Hey Friends, Thanks for finding me here. As we get ready to hit the road tomorrow, I wanted to get down a few pre-tour thoughts. Marina has done a brilliant job booking this tour. The prep work for such a tour is daunting and people often have no idea as to what goes into pre-tour planning. This makes perfect sense. Why would they know? Fortunately, we are surrounded by amazing supporters throughout the world. This tour is largely comprised of shows hosted or sponsored by these very fans and friends around the lower forty-eight. Some of our shows will be house concerts (which we love) while others are sponsored by fans and held in various venues. Other shows are played in traditional music venues, such as Rockwood Music Hall in NYC. When planning the route, Marina had to keep both geography and calendar in mind. She put out feelers both on social media and to her e-mail list, asking if anyone would be interested in hosting a show this summer. Once Marina had confirmed our "anchor" gigs (shows that would pay for big part of the tour) she had to figure out the in-between shows. Finding a venue in a given town on a given date is not an easy task. Together, we scoured the internet looking for venues that would fit our needs. Ultimately, we will be playing churches, libraries, coffee shops, houses, hotels, etc., all due to Marina's perseverance. It can be exciting or soul-crushing work to contact venues. Some bookers are excited to host a show, have done their homework and are extremely helpful. However, many bookers have no desire to do any work. They often don’t like their jobs (or, at times, it seems life in general). Often they are just lazy. Usually Marina is much more organized than the venue bookers which makes their frequently condescending tone that much more difficult to absorb. It is common to leave five voicemails before actually getting a booker on the phone. Often, if you do get them on the phone, they have ignored the voicemails and proceed to ask you the questions you have already answered in your voicemails. “What kind of music do you play?” “Do you have a website?” Fortunately, we have largely steered clear of those places. Negative honesty aside, we are excited. Not only will we perform for a lot of great people, but the tour will offer us new opportunities as tourists. We will visit areas of the US we have never seen. As big fans of Sequoia National Park and Yosemite, we are greatly looking forward to seeing Glacier and Yellowstone. As fans of history, we are excited to see Lexington and Concord, while also spending one night at the Lizzy Borden Bed and Breakfast (...yes, the actual house. We are told it’s haunted). We will be able to reconnect with friends, family and favorite places along the way. Most of my family lives in Springfield, IL. This is also where Marina got her start. We will be playing two shows in the area. City Tavern in Philadelphia will get a visit, as will the National Mall in D.C.. The list goes on and on and I intend to keep a journal here. As for the preparation for the tour, we ordered new t-shirts, complete with gig cities listed on the back. We also had to reorder Inner Superhero and My Star CDs. This is not an easy task, as formats and graphics change over time. Marina had to enlist the help of our brilliant graphic design guru, Jim Aiken, and our friend, Mike Bundlie, who assisted in the ordering and visual formatting of the new CDs. We also bought a new small stage monitor speaker to replace the large floor speaker we have used in the past. We are trying to do what we can to reduce the amount of space taken up in the Prius. Sennheiser sent Marina a new microphone for the tour and Yamaha cleaned her piano and powered mixer. It is nice to have endorsements from companies that help out in times of need. Likewise, Toyota of Santa Monica generously co-sponsored our tour. We put a substantial amount of this money back into the car, making sure it is solid and ready for the task ahead. Much of the upfront expense of the tour has been covered by Marina’s fans’ contributions on http://www.patreon.com/marinav . We can’t thank them enough! This tour will be a difficult, but entertaining undertaking. I realize I am writing this after the Pasadena and Las Vegas shows. I will write on those gigs in a later post.