On Tuesday, the day our CD was released in Canada, we woke up before the sun so we could sing a tune on Canada AM . The day also had us at BRAVO for a wee interview, and then over to Explorenet.com for a live performance and interview. All of this was a blast except for one rather important detail - Caroline had the flu. She's all better now, we are happy to report, and somehow Sue and I never got sick (knock wood.) But because of this sudden illness we never made it to New York City and had to cancel our show at the Rockwood. We are looking forward to setting up another show there as soon as we can.
The next day, after a good day of recovering, we started our trek south and landed in New York state that night to sleep. The next day as we headed for Massachusetts, I discovered I was without my winter jacket, and had ZERO recollection of where it might have ended up. (After listening to my phone messages tonight, I now know it's at the Days Inn where we slept.
But I digress...
I want to tell you about how the show in Massachusetts came together. Last October during our Harbourfront outdoor shows in Toronto, we met Henrietta (aka Hank) her husband Chris and their son while they were vacationing in Canada. About a month ago Hank came to see our show at Club Passim in Boston and after the show she offered to put on a house concert for us sometime in the future. We asked, quite earnestly, if she thought we could pull off a show in just a month (as we knew we had a spare day on this tour) and because she's amazing, she said yes, and pulled together a place to play, a place to sleep and an audience to witness the whole thing. The kindness of people never ceases to amaze me. She deserves high praise.
Below is a shot of us in the glow of our microphone Christmas lights.
The next day we woke up to a wicked-downpour (yes, I said wicked-downpour) and went for breakfast at a great diner with Hank and her *awesome* son. It was a great greasy spoon, and we ate eggs, veggies, toast and homefries - it was exactly what we wanted.
Imagine our surprise when, an hour later during our drive east, the pouring rain turned into buckets of snow. And, I was, of course, without a winter jacket and my thin sweater really wasn't cutting the mustard. Luckily my friends didn't make me pump gas in the snow (they are so nice) and we made it to our destination... eventually. Because of this sudden snowfall, we were worried the show might get canceled, but they are tough in Maine, so as they say - the show went on, and we had a great night in a beautiful house that our host, Bill, is in the midst of building. It's going to be stunning, he has quite a gift for creating beautiful homes and barns.
In the morning, after a cup of coffee and homemade blueberry pancakes, we headed north to Quebec for our last show in this whirlwind tour and arrived in good time. We met a lot of new people, had a great time with the gals we were playing with, and we had a blast opening the show. Little did we know Nuit Blanche was happening in Montreal that night, so the streets were alive with action as we packed to leave. After a futile search for pizza I realized I had no idea where my phone was. After frantically searching all the normal bags and pockets, I was baffled - so we headed back to the venue (and Nuit Blanche) to look there.
It wasn't there, so I grabbed my suitcase and took it to a well-lit area and searched high and low for my silly phone. I wish you could have seen me frantically unpacking my suitcase in a room filled with tipsy-Nuit Blanche goers... there was underwear flying, makeup bags emptied and cowboy boots being turned upside down... I don't know why I even went to my boot, but I turned it over and out came my phone... I felt absolutely nuts after this, but Caroline and Sue, like other similar times before when I have completely lost my marbles, were so nice about it.
This delayed our departure from Montreal, but we did eventually leave and landed in Ontario for a quick sleep before coming home today.
We won't be in Toronto long, but while we're here we're going to make sure to see the people we love, walk around this lovely town, do our chores and catch a few Zs before embarking on our official CD Release tour that starts in Sudbury this Thursday.
xo/ko
