Chicago and Eastward Bound!

The Chicago River....

5/26/13

On to Chicago. We are to do three shows there over a 10 day period. Bags packed and loaded, we winged our way to the Windy City…arriving about 7:30. Rosie and I had a message from our friend Henry Davis from Macon that he was there with his group of folks. We would arrange to see him the next day for dinner. After settling in to the Peninsula Hotel….which by the way, is beautiful and conveniently located on Superior St very near North Michigan Ave., we went for a cocktail down in the bar. They poured a generous Grey Goose vodka martini for Rosie and a generous GG on the rocks for me…both with nice blue cheese olives. Ahhh. We decided we didn’t’ really want to go out for dinner, and downstairs in the hotel is the Shanghai Chinese restaurant, so we opted for that. It fit the bill nicely…and we enjoyed a light tasty meal. Back in the room, the bags had arrived, but we didn’t feel like unpacking, so we left that for the morning and watched the Tube for a while before putting our heads on the pillows.

5/27

After a good night’s rest, we did our morning thing, unpacking the bags and me going to the gym to try and shake off the “road dust”.  Eventually we went out to pound the pavement and nose around Michigan Ave, the “Magnificent Mile”. We had lunch at “Food Life” in the Water Tower Place. Food Life is one of those spots where you check in and are given a sort of credit card…then proceed to pick out your food from multiple sources…anything from BBQ to Sushi to Chinese to Salad Bars…all kinds of choices. After that we explored the shops in the Water Tower and along Michigan Ave, but didn’t really find anything we felt we could do without….still, it helped to kill time. 

We re-grouped at the hotel and made plans to meet Henry Davis and his party. and we arranged for a dinner at the Devon Seafood Grill, not far from the Peninsula hotel where we were staying. Henry and his wife Susan and their friends Kyle and Jackie accompanied us. Great place and the food and service were excellent. Kyle plays in a band called “Dredd Clampitt”, which is sort of a bluegrass rock/reggae kind of thing. He and Jackie are fine folks and we really enjoyed getting to know them…and of course it was wonderful to catch up with Henry and Susan. We had arranged for passes for them and would see them again in VIP on show day.

The Calm Before The Storm

5/28

Time to “make the doughnuts” again, as we say. First of three gigs at the United Center. Our guest tonight would be Taj Mahal, and I was buzzed about that. Taj was a guest with us years ago on one of the tours for a Pay Per View event. I also know him from some visits to Macon, Ga. Our mutual friend there, Bill Lucadu, has hired Taj to come play at some of his big parties. I’ve been a fan for decades…just love his records. He and Mick had talked about tunes and decided on “Six Days On The Road”, the old trucker song. He did it on what I think was his second album, “Giant Step”. So at the show we huddled in Mick’s dressing room to go over it. It was so great to see Taj again and hear that wonderful voice. We sorted out the song and went to sound check to do our thing. It all went fine and we were ready. The usual routine ensued…going to catering for some food, doing emails and such in my dressing room, wandering around backstage and eventually making it to VIP to see Henry and some others we’d arranged passes for. 

Finally time to hit the stage, and the groove continued. The band has really hit its stride and the gigs have been consistently good….yea!

5/29

Our pal Quint Davis…who runs the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival was coming to hang with us. He rang us up upon his arrival and came down to the room bearing some fun little gifts of Jazz Fest shirts and such. He’s such a sweet fellow that way, always trying to do something nice. We hung for a while, catching up and then he headed up to his room for some down time and Rosie and I went out to explore the shops again for a while, which proved to be detrimental to my pocketbook. We went to several places, and in Bloomingdale’s I found a couple of pairs of shoes I liked..a pair of cool Boss black tennis shoes and a pair of casual black loafers. Rosie found a couple of things she liked, and we enjoyed the shopping and took the loot back to the hotel to kick back for a while. Later we hooked back up with Quint in the evening to have dinner at the Ralph Lauren Grill (or RL Grill as it is known), which is adjacent to the Ralph Lauren store. Rosie and I had dined there years before and liked it. It proved to be a great choice and Quint really liked it, too.

Quint Davis and Rose Lane

We had a fun little experience during the dinner…there was a group of ladies at the table next to us that were wearing some very fun and “adventurous” hats. Hard not to notice them….Rose Lane eventually leaned over to them after we finished dinner to inquire about the hats (she is an avid hat fan). It turned out that the younger girl at the table was a hat designer and had designed and made all of their head gear. We had fun talking to them and took some pictures with their permission. Fun stuff.

Quint was kind enough to pick up the tab for dinner and we walked back to the Peninsula to turn in for the night.

5/30

Another off day for us  

5/31

Time for the second Chicago show. I had been experiencing a bit of pain in my hip area, so decided not to work out and try and let it smooth out. After tapping on our computers for a while…me doing emails and Rosie working on several aspects of our website, Facebook pages and this blog, We took the early van at 2pm to the gig, and Quint went with us.I set to work on the tunes for the night, knowing that Sheryl Crow would be our guest. Sheryl is a good friend and has always been so nice to me and to all our family through the years. Of course she is an amazing artist, and I really looked forward to seeing her, as did Rose Lane. Back during the re-release of Exile On Main Street…when Jimmy Fallon celebrated the release with a week long stint of artists doing songs from the record and I had played with Keith Urban on “Tumbling Dice”, Sheryl was on the next night and I played with her on “All Down The Line”. Since that worked so well, I suggested it for tonight, and everyone agreed.

Charlie Watts, Sheryl Crow. Chuck and Rose Lane

 Quint hung with us in our dressing room and it gave us more time to catch up. He was working on a couple of big events in Jacksonville, Fl and Baton Rouge, La. Big shows for country artists. Quint is very creative and has come up with these one and two day festivals that features huge country artists like Brad Paisley and similar talents. After chatting with him for a while, I left him to do some communications while I went to the stage to practice a bit. Soon it was time to meet with Mick and Sheryl to do an advance of “All Down…” before the sound check. Sheryl was gracious as always, and got her part of the duet down quickly. Then we all headed to the stage for the sound check. That all went smoothly and we were ready for the final countdown. Sheryl’s manager, Scooter Weintraub, was there with her, and we’ve been friends since the years I worked with Eric Clapton. It was great to catch up with him as well..and we had at least a short hang in the hallway. 

Rosie and I had lots of guests in the VIP, and headed up to make the rounds. Bill Doyle, the CEO of the Potash Corp was there with his wife Kathy and two of their friends. We would have dinner with them the next night. We worked the room for 30 minutes or so before heading back down to do the show.

Our dear old friend Brian Setzer

Everything being set, we hit the stage at the appointed time and had what I think was one of the best gigs yet. Sheryl just knocked it out of the park and the band was tight the whole night, with high energy throughout. Back at the hotel we hit the bar for a while…it was a pretty crazy scene, with lots of fans hanging out and several of us in the band there as well. The good news is that there was a nice little area that was roped off where some of us could have some privacy and not be right in the middle of the madness. We sipped on a couple of drinks and talked with friends for an hour or so, then took it to bed.

June 1, 2013

I got up about 9:30…and had honestly forgotten that I had a phone interview to do at 10am with a London journalist about my CD, “Back To The Woods”, which has recently been released in Europe. The phone rang right at 10, and as I was sitting at the desk, I was able to grab it quickly. Rose Lane was still asleep. The interviewer was Peter Sargent, who is also a musician (guitar player) and who was quite good to talk to as he had done his homework, listening to the disc a few times before interviewing me. We had a great chat for about 45 minutes. By then Rose Lane had gotten up, and we finished what was left of the morning sipping coffee and talking about the day’s plans. 

Quint was going to stay in Chicago, hang with us today and see the last show the next night…but unfortunately he was called away for an important meeting. He was disappointed, but hey…biz is biz. We hated to see him go, but were grateful for the time we had with him.

 Rosie and I went out for a walk and to do some more window shopping, again…just killing time. We had arranged a dinner with our friends Bill and Kathy Doyle, who had been to the show last night. Bill had reservations at Spiaggia, an upscale Italian place. We met them there, and were introduced to their friends Bill and Jan Zanoni. We all enjoyed the company and the food…and Bill and I had a chance to catch up on the fertilization project that Potash funded on our place, Charlane Plantation. I had proposed a second project to him…another fertilization experiment on our pine trees in a different tract on Charlane. This is a tract that I bought from the Weyerhaeuser Company about 18 years ago. We did a first thinning on it two years ago, and the trees are about 20 years old now . The soil on this tract is very sandy, so the trees are quite slow growing. Bill agreed to support it, and it will be really interesting to see the results of fertilizing this particular tract. It will be about a 6 year project.

We wound up our dinner and took a cab back to the hotel to wind up the day.

6/2/13

An off day, but I did some media at the local NBC affiliate. A nice fellow named Stefan Holt did the interview outside the studio in a park area. We had a great talk, and he had done his homework. The piece would not run for a while…several days later…Stefan and his cameraman got lots of shots of us not only doing the interview, but walking around in some of the part greenery as well. I was able to talk quite a bit about The Mother Nature Network…and when the piece was done, they did us right. It can be seen online at: http://www.nbcchicago.com/video/#!/news/local/Rocking-Mother-Nature-Website/211001301

The rest of the day was nice and easy…dinner at a Vietnamese place call Colonial, which we throughly enjoyed.

6/3/13

Our third and last Chicago show tonight. Did the workout thing in the gym and left on the early van to the United Center. Tonight’s guest is Taylor Swift. Perhaps not an obvious choice to guest with the Stones, but I think a really cool thing. I love her songwriting and her records…for the kind of thing she does, she is excellent at it and she is one of the most popular artists of our times, no doubt. Mick had spoken to Don Was about her, and Don suggested “As Tears Go By” for the duet. I had thought of it as well, but didn’t think Mick would want to do a song that we have not rehearsed…but he was willing, so that was the pick…a great one for her to do. After the usual routine to do the set list and such, I went to Mick’s room to meet Taylor and to work with them on the arrangement. She is a lovely girl…very professional and easy to be with. We had a nice chat about her tour (she had interrupted a day off from it to do this) and how things were going for her, then we all got down to biz on the song. We worked out the vocal lines that each would do, and when they would harmonize…all going nicely. She was quite animated with Mick, asking him to “give her a twirl”  during the solo section, which he obliged to do. We wrapped that up and went to the stage for the sound check. We went over the tune once before she came out, then a couple of times with her. It went very well, and we were ready to do our thing.

I think the gig was the best of the three…although they were all really great. Taylor did extremely well…and when the tech folks put up the duet on YouTube…between the Stones social media and Taylor’s, within a week there had been almost two million views of it….amazing! Taylor has already established herself as a solid mega talent…and as she is only in her early 20’s, she will no doubt has a long and fruitful career. I hope maybe I can play on one of her records one day….