2010-10-21: Italy

Ah, Italy. Check out this photo. This was the spread laid out for the lunch break at my first rehearsal for the Songs With Other Strangers tour. Back home it would be a PBR tall boy with a bag of ranch style Doritos. This was something more like an off-the-menu special at one of the Mario Batali restaurants except that I didn't need to make a reservation and I could practice songs between courses.

And does practice make perfect? Well, I can testify (and you'll have to take my word unless you live in Ravenna or the my testimony gets refuted by a YouTube clip) that the first show went really well. Hugo, Stef, Cesare, Marta, Manuel, Hugo and I each sang a couple of songs each and we swapped the sinister verses on a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows". I got the verse with the reference to Malibu, appropriately. Even 16 years after defecting, I'm still an LA boy.

Tonight is a night off from the tour but I'll be playing an acoustic show (accompanied by Rodrigo) at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan which means I'll be singing around 15 songs instead of two. I'm on Day 3 of the trip which is when, for me, the jet lag begins to hit hardest which should add a gentle psychedelic flavor to the show. More music, more food, more miles to travel ahead.