Rochester Hills, Michigan

We're staying in a suburb of Detroit called Birmingham, a beautiful little town that I suspect is loaded with do-re-mi and almost too pretty to be real. Small town America--Norman Rockwell/Disney style, perfectly manicured. The kind of place that if you dropped your cookie on the sidewalk, you'd pick it up and eat. It's that clean. Loads of boutiques, restaurants, and a main street movie theatre complete with coloured lights and neon marquis. Back to the future anybody? Danny, Guy and I started the day on a mission to find the local IHOP, International House of Pancakes, which we were told was closed for renovation (probably a good de-ratting), so we ended up at a fab Greek coffee shop for a breakfast of flaming cheese--saganaki, Greek omlettes, pancakes and gallons of coffee. Why not?

Tonight's venue, MeadowBrook Amphitheatre, was another outdoor shed in Rochester Hills, a suburb about 20 minutes from Birmingham. On arriving we found our Nashville pal, Mike McAdam who has come out to play guitar with Bap Kennedy. Mike's a great guitar player who I've known and admired for almost twenty years and it will be good having him with us for a while. It was a very active audience in that there was always lots of non-stop traffic, people up and down the aisles, back and forth for beer, toilet, god knows what. Both Guy and I got in some serious audience watching and agreed after the show that there were so many little scenes going on. A beautiful girl just in front of us was rubbing up her boyfriend and talking all night. Some committed solo dancers, guitar guys blissed out while the girlfriend's wanted to boogie. It was great really, very unusual and made for a night of mutual observation.

My very good friends Heather and Bill Howitt came in tonight from Windsor, Ontario along with son and daughter-in-law John and Patty and their friends Lynn and Jeff. We all had a couple of drinks and loads of laughs back at the hotel after the show. I've known the Howitts nearly 30 years, going back to the old Neil Diamond days and there are few finer folks on the face of the planet. Here's to friendship.

So long,

Richard