9 Nov – Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center (Tampa, FL)
w/ Indigo Girls
I’m trying not to short-change anyone by forcing you to read MY description of events since I would play everything down just because I feel uncomfortable describing it. So, once again, here’s Robyn:
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it was a great night. the crowd was very responsive and respectful. i was a little worried at first because this was the largest auditorium yet and sometimes these fans can be very selective. but i shouldn’t have worried.
i won’t go on like i have in the last posts. just hit the highlights. it would be repetitive anyway. he sings, he wins, he signs lots of cds, and people beg for a return date. that’s how it’s happened every night.
but here…this is so you can be a proud friend, as if you aren’t already:
– someone wrote on his mailing list that they were the best opening band ever. (sound familiar?)
– a random girl wanted to kiss his red hair. (it was a beatle-esque moment, and everyone made fun of him for it for a few hours)
– a woman came up to ask him to autograph his cd, only to make it out to her 8-month old daughter. (how cute is that? he wrote “I will be really old by the time you’re reading this”)
– a girl came up to paul to have him sign his cd and her friend outed her. she blurted out that she had driven from orlando just to see paul’s show again. (i’m sorry, but did you catch that? AGAIN!)
– he did one of rose’s songs with her and my body was covered in goose bumps by the end. they ended on an “ooh” part and someone said they sounded like ghosts, but not in a howling banshee scary way. it was absolutely breathtaking. eerie, but amazing. emily approached him afterward to tell him just how amazing it was.
– his cover was equally amazing. it was the best sound, yet. rose, amy and emily came up to sing on it again, and this time everyone nailed their parts. the creep section was particularly wonderful and the crowd lost it at the end. amy and emily hugged him on stage afterward. it’s nice that the crowd gets to see the admiration they have for him.
and something else happened. i can’t tell you, because it wasn’t my moment. i give you back to paul to tell you all about it.
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Well, first things first… Lately my time backstage has been pretty swamped, last night Rose and I went over her song while the Girls were playing and then Emily had asked if I wanted to do the penny whistle solo on “Closer to Fine” with the melodica. So I went through that about a million times with Rose playing the song for me. I was nervous as hell about both bits. So we went out and Rose’s song went really well. Then they did “Closer to Fine” with us still out there and we got to the solo… well, I should explain that the part on the melodica that I play on “Sherman” is the only thing I have ever played, I can’t play keyboards and certainly can’t transpose on the fly. It turns out Rose and I rehearsed it without a capo, so I hit the first note and knew I was in big trouble. I tried to recover it as best I could but it was a mess. The only upshot being that everyone thought it was funny.
Tampa gave me far and away the most surreal moment of this whole experience.
After we play our set I go out to the lobby and sign CDs and talk to people. Usually the crowd clears out a couple of minutes before the Girls go on and I head backstage again. At this venue the only wa back to the stage was to head back down the side aisle and then cross in front of the stage to the side door. So Robyn, Andrea (sorry, Andrea and Stacey from Daemon came down for the last two shows) and I headed down to go backstage. When we got down to the bottom and were about to start crossing in front people started applauding. I looked around to see if the show was already starting.
It wasn’t.
They were just applauding because we were crossing in front. I have never felt stranger in my entire life. I think I waved, maybe. I don’t know. People were just shouting things and applauding.
The girl who wanted to kiss my hair was really cute, by the way. What am I, made of stone?