Pacific Northwest

Hello again, Loyal Blogsters!

Once again I must apologize for delayed posting. I am half a week from the end of the second of two back to back tours in the Pacific Northwest and was hoping to update after each of them but unfortunately my camera ended up on a plane to New York after the first one and I had to wait to get it back before posting. So here is another extended post to bring you all up to date on my touring life!

Javier, me and Doug visiting the gorge in Auburn

Back in mid-March, after a week of unwinding at home in Maine, I set off for Sacramento to meet Doug and Javier, two of the three other members of what was then the Neil Pearlman Band and is soon to become Alba's Edge.  After renting our small SUV, we headed up to Auburn, CA, where we stayed with Doug's brother Sam.
















The next day (Thursday) we headed out on an epic 12 hour trek up to Portland, OR, where the first show of our tour was scheduled for Friday night. Our Ford Escape treated us well throughout the tour, with a nice sound system for on the road entertainment and a roomy back seat:

Good for practicing,

Sleeping,

and Partying!

Once up in Portland, we met up with our fourth band mate, my sister Lilly.

Hangin out before the house concert in Portland

Our show in Portland was a wonderful house concert hosted by Abbie Weisenbloom and her family. The show was a great success, with lots of great people coming out and even an after-hour fiddle jam with a Scottish ceilidh dance or two!

The next day, after a little Portland sight seeing, we headed up to Tacoma, WA where we had a St Patrick's day show at a big music cafe called the Mandolin Cafe. We had some good publicity and played to a full room, then drove another hour and a half up to Bainbridge Island, outside Seattle, where we would be playing the next day.

Bainbridge Island was a sort of miniature music festival that Sunday, as Brittany Haas and Lauren Rioux were playing an afternoon show on the same island that day, so we went to their show and they came to ours and all in all it was a great music and friend-filled day on a beautiful island closing off with our concert, which took place in an amazing house with an incredible piano (enough superlatives for ya?). 

Outside of the Bainbridge Island house concert

Lilly had to fly back to New York for school the next day so we had to finish the tour without her, unfortunately. We spent the next few days traveling back south toward California in order to get to Santa Rosa, CA, for our Wednesday evening house concert. It was another wonderful experience in a beautiful place on a great piano. We had a small but very interested audience, who asked us all sorts of questions so it ended up being half concert half discussion of our music, which was a very interesting and enjoyable experience.

The view from the back yard of our Santa Rosa house concert

The final concert of our tour was a double bill in Grass Valley, CA, with the band A Thousand Years at Sea, who I also play with. We played to a packed room at the Sierra Mountain Coffee Roasters, which is a decent size music venue in spite of what you'd expect from the name. The next day Doug and Javier flew back to New York, having completed a very successful second tour of the Northwest.

The front of the room at Sierra Mountain Coffee Roasters

Since the end of that tour I have been performing and recording with A Thousand Years at Sea. We are working on our second full length album currently and with most of the mixing and all the recording done, I feel very good about it. (If you want to support the album and preorder a copy go here:  http://www.indiegogo.com/athousandyearsatsea )

In the studio

I write this from San Anselmo, CA, as we get set to head up north on a string of shows that will finish off this week before I fly to Scotland this coming Monday! Exciting times are ahead, so stay tuned for more updates!

Best wishes,

--Neil