London, Ontario, Canada

After months of non-stop shows, the days off seem to be coming fast and furious with yesterday being another. The distances between gigs in America is greater than the European routing and simply takes that much longer for the equipment to arrive, affording us a little more leisurely pace. Over the years I've made many friends in Canada and was able to connect up with a great songwriting pal of mine, Cris Cuddy and his wife Heather for an afternoon adventure of vintage guitar hunting and bakery shop sampling. Last night I had dinner with Terry Tompkins and Lisa Boudreau of the group Lost and Profound. I'd produced a couple of albums with them in the '90's and it was great catching up again.

Today we flew to London, home of the University of Western Ontario, Fanshaw College, Ford and General Motors plants, Kellogg's cereal of Canada and Labatt's Beer. The outlying areas are agricultural with corn and soy beans being the big cash crops. A nice small town feel and neat as a pin with the population growing by 50,000 when school is in. We played in the John Labatt Centre to a small audience of maybe 2,000. A warm bunch of folks but it was strange with the stage set so close to the tiered seats with only 7 rows of floor seating. Still, a good show. Another friend, John P. Allen stopped by backstage before we took the boards to say howdy. John's a world class Canadian fiddler and an old pal going back to the days when I produced a record for his band Prairie Oyster. John's just released a wonderful CD of his own called The Canadian Fiddle. I'm proud to have played on a couple of cuts and I love everything about it. It's available on-line through CD Baby at cdbaby.com. I think you'll enjoy it as well.

An easy flight to a suburb of Detroit where we'll play tomorrow, Rochester Hills at the Meadowbrook. Fab Thai food on the plane conjured and served by our new hostess, Laurie. The flight was capped off by an unbelievably smooth landing, never knew the wheels had touched down. I know we'd had a few G&T's but far from feeling no pain, this was an award winning 10 point landing.

So long,

Richard