Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada 14 October, 2015

This will be the second time I’ve written these notes as this goddamn computer has devoured a very lengthy version and assigned it to the nether regions of wherever these things end up.  My relationship with technology remains frayed.  This will be an abridged version.

The room with a great view of Carnegie Hall turned out to be a nightmare.  Garbage trucks, deliveries, motorcycles, sirens all night long that seemed to become amplified as it rose the twelve stories of the hotel and the double glazing did nothing for keeping it out.  I finally got up at dawn after a couple of hours sleep, brewed some coffee and hit the gym… early.  When I got back to my noise chamber I dropped our tour manager a note asking to change rooms.  In all the years I’ve been touring I don’t think I’ve changed rooms three times in total but there’s no way I can deal with another week of this.  

Shortly before we left for the day the phone rang from the front desk saying a bellman was coming up with a key to my new room and to help with the bags.  Up another eight floors to the 20th and a room on the backside of the hotel with a view of Central Park.  Now we’re talking… this is going to work.

It was a sushi fuelled flight to Buffalo, New York and drive over the Peace Bridge, clear customs and passport control then on to Niagara Falls.  The venue was the Fallsview Casino located right on the Falls.  We arrived and went straight to a room for the crew in the casino hotel on the 32nd floor with a spectacular view of Niagara Falls.  A mighty display of nature with great clouds of mist rising above it.

I’d had so much sushi on the plane that I passed on dinner tonight and put some time in practising and getting ready for the show.  The theatre is a small and modern room with a capacity of 1,560 of people.  Talk about a quiet crowd.  Casino audiences generally are there for reasons other than your show and are distracted but this was something else.  By the end they were standing though.  The high point of the evening was just before the final encore.  There at the front of the stage were my friends Angela and Colin Bradley who live up here.  Great seeing their beaming faces.

It was a runner back over the bridge, passports handy, Buffalo and back onto the Legacy.  With drinks in hand we took to the sky.  Having missed dinner I was really ready for a large slice of lasagne with my gin and tonic.  I made quick work of it along with a second helping and drink.

It was nearly 1:30 when we arrived back at the hotel.  I stood in my new room listening to the welcomed sound of silence and took it as a harbinger of a good night’s sleep.

Wish me luck as I try again to post this.

So long,

Richard