Our Northwest tour began on Vashon one of the islands off the coast of Washington state. Vashon has been accurately described as Mayberry meets the Oregon Country Fair. Our audience was a wonderfully eclectic mix of families, artists and noodle dancers. It’s a beautiful place where you can live off the beaten path with lots of free thinkers!
The next night we played a house concert on Bainbridge, another island in the Puget Sound. The house sits on an inlet right on the water. I had the pleasure of rowing a canoe out in the water with our host and dropping off a crab trap right in front of their house. Then I watched a bald eagle hunt for fish while eating breakfast. I loved it all! We performed in the center of their garden with our audience surrounding us. Our friend Zane from Mackie & Ampeg brought some new gear for us to check out. The new speakers and PA kicked ass! Zane is also a wonderful guitarist and honored us by sitting in on a song. He rocked and inspired us! To top off the night Alan Simcoe, an incredible guitarist and luthier, gave us all a spontaneous dining room concert. His fingerstyle chord melody performance was excellent. Check out his store Village Music. His acoustic guitars are beautiful and unique. We all felt that he was a small town secret that more musicians should know about.
Lake Oswego in Oregon was our next show. This is a cute little town sitting right on the lake. It appears that waterfront shows were the theme of this tour. What a great and appreciative audience! We saw old friends and found a large group of new fans! They gave us a standing ovations and cleaned us out of our CD’s. Thank you Lake Oswego!!
After the show we had dinner with one of our friends Tia from APM, which distributes the Sonoton music library here in the states that JP and I write quite a bit of music for. Then we went to the house of a fraternity brother of Jim’s for drinks. You guessed it…the house was right on the lake. It was a lovely boathouse. JP thought that they said houseboat and kept waiting for us to sail off. It was a long day!
The next day we took off for Sun Valley, Idaho. This was another first for Incendio. More uncharted territory – exciting! Well our audience was definitely ready to dance and have a good time. From our first note to the last they were on the dance floor and didn’t want us to stop. The sound crew was a pleasure to work with. We are looking forward to going back. Did I mention how gorgeous it is up there? Tomorrow we leave for the long ride home and then off to California World Festival in Grass Valley.
