Cincinatti, OH

OK, if I said every show was our absolute best to date, you'd eventually stop believing me. It is time for a reality check. Last night was not our best. Someone, I think it was Wendell Kelly our trombonist, commented recently that when you feel like the band had a great show it probably really means that you just had a great show. I don't necessarily buy that, but the inverse is certainly true. If I don't feel good about my performance I tend to not notice the great work of others.

I modified the pedal system on my Dusty Strings D600 to make it easier on my back since I stand up for the entire show. The problem I'm about to describe was created by my modification, and is not the manufacturer's design. I start the very first song and it is important that the damper system on my hammer dulcimer be adjusted perfectly prior to the show. Everything checked out fine, but about half way through the song, before my solo, the string connecting my pedal to the dampers became disconnected. I had to improvise from then on. It wasn't horrible, and I'm sure no one in the audience new that anything was going wrong, but it threw me. As soon as we finished the song I got under the dulcimer and temporarily tied off the string. The way I had to tie it limited my ability to use the dampers for the rest of the first set. I took the rig off stage at intermission and repaired it but I never really got groove back. There were also a couple of noticeable mistakes made by others later in the show, but again, I'm sure most of those in the audience did not notice. It turns out that even after the show ended our bumpy night was not over.

We had a long night ahead of us, 6 hours including a scheduled gas stop. About 3 hours into the trip one of the buses had a flat tire so we had to stop and divide those people among the other two buses. We arrived in Cincinatti after sunrise and found out they had not tranferred the luggage from the broken down bus. A bunch of us decided to go to breakfast while they waited. I finally hit the sack around 7:30 am. No, I still haven't mastered sleeping on the bus.

David Hudson and I are meeting a fan this afternoon to talk about didgeridoos.

We are all looking forward to a day off tomorrow.

There are still changes coming to the web site. I just have to steal a moment here and there to work on the design.

I keep promising more pictures but run out of time before I get them posted. I'll give it another shot this afternoon. ¶ 4:54 PM