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11/17/2006: "'Sno Angel USA May 26-27 2006"

I am home for 5 days.
Then back to the airport.
I just make the plane.
New york next.
At the same time I am attempting to get 3 cars full of choir and band folks down from Canada for the new york city show.
It all sounds impossible.
So many details again shuts my brain off in mid sentence.
Border crossing details and one way travel due to a bulk of cheap flight tickets from new york to chicago to ottawa only.

This drivel of travel blur provides star bursts in my skull’s inner felt, socketing my eyes, which I am used to. But not always.

I land in new york and taxi to the hotel.
Ground zero.
I get out and forget my USA tipping etiquette.
I have been coming and going so much from overseas that I mistakenly euro tip the cabbie and he gets angst ridden.
I pause to breathe in his dramatic presentation of irk.
It’s a new york moment.

I settle in my room and savor its removal from all things human.
The air conditioning belittles the liquefying steam of humidity a thin layer of pane away. Its dark out there. I am well tucked into one of the infinite corners of the universe that hide us just moments in between all things. I wonder about all the dreams that have come to die in this room. I gaze upon their stains on the wall.
Some things never get clean.

Then I sleep well enough with the running grunt of the AC making the room as comfortable as the inner hull of large steamer wrapping it up in the constant groan of engine grind while hovering over a deep sea’s unfathomable depths.

The end
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next day:
….the choir and band have all made it.
Jeremy gara has come to play drums for these 2 shows.
He is in the middle of recording a new ‘arcade fire’ album, and we have not been able to play together at all since we recorded the ‘sno angel album 3 years ago.

Some time back, we almost opened for a wilco tour, but that got cancelled when jeff tweedy checked into rehab. When that tour reassembled, calexico had the opening slot and jeremy had joined arcade fire.
The end.

We amble through our sound check.
The back stage is too small for us all to fit.
It’s the size and temperature of a large toaster.

The show this night will be fierce and sweaty and very good.
A great pleasure to play new york city with already having a full tour under our belts. We are tight and unflinching.
We get wet.
Soaked.
I love new york.

We then head out to new jersey to find our hotel next to the airport so we can make that severely early flight to Chicago. We get lost and drive forever. I always get lost here. The roads here are tangled up and I can’t get a flow. I can see the hotel across the scramble of darkly stained high ways, but can’t get to it.
These roads never get clean.

Hotel arrival and more insanity. Desk clerk yelling at some guests who are yelling back at her. Lobby now filled up with very tired choir and band folk. It’s a days inn, at the day’s end, and it stinks.

- - - - - - -

Come morning I am baked.
Fly to Chicago, get out, rent 2 vans to get to the hotel.
For today I had won a 4 star hotel for everybody.
It’s the price line dot com gamble thing, and was lucky enough to secure everybody a room in the same place, cause it could have ended up placing us all in different hotels all over town.
We are stylin’ and it’s costing less then yesterday’s texas hotel;
…meaning: a lone star accommodation.

The rooms are lush and welcoming. The beds swear to us they have never been drenched in the trampled parade of humanity spilling their suicidal dreams in a great endless swamp of crippled sleep.
Nap time delivers high hopes for us all to be well amped tonight.

- - - - - - - - - - -

The venue tonight is the old town school of music, a stunningly sweet venue with theater like proportions. And the massive backstage area is an entire floor downstairs which only teases the memory of the bowery ballroom’s backstage toasteresque proportions. The band and choir seemed tickled by the contrast.
-
- A short time later, my family shows up. They have come up from Tucson. Kids and wife now make it a fantastic family here on the road and has all the ingredients for a good set tonight.

– - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
There is something very seamless about the show tonight.
The set plays itself. We are just along for the joy ride.
A firm and affirming fiery form of fun.
Its good to have the kids in the house.
Afterwards we all van it back to the hotel.
Everyone’s in exceptional form.

I settle the finances there and we all gather to say our sweetened sad good byes. It’s a success but looks like I lost about $2,500 on this little run.

Me and the family remain another day here in Chicago to just do nothing and let a vacation begin. Time to just pay attention to the children and the brave woman hanging in there with all this hooey.
Everyone else flies back to Canada.

In the Chicago tribune was an adoring half page review of the show with a large picture of us on stage.
Chicago is a great town.

Then we move to denmark.

So, that was may.
The end.
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