Camden

Day 1: Camden, NJ – A very long overnight drive from Toronto to get us here. Why here? A three day festival just across the river from Philadelphia, put on by WXPN (one of the better music stations left standing). It was as hot as a two dollar whore on the 4^th of July. I tried to stay as cool as possible and moved between the air conditioned bus and the air conditioned green room and didn’t get much of a feel for the festival grounds. It was definitely a well attended event with lots and lots of bands that I’ve never heard of (kids these days). We had a pretty good, if short, set. After the show we headed back to the hotel to recover from our heat exhaustion. Later in the night the police cordoned off the hotel parking lot…speculation was that a body was found in the back of a car. Welcome to Jersey.

Day 2: Annapolis, MD – A day off on day 2 of the tour is just a little unusual. But so be it. We woke and we drove. We watched the movie Greenberg in which Ben Stiller (in a serious role) plays an asshole who puts himself into cringe-inducing situation. We kept waiting for the punch line, which never came. And we watched Green Zone in which Matt Damon plays a soldier in Iraq who goes off on this ludicrous hunt for the missing WMDs. It was time well wasted. We arrived in Annapolis just in time to greet the noon day sun. It was so hot today the squirrels were fanning their nuts. I braved the heat to wander around Annapolis. I’ve always liked this little town, it has ice cream, good coffee, cobblestones and lots and lots of history: it actually has over three hundred years of history ranging from the inspiring (the ratification of The Treaty of Paris) to the terrifying (the bustling slave market that was this town’s economic engine for decades). I found a pristine hard covered copy of Ian McEwan’s latest book, Solar, in one of my favourite used book stores, I found a smelly pub and ate a semi-tasty BLT with a happy hour, half priced pint of local Pale Ale and had a cup of oh-so-tasty coconut ice cream at the Annapolis Ice Cream company. So it was a good day.

Day 3: Annapolis, MD – Another good day. Hotter than a McDonalds cup of coffee. I found a nice cafe and had a good latte and very good breakfast of smoked salmon with capers, onions and cream cheese on a toasted sesame seed bagel. I talked to my family who are ensconced in the Adirondacks; worked on a new song called Idle Tales; struggled through soundcheck; and then had a very fun show. The Rams Head is an odd space. It doesn’t have the greatest sound on stage (and it probably doesn’t have the greatest sound in the audience), but it’s always a fun place to play and that’s because of the audience. There is always an energy in that place which you just want to plug in to. We played a wicked version of Me and the Devil tonight. Before we went on, we watched a documentary on Miles at The Isle of Wight in 1970. So we were emboldened.