Tour Diary – Albany, NY (March 2, 2013)

We slept last night in the Northampton Quality Inn parking lot and this morning made our way to Albany and The Egg. There are very strict rules about playing The Egg, because the theatre is mounted (yes, mounted) on top of a government plaza. The entrance to the loading bays which are underneath the plaza are as well hidden as the batcave and we had to circle the plaza a few times before Alfred appeared to show us the way. Once inside, and before he had a chance to back the bus up into the loading bay, our driver, Randy, was set upon by an overenthusiastic State Trooper. He was told that he had a five year old outstanding New York State ticket and that his license had been suspended in the State, so he had to leave the bus immediately and couldn’t even back it into the bay. Randy pleaded innocent and in his defence offered the fact that he had crossed the Canada/US border into New York State several dozen times  over the past few years and had never been flagged. Eventually the trooper made a few more inquiries, wrote him some kind of ticket and then backed down on his demands and drove away. But now Randy has a ticket which carries with it a misdemeanour, which he has to deal with….all in the name of keeping us safe I suppose

The Egg is one of the weirder theatre designs out there. It sits on top of a pedestal at the edge of an enormous concrete plaza. The urban myth about its design is that the architect was having breakfast with Nelson Rockefeller who told him that he wanted a landmark theatre to be built in the state capital, so the architect placed a half a grapefruit on top of a water glass and said “how about something like that?”….and so it was born. This was the first of five or six Trinity Session shows that we are doing on this run. Two sets, with the first being made up of all Nomad Series songs and the second set a run through from start to finish of The Trinity Session. We have done three or four of these types of shows in the past. They are a little odd and a little “constructed” but tonight we could feel how they could easily work…it’s just a matter of relaxing in to the “construct”. Not a bad night overall.

Pete's ipad sketch of The Egg: