Tour Diary – Minneapolis, MN (April 15, 2012)

We didn’t come across any tornados on our drive last night, but the rain was of biblical proportions. It was an odd day today. The sky above the city swirled with clouds heading in all directions at once and the temperature plummeted. Jeff had to leave the tour for the day to attend to some matters at home and Margo’s illness got worse. The Penguins and Flyers series devolved into a WWE meets AHL event, sort of like a No-Holds-Barred cage-match on ice. There was weird juju in the air.
We had two shows tonight and the first one was as peculiar as the day. We struggled a little bit with the hole left in our sound by Jeff’s absence. Margo’s illness reared up and she had to leave the stage in the middle of Miles From Our Home, so Pete, Al and I played on (Jeff’s words of advice spurring us on, “never stop!”). A verse or two in to our instrumental version of Walking After Midnight and Margo returned and soldiered on. For the second show we reassessed and refocused and played with and around the empty space created by Jeff’s absence rather than trying to fill it and the result was a very different and magical show. We need a day off.