Jerry Christmas Tour,
| Situation: | Touring during the 2009 holiday season |
Well the Jerry Christmas Tour has come and gone (quite some time ago now I know) and I would like to thank all the folks, old acquaintances and new, for coming out and supporting us. It was a great time for everyone from the bus to the lobby and I have seen many really nice reports on it. This year was an especially challenging one for most folks, in one way or another. With the financial crisis coming down on us all, I hope we brought a little cheer to the front and pushed some woes to the rear. That time of year is for giving and we were trying our best to give our gifts of music. It was meant as a way to leave all the dreadful slag behind if only for two and a half hours of one of your days. I seriously hope it worked. The band of Guthrie, Todd, Chad, along with Matt Combs, Alex Hargreaves the esteemed Maura O’Connell and John Oates were all ecstatic about the music and fun onstage and off. I thought the shows were well paced and the audiences all gave back in full. I would call that a success. It’s too bad you can only play that kind of music and show one time of the year. Maybe I will do one in August of the coming year just to cool us all off. Every night I had the best seat in the house, as the proud one watching Alex come of age and blowing minds, while the consummate pro Matt gave him gave him a long leash over to my left. Toy pianos and great chamber trios mixed with insane pantomiming, that were curiously taken into stride. One women remarking, “who would have thought such an awful voice would come from such a nice young man” as Alex stepped up to fake my track of “Santa Claus meets Tom Waits” vocal. Maura would come bounding on stage and soon have the audience in her mighty Irish palm. She is a real singer. No tuning for her in the studio. She is one of those singers’ singers who inspire as well as enthrall. John Oates was so kind to grace us and be the good sport he is with our crazy renditions of Maneater and other Hall and Oates golden clusters. He and I continue to try to work together on his next project, a real blues and folk record he’s been dying to do for about thirty-five years. On the tour while in South Carolina he introduced us to his old friend, the great T Bone Wolk. How could we know he would leave us just a short time later for the Great Beyond. What a lovely man and talent that will be sorely missed, especially by his brothers Daryl and John. These days, maybe I’m just at that age, but we seem to be ending eras more frequently. This could bring up the argument that so much great music was made in the last 40 years. Or maybe this is an ongoing saga that hits groups of musicians of the same generation. Probably the latter, but I belong to the one being hit right now and it makes me sad. Anyway, back to brighter contents. Guthrie, Todd and Chad have grown so much in the last three years it is incredible. They are all stepping out into their own as I take some time exploring different avenues as I am wont to do. We’ll be giving the band a break while we go exploring on our own and hopefully when we get back to it, we’ll be better for it. This has really worked for AKUS. We are in the middle of a new record and I am really jazzed about it. We will tour sporadically this Spring and when Fall comes and the record jumps out of the box we’ve been carrying it in, expect to gear up for the infinity tours we have been known to go on during my eleven almost twelve year delightful run with Al and crew. Along with all that I am doing a few dates teaming up with Leo Kottke and at different times with Travis Tritt for our “Two Fools On Stools” Tour, also keeping a recording and touring schedule with Elvis Costello. We just finished a new record much like “Sugarcane” but with Pete Thomas and some Marc Ribot thrown in for good measure. We’ll be touring this April and then again in Europe and the Continent during July and August. No stone left unturned on any shore. Well that is it for this installment of “Jerry Tells All”. Hope to see you in my travels, or maybe right here in Nashville. I know this started as a Christmas tour report, but welcome to the Rambling World of JD.
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