Monday 30 July 2007

Shelburne,NS chez Forbes and Yola Christie
Arriving at the Osprey Arts Centre yesterday, I took my suitcase up to the dressing room, and there on the clothes rail was the Muji folding coathanger I left behind about a year ago. Back on the stage, meanwhile, was this:

 a terrifying image which I'm not going to try to explain

Among lots of socialising and some very fine food in civilised and civilising company today, we managed to rehearse a bit, and gave the first live performance of ‘A Good Start’ as part of our set. We asked for audience suggestions for a name for our trio, but the best one was the way we were described on the staff rota board at the arts centre: Boxwood Explodes. 

After being plied with more food, several single malts, and Forbes and Yola’s 1880s New York Steinway, the three of us ended up playing again around midnight and finally pegged out around 2am. The end result of this is that I havenow acclimatisedto the local time zone and I woke up at a respectable 7.30am this morning rather than at around 5.

Also yesterday, I picked up a pile of email which included an epic 20 minute song which will be a key chunk of our show with the Tiger Lillies. So that is moving along nicely too.  But now I’m heading next door to Roland and Kathleen’s where Chris is going to make us all pancakes for breakfast. Isn’t touring tough?

just after midnight, still on the road to Lunenburg 
We had a different kind of gig tonight in the big church at Wedgeport: suddenly being further away from the audience left us a bit bemused about how to engage them. But I think we won them over somehow. I was totally thrown afterwards by the reception for the audience being held in our dressing room about a minute after we came off stage. But once we'd cleared up a bit it was good to do some gentle socialising, and very cheering to meet a regular reader of this diary in such an unexpected place.