This Is Hockey Town
So here we are, we've started on our world tour with Diana Krall, with three successful shows in Calgary, Alberta. The Calgary Flames are onto the championships, as evidenced by three hours of horns, sirens, and human screams down in the streets, two nights ago; and though it was t-shirt weather yesterday, today there is snow on the rooftops (and bus tops: Metallica is staying in the same hotel as we are, and their buses are parked outside our hotel, directly under my window.
The band is Diana, me, Peter Erskine, and Robert Hurst, and the music is sounding fantastic.
It's difficult to get a "read" on the audiences, specifically as to how they're receiving the new music from Diana's recently released album. They clapped last night when we began an encore of "Departure Bay," a beautiful, new, evocatively moody piece. Their reactions to solos were a bit erratic.
I'm using my new stereo amp set-up built for me by Michael Clark (www.clarkamplification.com), and on Friday will have a beautiful new pedalboard and stage routing system feeding into it, built by the British guitar electronics guru Pete Cornish (www.petecornish.co.uk).
So I'll update frequently, and with lots of juicy information from what promises to be a long, diverse tour.
No food or wine notes yet--- though I had the new (2002) Carlisle Sonoma Valley Zinfandel the other night at my Nonet's performance at the Cerritos Performing Arts Center, and it was super. I'm toting a bottle of 2001 D'Arenberg "The Dead Arm" Shiraz to have on my birthday (this coming Sunday), so I'm sure to have some good reactions there. Better make sure to decant that bad boy.
More later
The band is Diana, me, Peter Erskine, and Robert Hurst, and the music is sounding fantastic.
It's difficult to get a "read" on the audiences, specifically as to how they're receiving the new music from Diana's recently released album. They clapped last night when we began an encore of "Departure Bay," a beautiful, new, evocatively moody piece. Their reactions to solos were a bit erratic.
I'm using my new stereo amp set-up built for me by Michael Clark (www.clarkamplification.com), and on Friday will have a beautiful new pedalboard and stage routing system feeding into it, built by the British guitar electronics guru Pete Cornish (www.petecornish.co.uk).
So I'll update frequently, and with lots of juicy information from what promises to be a long, diverse tour.
No food or wine notes yet--- though I had the new (2002) Carlisle Sonoma Valley Zinfandel the other night at my Nonet's performance at the Cerritos Performing Arts Center, and it was super. I'm toting a bottle of 2001 D'Arenberg "The Dead Arm" Shiraz to have on my birthday (this coming Sunday), so I'm sure to have some good reactions there. Better make sure to decant that bad boy.
More later
