New Tour Diary - Portland and Calgary 07/08/2004

[Gypsy-Rhiannon]

Portland & Calgary 07/08/2004

July 8, 2004
Portland & Calgary

I love the 4th of July. I realize there are a lot of holidays with much better themes....gifts, costumes, food, etc...but there’s something about the 4th that I love. FIreworks only last 15 minutes and more often than not it seems like it’s over before it started, but I just love it. We were in Portland for the festivities. The weather was beautiful and clear, and during the day there was a blues festival and tons of food and drinking going on, and then around 10, we watched 20 minutes of really good fireworks, and then we headed off to bed. I’m sure it sounds like a really uneventful day, but it was actually really nice. Last year we were in Vegas for the 4th of July....so this was a nice change from the debauchery that was last year.

The show itself was actually in Ridgefield washington, not Oregon at all. I was confused by this at first, as nobody could tell me why the itinerary would say Portland, Oregon if we weren’t even in Oregon. It’s the little things that confuse me. Oh well. The show was good.

When the show first started, Mick and John came out, and usually Lindsey and Stevie are quick to follow.....but not tonight. We waited and waited, Mick and John were chatting and the crowd was cheering in anticipation, but still, no Lindsey...no Stevie. I had watched them all walk out from the dressing rooms together. I saw them all ready to go on stage...what’s the problem here? John starts making yawning gestures, and Mick pretends to fall asleep. Finally, they come out and the show starts. It turns out there were concerns about the lighting for the show, since the sun was still very much out at show time. It made me laugh...sorry guys, but we already sent the other half of the band out on stage...we can’t exactly take that back. I mean, it was really bright out when the show started, but who cares, you know? It’s just lights, people didn’t come to see lights.

After Go Your Own Way, a lot of people in the crowd were holding their lighters up in the air, and I look over at John, who is standing on the side of the stage, waiting to go back on for the encore, and he has his lighter up in the air also. He’s a total goofball.

We had a long drive to Calgary that night, which was made even longer when it took us two hours to get through the border. All four buses pulled up in a little cluster in the parking lot of border control. It was early in the morning, we all climbed out of our bunks and lined up show our passports, passing the time yawning, rubbing our tired faces, and trying to figure out who has the best bus hair out of everyone. (There’s something about sleeping in a bunk that makes your hair do the most incredible things. It’s just like normal bed head, only like twenty times worse.) We thought we were good to go, but then it turned out we had to wait outside the buses while they went on the buses and looked through everything, including luggage. It took forever. They went one bus at a time, and of course our bus was last. So two hours later, after sitting on the pavement in the hot morning sun, wishing I could go back to bed... I finally did. All in all it took us about 15 hours to get to Calgary.

We stayed at the same hotel as the band in Calgary, that’s always fun. We headed off to dinner and saw Mick walking around, checking things out. We ate and hit the hotel bar for a few cocktails. We were in Calgary a few days before their big rodeo. I don’t know much about it, I think they call it Stampede, but our hotel was decorated like a really bad western movie set. Every time I waited for the elevator, amongst badly painted cowboys and barnyard type animals...I just had to laugh. We’re staying at like a 5 star hotel and there is hay on the floor. Unreal?

The show was fantastic. The arena was packed. I couldn’t see one empty seat. And the crowd was great. Stevie dedicated Landslide to The Stampede, people seemed to like that. Lindsey talked about the meaning behind Say Goodbye, the whole leaving the band thing, and his relationship with Stevie, forgiveness, etc...Mick’s vest solo was crazy. He kept yelling something like “can you hear me barking?”. As I was falling asleep in my bunk that night I could hear the guys in the back lounge of the bus watching it again...it’s like a car accident, you don’t want to look, but you just have to. Again and again and again. Don’t get me wrong, he’s enormously talented, but the vest solo is enough to boggle even the sanest mind. But anyway...

We drove from Calgary to Bozeman Montana last night, with a brief stop at the border at 4AM where we all had to climb out of our bunks and sit in the front lounge with our bus hair, while a uniformed officer identified all of us and one by one told us we could go back to bed. You don’t have to ask me twice. I slept until we got to Bozeman at 10AM this morning. Upon arrival we saw only a WalMart and a Costco. Looks like it’s a good day to Barbecue.

Only six more shows, eleven more days, 138 more songs...only three more tour diaries.


...Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong...


CB