Vancouver, British Columbia

This afternoon we boarded a handsome Embraer Legacy, our touring jet through North America. This plane will wing us from the upper Pacific to the Atlantic coast and all stops between. The power and surety of these executive planes never fails to impress me every time we take off, I've never felt safer. Dianne will be looking after us onboard and proved herself with this first hop to Vancouver from Seattle. In just 20 minutes she set up, served and cleared a delicious lunch of sushi that had probably been swimming in the Pacific water earlier that morning. We are officially in tour mode now.

We arrived in beautiful Vancouver on a picture perfect day, clear skies, billowy white clouds and rugged mountains capped with snow, It was a half hour drive to Queen Elizabeth Theatre bringing back memories of when we were here 2 years ago, the various eateries, watering holes and bike rides through Stanley Park. In '08 we based from the city for several days but this time we simply flew in for the show and left immediately after.

Queen Elizabeth Theatre was the site of our final show of the 2005 Shangri-La Tour and now five years later is the spot for the second show of this tour. It has capacity seating of 2,900, modern, clean and comfortable. The crew loves theatres like this due to the ease of load in/out and there's plenty of room for the equipment cases so they can remain backstage during the show and don't have to be reloaded back in the trucks once they've been unpacked. We ran through several things during sound check, continuing to make minor adjustments to our ear monitor mixes as well as various technical issues. The set was changed from the night before to try out a few new songs then it was time to clear the stage and open the house. I watched Pieta Brown and Bo Ramsey's opening set, enjoying them both very much then time to get changed and do our turn. The Vancouver audience, as always, was fantastic, hanging on every word then responding with great enthusiasm ... a performer couldn't ask for a better crowd.

Our first runner of the tour, a wild dash off stage to waiting cars that returned us to the Legacy for a 50 minute, Chinese food flight to Portland where we'll spend the night and play tomorrow, The one thing I always forget about the beginning of these tours is getting used to standing up on stage for 2 hours every night. It usually takes a few shows to get the stage legs back and I got to the room tonight completely knackered .... straight to bed.

So long,

Richard