How do you follow Great Big Sea Day? Seriously, by official proclamation of His Worship Bob Kiss, Friday, October 31st, 2008, was Great Big Sea Day in Burlington, Vermont.
C’mon. That’s pretty friggin’ cool.
Bit of a day filled with mixed emotions, really. Beautiful weather, lovely city, effectively a sold out show on GBS Day, and I was dying to go home. I’ve had my share of tinges of homesickness but I can honestly say, for the first time in my professional career, I would have cancelled a big show to fly home yesterday to join the Halloweening.
Spent the whole day Skyping home and receiving emailed photos of my son Henry and all the neighbourhood kids in full regalia. They were having a ball and I wanted to be there so bad that it actually hurt.
By late afternoon, I decided to go for a run to clear my head and get myself in the right frame of mind to do the concert justice. Mistake. I ended up getting lost and by dusk I found myself in a residential area where dozens of Dad’s led their little Thomas the Tank Engines and Pirates and such around by hand as they Trick or Treated up and down the perfect fall Vermont streets. Jaysus, it was depressing. I ran to the end of one perfect Halloween scene and in an effort to discretely get away, I smacked right into some post on the corner. To make a bad situation worse, I look up to see what has clobbered me, and it was a sign that read “Henry St.”
Wow, I should be home.
On the way back to the Theatre with night coming on, I ran down the pedestrian high street. It is one of the nicer ones in the US, lined with shops and pubs, and swarming with all kinds of folks with their Friday faces on. Each block of the high street is divided from the next by a crossing street for cars. The walkers are protected from roaming onto the middle of the cross street and into the path of oncoming vehicular traffic by lovely black cast iron posts connected by a dark grey chains that are clearly visible in the daylight hours. But not so visible to depressed folksingers in the dark.
At full romp, I took one of the chains right around the middle of the thigh and went flying into the crossing street and landed about a meter in front of a moving Police Car. Luck for me Burlington’s Finest, are sharper than me and hit the brakes before making tire food out of yours truly.
They jumped from the car and very reasonably assumed that I was drunk. When they asked if I’d been drinking, I replied,
“Not yet Officer, but that sounds like a good idea.”
Thankfully, the show went very well. Sang ‘Testify’, a tune I wrote with Russell Crowe for the first time ever. Cool tune.
Had a few pints with audio guy Steve for his 40th and watched drunken college kids in all kinds of foolish and suggestive costume. They must have hammered to put on some of those get-ups…though, despite hours of observation, I saw not one of them trip up in the dark grey chain.
Great Big Sea Day indeed.
Cheers,
Alan