Hello,

We had a great time in the U.S. on our January tour. We were thrilled by the turnouts in most of the places we visited - most of the shows were sold out or very close to it. A huge "thank you" to everyone who came out to support us and to all the street team representatives who donated their time.

We were at Hugh's Room in Toronto on the weekend so I thought I'd post a quick blog while it's fresh in my head.

Hugh's Room is a listening / dinner room that's located less than a ten minute walk from my house so it's the only venue I've ever been able to walk to! I go there whenever I can to check out bands or singer-songwriters. I've seen Garnet Rogers there a couple of times. He's the brother of the late Canadian folk legend, Stan Rogers, and a great singer and multi-instrumentalist in his own right.

Earlier this week we were made aware of an impending storm for friday during the day, which we feared would deter people from attending our friday night show. Although many people changed their reservations to the saturday show, there was still a reasonable turnout on friday, which was great. We loaded in at about 3 pm on friday, although there was so much snow on the road, it took us about 45 minutes to start unloading. This is because we tried to park the van, realized it wasn't where we wanted it, had to shovel it out, moved it to where we wanted it, had to drive around the block for the snow plows to come by, then re-park it... these are the joys of touring up north in the winter and part of the reason we love heading down to Florida in January.

Eventually we loaded in and sound-checked then cleared the stage for the "Roaring Girl Cabaret" to get their gear set up - they were the opener for the friday show. The band is lead by Miranda Mulholland who you may know from several Celtic bands on the circuit. Also, the drummer is Robbin Pearson who played in various bands with Mark and went to school with Mark and James.

Since I was so close to home, I was able to come to change before returning to the venue for some food and the show... now I know how Celine Dion felt during her years in Las Vegas - apparently her living quarters were attached to the stage such that she could walk out from backstage in her bra and panties if she'd wanted to (I know I would have!)

We enjoyed our dinner and the performance from Roaring Girl Cabaret, which was quite eclectic as the name suggests.

Our show went fairly smoothly and it was great not having to pack up any gear since we were there on saturday night as well.

On saturday night, we were joined by a talented Scottish singer-songwriter named David Ferrard. The show was sold-out, which we were very excited about! We were so excited, in fact, that both Brian and I broke strings on our guitars during the first song. Other highlights included me clumsilly spilling James' beer while searching for a replacement string; Craig building a miniature snow man, which died a slow, painful death on the stage throughout the show; Craig throwing snowballs at the audience as we returned to the stage for our encore; and a rowdy group getting up and dancing on the speakers. Since this is typically a mellow folk club, these are not things they're used to!

That's about it for those shows.

It's hard to believe that our next show is in Ireland. We look forward to seeing everyone who will be joining us for the trip. We're trying to make our overseas trips a regular occurance so if you can't swing it this time, maybe you'll be able to join us at some point in the future.

Slainte,
Trevor

PS - the spell check option doesn't seem to be working so if there are any gratooitus errors, my sincere appologies.