A.G. News
Summer is here and it is the season for many shows. I had a wonderful West-Coast swing starting on Salt Spring Island at "Moby's", a super restaurant/oyster bar that becomes quite the concert venue after the supper hours. The crowd was enthusiastic, the food was great, I was staying with my good friends, Karl and Tracy, who have a bed n' breakfast on the island, so...... I felt just fine about coming back and doing it again the next week. I moved on to Port Alberni where I played a house concert at my friend Cynthia Low's on the beautiful Sproat Lake. It is a sprawling, lovely home that could easily support an audience of sixty people. It was another wonderful evening of music-loving folks, tasty food and fine wine. My next stop was Brentwood Bay, a concert at the Brentwood Bay United Church. Once again it was a total pleasure to be with Dan & Leslie Gentile (the producers of the concert series) and their family who, over the years have become special friends of mine. It was another memorable evening and I had the chance to perform some new songs for the first time. On Sunday afternoon, Mothers Day, I returned to Gabriola Island at Cameron and Laura-Jean's, which was my home base for this part of the trip. I did a Mothers Day afternoon house concert there for an incredible group of their friends and neighbors. It was yet another perfect gathering of music lovers, fine food and wine, but then something totally amazing happened. Some archeologist friends of Cameron and Laura-Jean discovered a large petroglyph in the garden! That was, to say the least, a one-of-a-kind house concert experience for me. Cameron and Laura-Jean helped me out endlessly, lending me a car , feeding me, getting me to the right ferry at the right time, etc., etc. They really helped make this part of the tour possible. Merci beaucoup, mes chers amis!
The next week I played "The Duncan Garage Show Room" and had another chance to hang out with my eccentric bud, Longevity John. I also had the chance to touch base and spend the night with my dear old friends, Deb and Steve. I finished the BC part of my tour in Penticton at "The Dream Cafe", a legendary restaurant, concert venue and wealth of good energy. It was a crowd that never heard me before, they were singing along on the second song and on their feet for encores at the end of the night. What fun!!
The tour continued in a southerly direction to Bellingham, Washington, Vancouver, Washington, where my daughter, Hannah, joined me, to San Rafael, California and we eventually flew home from San Francisco. There have been many magical moments in this three-week tour that stay with me forever.
