; “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”…”Practice, practice, practice”…well apparently it’s true.

We were invited to participate in a fund raiser for the Music For Youth program (which helps to bring music education into the NYC school system). The theme of the night was Joni Mitchell’s music: all of the twenty or so participating acts were ask to play one Joni Mitchell song. So Margo, me, Jeff and Jaro flew down to play, “River” as our part of a very intense and hectic evening. It was sort of a get-on-play-get-off kind of affair. There wasn’t really time to absorb the ambience, but it certainly whetted the appetite. We now have a goal to strive for over the next twenty years: our own performance at Carnegie Hall.

We did get a chance to say hello to some old friends, like Dar Williams and Sean Colvin. We also got to meet some long time heroes like Richie Havens and Tom Rush (whose cover of Driving Wheel inspired our own). We also had a nice surprise, at the end of the evening, when Lou Reed showed up backstage (his partner Laurie Anderson was performing). It had been fifteen years since we last crossed paths. The only downer on the night was that Joni Mitchell decided to not come to her own fete. Apparently her cat was sick (no lie). I was really looking forward to meeting her, but maybe some people are best not met.

Stratford
Home of the Bard….well not really….although, there is a pretty major Shakespeare festival held every summer in this town. It is a very pretty place, slightly off the beaten track, which helps keep the charm, but close enough to Toronto to keep it thriving.

Tonight is the first of two nights that we (me, Margo, Jeff and Jaro) will be opening for Colin James. Tonight’s theater, the Stratford Festival Theater, laid out in classic Shakespearean style with the stage on the floor and seats fanning out from it, should be the perfect setting for our Folk Fusion Quartet. Unfortunately, the very strict union regulations, forced us to shut down our soundcheck before we had settled into the on-stage sound, which made us a little apprehensive about the show. Fortunately the audience absorbed a lot of  the slapback that we had experienced during soundcheck. The show felt good and the audience was great. Our first time in Stratford: a success.

Toronto
Massey Hall is without a doubt the best sit-down venue in Toronto. And given the opportunity, most musicians will jump at the chance to perform on its stage. We have done so a few times in the past twenty years and it is always a thrill: we would certainly rank Massey Hall as one of the best theaters in the world. Soundcheck went off without a hitch, the catering was excellent, the venue folk were very courteous and generous…..and, oh yeah, the audience gave us an amazingly warm and boisterous hometown reception.

This has been a nice little run with the F2Q. On Monday we start to work on the repertoire with the full band for the South West run and the Halifax gig. It’s going to be an interesting week. Pete has been incapacitated by a  bad back and isn’t going to be able to do the upcoming shows, so we will be working in a replacement drummer, Randall Coryell, for these shows….  Stay tuned.