Northeast Re-cap

Well, another tour has come and gone. Sorry for the lack of posts lately, it always slips my mind when I'm on the road. . .
We spent the last 2 weeks in the Northeast part of the country- mostly Massachusetts and New York. Starting off the tour was a show at the Nelson Odeon just outside of Syracuse.  I had the luck to play there last fall with Peter Mulvey and was very excited to headline a show there this time. The Odeon was created from a refurbished old country grange hall. It's got more character and charm than just about any venue in the country, and the owners, Jeff and Linda are incredibly hospitable!

Next we cruised through Massachusetts, stopping for a night in Northampton, and settled in Boston. Unfortunately, a show fell through in Connecticut at the last minute, but fortunately we had some extra time in Boston. The weather was fantastic so we spent a lot of time walking around the city, and even got some beach time on Cape Cod!

Boston Common

Cape Cod
Our final stop was NYC.. . the big apple. . . the city that never sleeps. . .well, you know.

We spent 5 nights with friends in Brooklyn. . . Bushwick to be exact. It's an "up and coming" neighborhood. I ended up playing 3 shows in the city, including a very fun house concert and a last minute gig in Prospect Heights with my old friend, Jon Ladeau. On the last night, we met up with Katie Powderly from Madison and played a gig at the Living Room in Manhattan.

All-in-all it was a great tour and I got to catch up with a lot of old friends. My only regret is that we stopped for lunch in Newark on our way out of NYC . . . got pulled over and issued 3 tickets by a very grumpy, uncompromising cop! Oh well, something had to go wrong.

take care,

Josh

A Hard Days Night

You guessed it, Liverpool. Thursday was Grateful Fred’s in Formby, Liverpool, just a bit north of the city center. Fred’s is an acoustic music club, quite usual in this part of the world, and a good one. Last night was their first night in a new venue which was the Formby British Legion Hall.  Complete with velvet curtains, embossed velvet chairs, and Vegas carpet Grateful Fred’s was cool as sh*#.

First, we should start with the night before in Dublin. If you’re in Dublin anytime soon, by all means, avoid the Citi Hostel.  It’s sketchy, it sounds like gunshots next door, there’s a cagey French lady (I think she lives there), and they don’t have a boiling pot for tea or coffee in the room. Also, you may want to avoid the ferry to Holyhead, Whales. When I informed Colin, the founder of Grateful Fred’s, that I’d be taking the ferry he sounded a bit pensive….now I know why. As we were leaving they said they were deploying the stabilizers to make for a more comfortable voyage. I didn’t know what they meant until we were in a 3-meter sea and I was wishing they hadn’t lied about putting out aforementioned stabilizers.  This made it obvious why there were folks at the bar, on the ferry, at 9 a.m., drinking….a lot. We then were fortunate enough to ride one of Mr. Richard Branson’s Virgin trains to Chester. It was fully stocked with about 25% percent more people than should have been on the train,  including a stubborn Welsh women obviously and outwardly annoyed with the lack of chivalry and common courtesy left in today’s youth, plus a bathroom door that wouldn’t close properly (directly leading to our amusement for the duration of the ride….you see, we were sitting on our suitcases in the hallway connecting the train cars due to the  over selling of the train)…we headed to Liverpool.

Once in Liverpool we made our way to Colin’s house which was an early 19^th century English home not far from the Legion. He set us up with a room, we had a quick bite (Colin didn’t, he headed back to get things set for the show…good man),and then went to the show. First up Colin and his band played a few great tunes to warm everyone up and handed things off to the Good Intentions. There was a a bit of trouble with the sound, but since Phil had just finished doing sound for Bob Dylan and Mark Knopfler over the weekend I assumed things would be just fine. The Good Intentions did play an unexpected acoustic set but did it fantastically and sounded killer. By the time it came up to me, the sound was running and the crowd was great. Can’t wait to be back at Grateful Fred’s.  

the Good Intentions

photos by Ron Davies