April 25, 2008

Howdy from Maine. I’m sitting here at the North Star Music Cafe, listening to our support for the night – Jon Call (his myspace here)…

Jon Call – Portland, ME
We’ll be going on in a half hour or so, and there’s already a good sized crowd. Good times. We’ve been really surprised at how many people have been in the rooms up here, so far from Colorado.

This is our last night in New England before making our way back to the West. Given that fact, we went to a place down on the harborside and enjoyed a fresh seafood linner (“lunch/dinner”). We all had big bowls of New England Clam Chowder (mine was thick enough that I could stand a spoon in it), and I had a fresh lobster roll. Took a stroll around Portland, enjoying the smell of seafood in the air. Seriously, the second we pulled into town, we could smell lobster, crab, fish, salt air, etc… awesome.

Hello from Maine! We decided to come up early and find a restaurant overlooking the ocean… and have a big lobster dinner for our last night in New England. It’s almost 3:30pm and we’re just a few miles outside of Portland, I think. The weather has been absolutely postcard perfect this entire week. We’re all blown away by the experience and joy of this week. I have about 4,000 photos on my camera that I need to get transferred to the laptop so we can share them with you here on the Journal. I’m going to go back through and update previous posts with relevant photos from those days… so I hope it’s not too confusing for y’all. Last night in Newton was awesome… thanks to all who made it out, and to the new Backstage Members who’ve joined the website this week, from Rochester to Des Moines to Boston. Hopefully we’ll have a few more members join us tonight after the show in Portland. Okay… I’m going to keep working on these photos and get this thing updated with some color! Hasta for the minute…

Russ here… Anton took over the Road Journal duties the last couple of days. It’s been crazy running around from gig to gig and doing promotions in between. Played tonight at The Attic / Union Street in Newton, MA. It was our last night with Fred on the tour, helping us with sound, merch, navigating, etc. We were all grateful to have his help with everything. We dropped him home a little bit ago, and all the guys have gone to bed. I’ll be hitting the rack here in a minute, after this update. Got out and played a round of golf this morning with Jason, managed to shoot a decent round on a course filled with trees (we’re not used to that on the Front Range in Colorado), then headed to Borders for a quick in-store promo set. After that, headed to the Attic and played for a supportive crowd… great room… a bit upscale, lots of after-work folks in there dressed up, etc…. really good dinner beforehand… and I’ll need to re-check on the setlist before posting. Fred’s got it with him, so I’ll need to make a phone call in the morning. I also can’t seem to find my digital camera, which has all of our photos from the last few days (yes, including the World’s Largest Truckstop and a college student in a tiny, tiny coat)… so I’ll have to dig through our bags and get those pics posted later today (Fri). We’ve decided to stay here at the Inn in Massachusetts for an extra night, rather than staying in Portland… so we’ll be driving a couple of hours back down here after the show tonight (Fri). It’s such an amazing place here at the Inn… we’re all happy to be able to relax and sleep here for one more night. Okay, bed time… here are some pics from today… hasta for now.

Breakfast at the Inn