This is the view from my hotel room where the tour began. On February 21st, 2012, Bert, Hideyo and I met in Saint Louis to rehearse and prepare for a 10 week, 45 concert tour. We visited 24 states (including Quebec and Ontario in Canada), drove over 10,000 miles in rental vans and flew over 7000 miles.

From St. Louis we went to Indianapolis, Lexington, Frankfort, Athens, Charlotte, Asheville, Atlanta, Chattanooga, Birmingham, Jackson, Houston, Austin, Dallas and Oklahoma city, and then had a few days off before we resumed the tour in Minneapolis.

This is how we spend our days. Bert and I do all the driving, Hideyo helps with the navigating. We pass the time by working on our laptops, sleeping and occasionally listening to music, but most of the time we keep it pretty quiet in the van. Trying to find decent food while traveling is always a challenge. We are often limited to the choices that we find when we pull off a the highway exit for gas. Sometimes I use my iphone to find a good restaurant nearby. Usually we don’t have time to stop and have a nice meal, so we often end up at fast food places out of convenience, but always try to find something better than the usual fast food chains.

In Asheville we had a visit from our friend Andre Cholmondeley, guitar tech to the stars. Andre is currently on tour with the Greg Lake band.

Here is a video from the show in Atlanta taken by our friend Christine:

I was very happy to play the show in Jackson, as we had never previously played in the state of Mississippi before. From Jackson we had a long drive across the Bayou to Houston. In Texas, we returned to one of our old favorite venues, the Cactus Cafe at the University of Texas.

The Cactus Cafe is through the entrance there on the left of this building.

Here is a video from the Cactus Cafe concert, by Kurt Bartelmehs:

After a wonderful show at the Jazz Lab in Oklahoma City, we had a few days off with each of us flying home, and then resuming the tour in Minnesota. In Minneapolis we played a “community-outreach” concert at a center for disabled people called Work Abilities.

Here is a video from that performance:

On this tour, we were very fortunate to play in some really amazing venues, like this one here in Hartford Wisconsin.

Sound check in Hartford Wisconsin.

We stayed at a beautiful summer home on Lake Sinnissippi owned by sponsors of the show in Hartford. The next morning, we had a few hours before we had to drive to Illinois, so I took the canoe out.

Hideyo Bert and Paul at the Lake House near Hartford WI.

After great concerts in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, we did a series of performances in Michigan including a very special show at The Ark in Ann Arbor, with special guests Tony Levin and Abby Swidler. Playing with Tony on upright bass gave us a chance to feature a few more pieces from our recent Masterworks Album. And with Tony on cello and Abby on violin the new arrangement of Perpetuum Mobile really came to life. The show at the Bell’s Brewery in Kalamazoo was also really good with an amazing opening set by Rachel Davis.

From Michigan we headed to the East Coast for concerts in New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont.

After the show in Cambridge Boston, I was invited by an Astronomer from Harvard to go to the Harvard Observatory to look through the telescope there. Wow! I saw the rings on Saturn! Amazing!

View from the Harvard Observatory.

Harvard Observatory

Harvard Boat House

That’s the hotel where we stayed in Cambridge on the right.

From Vermont, we headed north to Montreal to join up with our friends in the Montreal Guitar Trio. We had a much needed day off in Montreal. I rented a bicycle and rode to the top of Mont Royal and took this photo:

Top of Mont Royal

In Quebec City, we played a sold out show at one of the finest venues in the world: Palais Montcalm.

Glenn Levesque and Sebastien Dufour at sound check at Palais Montcalm

Sound check at Palais Montcalm

It’s a real pleasure to play shows with our friends in the Montreal Guitar Trio. Every time we play together it gets better and better. Sebastien wrote a challenging new piece especially for the sextet called Magneto.

Sound check with Bert, Glenn and Sebastien in Burlington Ontario Canada.

After 5 great shows in Canada, we headed west to California. CGT arrived a couple days early in Los Angeles for a day off and then a video shoot in Burbank.

For the day off in Los Angeles, I rented a BMW 1200GS motorcycle and rode up the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu and then up a small canyon to the Mulholland Highway. Great way to spend a day off in LA!

Back when the CGT was actually based in California, we became friends with Los Angeles film director Fred Raimondi (next to Bert in the photo). Fred has directed and done special effects for some major motion pictures and is highly respected in the film industry. We had been talking with him for a while now about doing a video for the CGT piece “The Marsh”, and Fred made it happen. Another well known LA film director Joe Murray was the director of photography on the shoot. Joe lives next to Neil Young up near Saratoga California on a large property overlooking the ocean, and was telling me stories of Neil, Eddie Vedder and other rock stars. I’m very excited to see how the video turns out. There were lots of very up close shots. You can see in this photo that Fred is holding the head stock on Bert’s guitar and the camera is just a few inches away from Bert’s fingerboard. I saw a little bit of the footage and it looked very intense and very cool. Photo by Bill Hibbets from Inner Knot.

Our friends from Montreal had part of a day off at the hotel in Pismo beach. This was the MG3′s first time touring in California! When Bert, Hideyo and I arrived in Pismo Beach the MG3 guys were very red and sunburnt from hanging out on the beach. We gave them the new name the Lobster Trio!

View from the hotel in Pismo Beach.

The guys in the MG3 were very excited to be touring in California and we were happy that our agency had booked some really nice venues for us to play, including Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, Villa Montalvo in Saratoga and the Napa Opera House. Patricia Fripp gave us an excellent introduction at Villa Montalvo!

Villa Montalvo, Saratoga California

The final show with the MG3 was a sold out concert in Bend Oregon at the Tower Theater. It was a great way to end the tour with the MG3, and then the CGT had one final show in Forest Grove near Portland before heading home after the long, but really great tour.

Deschutes River Bend Oregon. This photo was taken about 100 yards out the back door of the Tower Theater.

January 27, 2012

It has been almost 7 years since our last concerts in Japan. I was beginning to wonder if we were ever going to be invited back again. I was very excited when our agency told me that the Billboard Live venues in Tokyo and Osaka had made a good offer for CGT with Tony Levin to return to Japan. It was a short, but really great trip. After 24 hours of traveling, Bert, Tony Levin and I arrived at the Osaka Hilton last Sunday. Hideyo’s original flight was cancelled so he arrived one day later.

Even though we were super tired from all the traveling, after we arrived at the hotel I asked one of the Billboard Live production team if he could recommend an Udon Noodle House. In Osaka, they have a very special style of Udon Noodles that are fat, chewy and delicious. The recommended restaurant was called Tsurutontan, and we were given a map and directions. Bert, Tony and I set out to find the restaurant on foot, which was only about 1/2 mile away from the hotel. Even with the map and directions, it was still quite a challenge. There are no street names that we can read, and most all the restaurant names are also in Kanji. When we arrived at the area on the map where the restaurant was supposed to be, we had no idea if we were at the right place. Fortunately, many restaurants have realistic looking food models in the windows. I saw that the place we arrived at did in fact have Udon noodles, and so we went in and had an amazing meal. We still weren’t sure that we were at the recommended place until we went back the next day with Hideyo. It was so good that we had to go back again!

On Tuesday morning, we did some rehearsing all together in the hotel. We had worked up a set list to include Tony playing with us the entire show on every piece. This was something that we had never done before. In the past, we always played at least a few CGT pieces without Tony. We featured several pieces from the new Masterworks album, including the challenging Passacaglia, which we found to be even more challenging when suffering from serious jet lag! Tony learned all the bass parts to Bohemian Rhapsody so we could include him on that one as well. On Tuesday evening we played two shows at the Osaka Billboard Live venue. The venue was really nice, with cabaret style seating and a big stage. The Japanese production teams were excellent, taking care of every little detail. The sound man went around the entire room, making sure the sound was good in every area. When he sat right in front of the stage, I saw that he noticed the sound coming directly from Tony’s amplifier was overpowering the sound of the CGT guitars coming from the speakers hung from the ceiling, so he added several small speakers right at the front of the stage to make everything blend well. This attention to detail is rare from a house sound man, and very much appreciated. Both shows in Osaka were very well attended. The first show was good, but perhaps a little rough. The second show was better played, and the audience was unusually (for Japanese standards) enthusiastic and helped boost the energy level despite our jet lag.

 

Wednesday morning, we left Osaka and flew to Tokyo Haneda airport. A big Billboard Live Bus was waiting to pick us up and we went straight to the venue for sound check. The Tokyo Billboard Live venue is located in the Roppongi area and features a big wall of windows at the back of the stage, with a beautiful view of the city. We completed sound check as quickly as possible, and again the production team took good care of every detail. After sound check we had about 1 hour before we had to get ready for the show, we checked into the Shinjiku Hilton for a very short rest and a shower.

On Wednesday night, we played two shows at the Billboard Live venue. Again, both shows were very well attended. One of the highlights of the performances was the Bach Prelude Circulation with Tony playing bowed upright bass. We’ve been playing this one for many years, and Tony helped bring some new life to this special piece. Tony’s playing was so good, I found my attention being drawn to him, and so I had to pay extra attention to my own playing so I wouldn’t get lost and forget my own part. Another highlight of the night was Hideyo singing during the encore set. Yes, that’s right! Hideyo sang during a CGT show! There is a funny Japanese song called Zundoko Bushi that Hideyo had arranged a few years back for our CG3+2 album. Hideyo had told us that the song has funny lyrics to it, but we previously always played it as an instrumental piece. During sound check Hideyo went up to the mic, and began singing a few of the words. At the time, I thought he was just having some fun with it and had no intention of singing during the show. When we played this piece for the encore sets for both shows, Hideyo went to the mic and sang! Everyone in the venue was smiling, laughing and clapping along. Before the encore set at the second show, I had arranged with the production team to bring Hideyo a birthday cake with a candle to celebrate his birthday, and we all sang happy birthday to him. A very special night indeed!

 

Here are a few more photos from the 2nd show in Tokyo by Osamu Tio Suzuki:

For the encore set, they opened the curtain behind the stage revealing the windows with a view of the City. Beautiful!

On Thursday morning, I had a few hours before we had to leave for the airport to fly back to the states. It was a beautiful clear morning. Here are a few photos I took while walking around Shinjuku Tokyo: