Night Three: Chicago, Illinois

Julie and me post-concert in Indiana. I'm not really scowling -- I was just exhausted and Rena Fay, a huge Belew fan who was taking the photo, made a joke and told me to smile for my mother.

Chicago, Illinois - The Double Door. Another one of my new favorite places to play. I prefer standing room gigs because when the audience is dancing that means more energy to feed off of. Before the show, Adrian's booking agent, Joshua, was nice enough to take us out to dinner at a fine Italian restaurant called Club Lucky. We shared stories about Dweezil Zappa and we ate more bread than we should have but Julie and I are both vegetarians. Backstage area was underground and funky, again, the infamous deli tray with Honey Wheat bread (yep, and again, you could even fold it more than once!). Diet Rockstars were in order that night -- the first rider foul-up because I'm not a diet drink fan -- man, is there anything worse than that sugar substitute aftertaste? But no matter, I drank the whole thing anyway.

Adrian, Julie and I were unintentionally color coordinated like a bad joke (Julie was dressed in black, I was in white, and Adrian was red all over). I'll post a photo as soon as I find one -- a lot of King Crimson forum boards are putting up reviews of the show and I'm hoping someone has a link to pics. I'll put up some links to the forum boards themselves in my next post.

The show that night was our favorite. All around perfect. Gentle Giant guitarist Gary Green was in the audience much to my surprise and delight. He told us he really enjoyed the show. Afterwords, I went to a White Hen (Chicago's version of Wawa) where I watched a guy try to rationalize purchasing a six pack of beer and ten Peanut Butter Twix bars. Mmm...how nutritious. The mind boggles.

Anyway, an excellent mini tour. With three shows in the U.S. behind us, Europe here we come. I just got the tour/flight schedule and it looks like six flights in nine days. But seeing Italy and Amsterdam for the first time will be awesome...and I can't wait to see the European crowd's reaction because Adrian is just an unbelievable musician and he has a huge fan base there.

Okay then. We're off to Germany!