We’re going to the Midway Tavern today in Mishawaka, Indiana. Basically a township that makes up the South Bend area of Indiana, home of the famous Notre Dame University. We drove through the campus on our way out and I had to show Yoshi and John ‘Touchdown Jesus’. TJ is a giant mural on the side of a campus library building that so happens to be in the direct trajectory of Notre Dame’s football field. In other words if you were to stand in one of the end zones of the field and look towards the opposite end zone you would see the image standing in the distance. The stadium, built in the 30’s originally, is not one of those elevated designs but rather the squat-oval affairs of the time, with the wide band of fan seating, giving it the appearance of a bicycle velodrome when viewed overhead. Upon you’re looking to that said opposite side you can see in the background the TJ image. The picture depicts the resurrected Jesus so his arms are outstretched as if receiving the rays of God, his dad, God’s light shining down upon him. This has been humorously taken to appear as Jesus raising his arms to signify a touchdown, since the pose looks much like a referee’s actions of the same. The Catholic Church, although with a dreadful past history at times with their religious stands on practices and doctrine, does exhibit a bit of fun and levity with this particular image, albeit unintended, but it’s in good fun and spirit with their passion towards athletics. Other than the campus in the area, South Bend is but a quiet little town in Indiana. I will make mention too that when Tailspin Headwhack came out back in 97’, gosh it was so long ago, I was getting quite a lot of airplay from the local radio station there. Usually when that happens my agency would pounce on the opportunity and book you a gig so as to take advantage of the local populace’s appetite on my aural offering with the hopes in getting them to reciprocate with their paid attendance at my show. Unfortunately this did not happen and I was never booked in the area; until now.

I’m looking at my phone navigating our way to the club and we take a left off the main street and we’re getting into a very ‘neighborhood’ looking area. ‘There’s a club here!?’ I remember saying out loud. I also start to curse Apple Maps because they still haven’t come up to snuff with Google Maps on accuracy and just being up-to-date on info and correct all the time, but the app works so flawlessly with the phone and its other features that I just acquiesce to its operation and let it take me there. Most of the time the app gets me there just fine. Sure enough there it was, Midway Tavern. Famous ‘Home of the Blues’ for almost 40 years. We park in front and I decide to reconnoiter the setting since we’ve never been here. You know, find out where to load in the equipment, take a look at the stage etc. Immediately it’s like stepping back in time when you enter. The place still has much of its original layout and décor inside, with the bar area being the first part of the structure and in the back is the performance area. It looks like this could’ve been a club set up as a local social gathering place for people of Germanic origins. The images painted on the walls are traditional Teutonic dress of people dancing. You know the look, we mistake it for those Alpine mountain climbing guys, the shorts, suspenders, white shirts, high knee socks and hats with a feather in it. Maybe you hear ‘yodeling’ in your head when you look at them. This place does have a stage. It has the charming old style façade too with its curved shaping as if announcing to the patrons – ‘gaze towards here to be entertained.’ I love it. I’m eager to get started.

We load in and there’s really nobody here except the bartender and he’s busy with his duties up front. We’re set up now and I ask the bartender about the soundman and when we might expect him. ‘That’s me’ the bartender replies, ‘Oh, OK’ but we still have to basically do mic placement to get this going. It’s a very small PA and I’m not really worried cuz’ it looks like the right stuff for this size of room. We go through a very cursory sound check and wait for our frozen pizza that the bar provides us as our meal. Today, I guess, we are a pizza-band. Since John and I try to be economical on the road and save our latter meal of the day for the club’s meal, if one is provided, we’ll wait and often times we’ll get pretty hungry up to that point. This is one of those days and we ravenously set upon this ‘Tombstone’ offering when it is set before us. Yes it’s hot and yes it burns the roof of my mouth but I’m hungry and my need to satisfy hunger far exceeds my wanting good tasting food. Funny how hunger increases the flavor of what would normally be repulsive or bland food to me. That done, people are starting to show up and we get ready to play.

We start up and it’s an intimate gathering seated close to us but that deters us not from our full frontal assault upon their senses. Everybody is sounding good and Yoshi is starting to get his ‘legs’ underneath him. He’s more comfortable with the songs. It’s not easy for him. He had to relearn much of the catalog and adjust to our ‘American’ way of playing. It is different from Japanese rock players. Plus the way we shift it over to a ‘jam’ or ‘conversational’ method in our execution of the songs you have to be listening all the while to adjust and respond to our stage environment. My gig requires quick musical feet from time to time. He’s getting it though and he’s been sounding better every gig. We finish up the night in our usual fanfare and we say our good-byes to some of our fans that have made long trips and to the new ones in the area. The owner says we’ll be back and I really hope so. This atavistic venue has been a joy to play and experience.

Detroit oh Detroit. A veritable cornucopia of memories come flooding in every time I think of the past times I’ve had in Detroit. From my first experiences at playing in Sully’s on a Sunday and when we got there our gig went from just us that night to me opening up for Mick Taylor, ex-Rolling Stone Taylor. Then years later with Ted Nugent’s management there and then later Bono and Edge were hanging out in the crowd. But lately I’ve been gathering my latest recollections from Callahan’s out in Auburn Hills. A spacious club with a good size stage and the layout obviously set up for the main attraction; live music. I’ve always managed to hang on to my stalwart fan base here and at times it fluctuates up and down but never have they abandoned me. I always tried to mix up the variety of songs here too because of the varying tastes and fun side of my fans that seem to come out. I also get a number of fans over from Canada attending cuz’ Windsor is just across the Rainbow Bridge there. This time we have Yoshi with us and that’s sure to change up the vibe and sound. We’re all starting to gel better with the chemistry and musical language on stage. The material is becoming more powerful as we go along.

Auburn Hills is up on the north side of Detroit’s suburbs and at one time half of the city’s major sports teams had their respective venues where they played home games in. The Lions had the Pontiac Silverdome, I guess really that would be in Pontiac, MI. cuz’ that suburb is right next to Auburn Hills, and the Pistons at the Palace. I haven’t seen the Palace yet but the Silverdome as far as I know has been just sitting there. I’m a bit confused now though because I saw some reports that the city was just trying desperately to sell the structure for basically whatever they could get because just maintaining care of the parking lot is expensive much less than huge building sitting idle, and as I saw the weeds that had managed to grow up through the pavement of the parking lot start to resemble a miniature ‘weed forest’ as we would return twice a year, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad for the Silverdome. I have seen a report though where it is claimed the Silverdome had been bought by someone and some of its internal things, the seats and bathroom facilities and what-nots, were auctioned off but I guess it’s still there. That also was the home to the Pistons for a while and the MLS Soccer team and it hosted a game of the World Cup when it was held here in America a while back. Economies expand and contract and there’s different ways of seeing it I guess. From my eyes though Detroit definitely looks to be coming back.

We’ve got us a decent crowd here at Callahan’s and we’re ready to go. Launching into our set with our usual gusto and ‘take no prisoners’ attitude we blast through our first set and mistakes be damned. It’s all part of the package with the emotional style I use but this is how I learn too. Eventually I’ll get this down. I’m slowly expanding the set list from the repertoire of songs we know so as to bring Yoshi up to speed for the next few weeks. I’ve been having to put the keys of the songs next to them on Yoshi’s set list to help him but sometimes it’s me that needs the help cuz’ I just don’t think about the keys anymore. I know visually where my hands are supposed to be when I play in CDG. The only time I think about it is when I’m jamming with someone else and I have to transpose due to the fact I tune to ‘D’ and I must play up a whole-step or half-step, depending on their tuning of course. So on occasion I have written the wrong key down much to Yoshi’s slight chagrin. He’s quick though and he hears my error. We finish up and I say my warm good-byes to many of the people that have been coming to see me for years.  A few for more than a decade. I guess I’ve still got something special to hold them after all these years. I am indeed very grateful for my fans and I know too it’s my responsibility to them to keep stretching and working on my craft to provide them with a good experience at my shows.

Thank you Detroit.

It’s always been a good place for me. Gilly’s has just got this special vibe to it. Jerry, the owner, is one of my faves’ in the nation and when he talks the history of the acts he’s handled and performed in his club it’s like listening to the real thing. From Chet Baker to Chick Corea to legends of Jazz, they have all stood on that stage there and played. It’s a tremendous feeling I get every time I come here.

So we arrive and load in and Jerry meets us outside in the back by the load-in door. This used to be a bus station, a Greyhound bus station back when I started to play here but now it’s abandoned and Gilly’s is pretty much the last thing standing in the complex. This is downtown Dayton we’re talking about too. Still a fine town even though it’s been a bit of a slog for the city to get out of the economically depressed state that visited this area but they’re on their way back.

This room sounds great and the sound man has dialed us in very nicely and so we’re ready to go. Yoshi is proving himself to be quick on his musical feet. He adjusts his playing and styles if he hears he’s a bit out of place. He’s deft at his craft. We whip into our usual set list and then for tonight I have chosen some songs from the vault that we haven’t played yet so we can get this song under his fingers and mine too. There are some tours where I’ve worked up some songs that were incredibly detailed and ambitious and played them dozens of times. We take a break and somehow those songs don’t make it onto the set list over a period of time and when they finally make an appearance I quickly find out how much the songs have faded in my ability to execute them. Then I have to spend time in the hotels before my gigs working diligently relearning those very same songs that were so familiar to me. I watched a video post of Ritchie Kotzen and Billy Sheehan relating this exact experience; going through the motions of relearning songs they knew so well. I knew I was normal at this point when those guys were talking about it. Sometimes it helps to get perspective from another source you thought were far from having these problems.

I’m getting around pretty good and I hear myself fine on stage and that’s always a good thing for me. With the high ceiling and high stage in Gilly’s it gives the music its own natural reverb. It’s a really nice addition to our occasional atmospheric excursions. My second gigs are pretty much always fun because my fingers are starting to work. We finish up with a flurry and the crowd is happy and we load up and have a quick chat with Jerry’s brother who handles the biz at the end of the night. I convey my gratitude that I get to play here and hope that our relationship continues. Dayton always lives in me.

It was a long time in the planning and finally our efforts had come to fruition. Yoshi Ogasahara is here in the states and has acquired his Visa to work and play in the US for this tour in July –August 2015. I’m here to tell you people, I’ve gone through this process several times now, the acquirement and paperwork involved with bringing someone here to our fair country with the legal intention to work that is. Plus on Yoshi’s end of it there are hoops and fees his side had to lay out to get this completed as well. A work Visa to the US is not an endeavor for the economically squeamish. It’s quite expensive, $4k-$5k and unless you love to fill out your own tax forms and revel at the chance to pore through various permit applications and such, the paperwork is best navigated by a professional; Immigration attorney. Another expense, oh, and then there’s the plane ticket. Oh well, that mountain range tackled and overcome we now have Yoshi here and it’s great to see my longtime friend again.

 We jump in the van at 6 am, all of us, and point north and start to make our way towards Tuscarawas, Ohio for the first gig on this tour. The drive is one I know because I’ve done this exact route in just about the same ordinal placement as on previous tours. The Canal House is always a fun place to play and it’s also a great place to start a tour. The crowds are a mixture of dedicated fans that live close by or venture in from Cleveland or from the Pittsburgh area and they’re ready for anything that we pull out. Gotta’ love em’. The Canal House is a surprisingly well situated venue for being out in a location that some would consider ‘in the middle of nowhere’. The claim to fame out in this part of the country is that there’s a rich baseball history out here. With their most famous son from the area, Cy Young who was born around Newcomerstown, Tuscarawas had many baseball teams with companies sponsoring them and support from the surrounding populace. There are old photographs up on the walls in the Canal House showing teams from 1900’s to the 50’s. Pretty amazing. If I had done more research for this blog I’m sure there would be several names of repute in the Baseball World that hail from here but alas I am at the computer early in the morning and trying to make a deadline. Suffice it to say I always enjoy playing here and am grateful for the opportunity that John Hursey has given me. It should be noted how John has done a great service to this area as well because he keeps bringing in lots of road acts and national touring acts here to this quiet agrarian part of the country.

Now usually I’ve lamented that I’m horrible at first gigs after a lay-off, this one being around 2 months approximately, and it’s good that I’m here with fans that just want to see me play and mistakes be damned cuz’ they’re at least played with conviction and verve. We also had no time to rehearse before this gig with Yoshi but if I know the Japanese work ethic in preparation to duties, I’m not too worried. Sure enough, since John McKnight and I know each other so well and Yoshi just has to drop himself in to this machine we all come together pretty damn well for not ‘talking’ to each other musically for the past 2 years or so. Yoshi is also a good back-up singer and we start to incorporate 3-part harmonies on some of the songs so this is a good chance to see and hear of things to come as the tour progresses. We have a bunch of fun playing the songs and reacquainting ourselves musically and we can’t help but smile broadly at times, even at the mistakes, cuz’ this is fun.  It’s the best first gig on a tour I’ve had in a long time.

I can’t wait to see what’s coming up for the rest of the tour.