Well, I really fell off the blog wagon during the last week of the tour, so let me see if I can re-cap a little bit.
Thursday, May 8 we played at Tusca Cafe in Pittsburgh’s trendy South Side Works. We’d actually been there earlier in the week to go to the Cheesecake Factory for, well, cheesecake, and my poor friend was served a frozen piece of cheesecake that I can only describe as a cheesecakesicle. But I digress. Tusca seemed very swanky and upscale, and I enjoyed listening to Heather Kropf and Brad Yoder’s smooth piano/sax stylings and then the nice smoky vocals of Sonji. The only bummer of the night was that the place kind of cleared out right around the time I started playing. Apparently Pittsburgh is not one of those places the parties late – at least not on a Thursday night! But it was worth it to be a part of a great event, and it was nice to get my feet wet in a new place. There seems to be a great scene there. We had a great time in Pittsburgh generally; we went to the Andy Warhol museum and enjoyed the budding spring for a few days.
Friday, May 9 was the last show of the tour back in Ann Arbor. It was a nice little homecoming for us, playing at Crazy Wisdom – I played some great shows there during college. I wasn’t sure what the turnout would be like, especially given the fact that U of M is out for the summer, but the place was absolutely packed! As always there, the crowd was extremely attentive and appreciative, and it felt really wonderful for me to finish the tour on such a high note. It didn’t hurt that some friends and family were there for the show and we went to Pizza House later! That place RULES! One of my college faves, especially when I had a late night veggie italian sub craving. :)
In the morning I was lucky enough to see my niece’s soccer tournament in Novi and then we spent Mother’s Day in GR before hitting the road back west. It was uneventful – until that snow on the border of Colorado and New Mexico – we just can’t avoid it! But we made it home safely after all on Thursday afternoon and now here I am in LA, melting in the heat. I was just not really prepared for this crazy heat wave, and it seems even more drastic since we were just in cooler climates. The afternoon I got home I felt incredibly productive, going into super-laundry mode and making lists of things I needed to do, and then Friday afternoon I just crashed.
Mike and I have been getting some things for the apartment, though, and generally doing stuff we ran out of time to do before the tour. The fact is, I really loved being on tour. I loved always having a show to play. I loved seeing somewhere new and someone new every day. We stayed with lots of friends who made us feel completely at home everywhere. So I missed certain things but I never felt homesick. But it’s funny to me the little delights of being home after so long…for instance, I know where the glasses are! I know how to work the remote. Also, it feels great to go to the grocery store.
And that is all – next up, a show in town at cool club Libertine, and a tour of Northern CA and the Pacific Northwest is in the works for later this summer. The tour felt like, instead of something over and done, the beginning of a long road. And I can’t get wait to get back on it!