East Coast Tour

I love the East Coast. Just something about those brick terracotta buildings....and perhaps the fact that you can find a dunkin donuts on every street corner in New York and Massachusetts.
I remember buying a tea with milk and sugar with a donut almost every morning from the Dunkin Donuts across the street from the Berklee College of Music when I was studying there.

So it was nice to taste the familiar again.
And Manhattan has such an energy to it. That juxtaposition of cultures, waiting around every street corner, there for the discovery. I wandered around Union Square, enthralled by the statue of Mahatma Gandhi, had a sample of the eclectic stores in St. Mark's Place (wooden crafts, tibetan beads, you name it...), rode the subway, marvelling at the stoic persistance of buskers in the steamy heat of the underground.....dragged my heavy-*** keyboard through the wet, streets of Chinatown and up and down subway steps (thanks Chris for helping out!).......
bought a pair of $5 sunglasses from a street vendor, experienced getting my eyebrows threaded for the first time (No tweezers...just a piece of string and dexterity...and presto...your eyebrows get shaped and neatened...don't know how the woman did it!...seems like it's practiced mostly by Indian women.)

Next stop after Manhattan was Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
I played at my very first Campfire Festival at the lovely Club Passim. What a great community of songwriters and I love college towns. It was nice to smell the air and be in Massachusetts again. I didn't manage to head down to Boston though (not enough time in the itinerary) and that was a pity. I guess I'll just have to head back there again sometime soon and take that walk down to the Charles River and just watch the river flow by.

I was also in Rhode Island and stayed in a lovely Bed and breakfast. Loved the french toast that we had for breakfast and also met a lovely gentleman from Spain who turned out to be a writer who authored books on socio-bio-diversity. According to him, Ecuador is the country with the greatest biodiversity within the smallest land area. Fascinating.
Had a good time performing at the Tazza Caffe in Providence, R.I with my good friend and fellow singer-songwriter Zachary Provost.

After Rhode Island, we drove 7 and a half hours the next day, to get to Washington, D.C.
What a loooong drive it was.....I was all optimistic that it would be an o.k drive, but really, next time, I'm gonna study my map before I book venues that far apart *grin*

We met Janelle out at the venue, Staccato, in Washington, D.C. She had driven 5 hours from Pennsylvania to see us. Wow. And she had to drive back after our show to get the car back to Pennsylvania by the morning. I think she mentioned that she was loading up on coffee!

After Washington, D.C, we had to return to NYC the next day. What was supposed to be a 4-5 our drive turned out to be a 7 hour drive with all the bad traffic and bad weather.

The Encore performance in the Broadway district of Manhattan was fun. Michael the sound guy did a great job with the lights and sound system and I had such a lovely time playing the REAL piano!
It was also lovely to see friends like Sophia and Phillip again and their family.

Whew.... so I'm back in L.A now. Gotta go get ready for my performance tonight at The Mint.