America's Heartland: Epilogue

After an unexpectedly exciting and incredibly tiring week of 5 back-to-back shows in Iowa and Nebraska, it's good to be back home for a winter break!  Things only seemed to get progressively awesome as the week continued, finishing off with 3 packed houses.

It's really nice to be writing this blog post from my bed (not a hotel bed), and just to get in the mood for the next weeks off, I'm listening to Ella Fitzgerald's "Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas"!  Premature--I know--but nothing really makes a winter break officially feel like a winter break more than listening to one's favorite Christmas CD!

On Friday morning, Annette and I went down to The Mill coffee shop in downtown Lincoln, NE, to do a radio interview.  It's wonderfully disarming to duck into a coffee shop on a cold, rainy morning, sit down with a warm latte, and chat at a table in the back corner with a great host.  No frills, no sound-proof studio rooms, no producers with headsets and clipboards; just a live broadcast of some people casually talking about the arts into microphones.  It was a fantastic experience.  [If you want to listen to the podcast version of the interview, go here, let the podcast fully download, and then start listening around 3/4 of the way through the interview--we were the last segment of the broadcast.]

L to R: Dean Marshall (Co-Founder and Musical Director of Barrage), me, Annette, and William Stibor of "Friday Live" on NET 91.1

It was such a blast playing at the Lied Center in Lincoln!  A packed house (nearly 2,200 people!), a great venue, and a great city.  Lincoln rocks.

The next morning we had to make a 4.5 hour drive to Mount Vernon, Iowa.  I had the backseat to myself when we got in the car, so I pulled down the arm rest/center console to get cozy for a short nap.  When I awoke, I caught a shocking glimpse of myself in the rear-view mirror:

This is what happens when you fall asleep on your side with wet hair.

Here are some more pictures from our drive:

Mind-numbing thought of the day: Michael Jordan is so famous that the back of his head is instantly recognizable.

Wind turbine blade in transport.

We finished up last night with a sold-out, return performance in Mount Vernon, IA, capping off a stellar week.

But the hardest part was yet to come...today's trip home.

For those of you who read about last week's trip home from Oklahoma, this was, fortunately, nothing of that sort. Today's trip was just a case-in-point of the "hard travel days" you may have heard touring-types bemoan.  Most notably, it consisted of 3 hours of sleep and then catching a shuttle to the airport at 4:15 a.m. this morning.

And, just as proof that arriving at an airport that early should be considered cruel and unusual, I'll leave you with this photo of what I saw when I arrived:

Good morning to you, employees of AirTran!

America's Heartland, cont.

Yesterday on our drive to Des Moines, I was able to grab just a few more snapshots of driving in the heartland.  And due to the overcast weather, everything was just a little bit more beautiful.

The Capitol in Des Moines, Iowa.

In other news, last night my E string popped during the show on the very first note it plays.  Not in the hour I was practicing before the show, not when I was tuning back stage prior, but right when we ran out for "Old Joe Clark" and I started playing the melody (which begins on an open E string).

...really, E string?!  The first note?!

Having a string pop in your face during a performance will never not be shocking.  Thankfully, however, that's why we have a spare violin (whose name is "Joanne") waiting backstage.  [It's true: we have named our spare violin.  Why?  Why not!  And she has even has this name to the extent that we actually use her name in passing, e.g., "Joanne is right next to Ted's monitor desk," "Yeah, my E string popped so I had to go grab Joanne," etc.]

Thanks, Joanne!

Off to Omaha, Nebraska -- my 44th state with Barrage!

America's Heartland

After an incredibly exciting two weeks off (which were filled with classroom visits, teaching, practicing, and family and friends), we're back on the road very briefly.
 
Five shows in five days.  And because these five shows are in Iowa and Nebraska, I'm choosing to affectionately call this tour the "America's Heartland 2010" tour.  

[...too cheesy?  Probably.]

Yesterday we kicked off AH 2010 with a big drive from Chicago, IL (that's where our truck was waiting for us), to Burlington, IA.  And while I forgot to bring my camera in the car with me, I did have my cell phone (which, I'm discovering, actually takes fairly decent pictures for being an older phone).

Most of the drive looked like this:

We stopped and ate lunch, quite randomly, in Dixon, IL, which takes an extraordinary amount of pride in being Ronald Reagan's birthplace.

And, perhaps most indicative of much of this region, there are many trains and silos.

I was hoping to see some corn fields here in Iowa, but I just googled "corn season" and learned that it has, unfortunately, passed (yesterday's scant crops hinted at this).  Oh well.

Off to Des Moines!