Tag: Indigo Girls

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?

8 Nov – Pompano Beach Amphitheatre (Pompano Beach, FL)
w/ Indigo Girls

When we first arrived it immediately felt odd. I noticed before the Orlando show that having a day off seems to affect the next show, I felt out of rhythm. It’s hard to explain. The Pompano Beach Amphitheatre was listed as having 3000 seats but somehow I find that doubtful. The area of town felt more like we were playing at a high school, though the amphitheatre itself was very nice. Just not 3000 seats. Shortly before the show we found out there were 1900 tickets sold, which I think is probably the biggest crowd of the tour so far, if that’s correct.

We soundchecked the cover song with Amy, Emily and Rose and at one point it was the three of them and myself and Lyle standing around making sure we had the harmonies right. Robyn’s camera battery had died and so there’s no photo, but that was a pretty cool moment.

Just before we went on the crowd in the actual theatre was very light and I figured they were just going to hang out until the Girls came on. But Amy introduced us again and this time told people that they should come inside and listen to us. The amazing thing about these shows is that, of course, they did. So by the time we started, the place was full. One song in and they were really responding. We played, overall, the tightest, most comfortable show so far. It really is very dependent on the crowd in a lot of ways, the adrenaline from a good response can cover a multitude of things, but we were just tight in general last night, I think. We did the cover last and the Girls and Rose walked out just before the chorus and the crowd went up. It was a blast.

I think now is a good time for another report from Robyn who remembers many more things than I do after a show:

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i was backstage at first. i was afraid the same thing would happen to me like it did in orlando and i would be hassled by security for wanting to get back in. but then i reminded myself i was now wearing the all-powerful indigo girls “all access” badge and that meant i, too, was all-powerful. i left after “hey, california” to watch the rest of the show from the back of the amphitheatre.

the crowd really was responsive. paul, after familiarizing himself with the beachy amphitheatre-style setting, reminded people to purchase his cd after buying their pork and cappuccino from the nearby concession stands. or a mixture of the two. “you could get a pork cappuccino.” and lee chimed in, “a porkuccino.” i say this because a). it was hilarious; b). it demonstrates paul’s comfort with the audience on this stage; and c). they were on last night. everyone…paul, the band, the audience.

the set was great…but let’s cut to the quick, shall we?

the girls and rose came out just before the chorus of the cover to sing along with paul. there was cheering. but i don’t think the cheering for them was as loud as when he began the “creep” section of the cover. i heard girls screaming and saw hands thrown up in the air while clapping. he nailed the high parts and i caught myself whispering “yes!” as he got to the final high part. the girls and rose sounded great with the song. it was awesome.

i ran backstage just before it was over, and caught emily saying, “that was FUN.” as she walked off stage. amy was angry with herself for missing her notes. “i just couldn’t get it.” it was kinda funny to hear someone who always seems to have perfect pitch say such a thing. especially when you couldn’t tell at all. i guess that comes with being a musician.

i escorted paul to the merch table – i love doing that; it makes me feel like his bodyguard – and there were people already buying cds. it’s always fun to see the look on people’s faces when they see him out there, too. girls will whisper to one another, “look, there he is.” and other people will cautiously walk up to him, then others will bound up to him with excitement.

a woman from a nearby community college interviewed him. a random man who was also at the orlando show said he could go home now; he had come to see what he wanted to see. another said he was so pleased to have seen such a great opener, another wrote that this was the first opening act he had ever liked…EVER. it was a good show.

and then “kid fears.” paul walked on stage and some girl screamed “PAUL!” i think twice. and when he started singing his part (which was just beautiful), the people who had rushed the stage couldn’t figure out who to watch. which, when you think about it, is very impressive. for such crazed devoted fans who can’t stop screaming amy or emily’s name or who can’t keep their eyes off of them, paul made an impression.

a few more cd autographs in the rain and we were off to IHOP. now, off to tampa. to do it all over again.
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Robyn, who is Chris’ wife, has been an amazing tour manager, by the way. She has kept me sane through this whole thing by constantly being on top of the small details.

So, currently we’re driving to Tampa, and I realized today that the travel between locations does quickly become sort of repetitive. It’s hard to discern where you are at a given time because after awhile it just become rote and one road is pretty much like the last. That in itself, at least at this stage when it’s all still new, is sort of cool.

6 Nov – Hard Rock Live (Orlando, FL)
w/ Indigo Girls

Guessing here at the outset this post will be much shorter than the other two. This was a strange show. Before we went on Amy said it reminded her of playing Las Vegas and that’s really as good an approximation as any. When we started I could only see the first few rows and it looked as if the crowd was very light, but as the lights brightened I could see they were mostly crowded around the bars at the back.

The Hard Rock in Orlando is a strange place. It’s large, just a bit smaller in capacity than the Florida Theatre was, but there are several bars in the back of the room. Also, maybe more importantly, it’s in the middle of Universal so the crowd is a very strange mix of fans and just people who are out at Universal. Near the end of the set when I mentioned that we just had a couple of songs left someone shouted out “hurry up and play the two songs!” My voice didn’t hit the high part for the first time in the cover we’ve been playing.

Still, I saw my name on a huge marquee. We played “Guy Fawkes Day” since we didn’t have a show on the 5th. I met Rose Polenzani, who’s also on Daemon and just happened to be down in Florida this week. She is extremely friendly, she did a couple of songs with the Girls and she and I talked about me singing backup on one of them for the next couple of shows (she’s traveling along with them for the next two dates). I sang on “Kid Fears” again and this time felt very comfortable with it. I tried to sing it like I wasn’t shy, and both of them seemed really happy with how it sounded… Emily blew me a kiss after we were done.

I neglected to mention the CD sales for the last show, but we did extremely well in Jacksonville. Last night we did alright, which is really sort of a funny statement since we really did much better than we would at any normal show we’d play.

Today is another day off.