Jergel’s Rhythm Grille might as well be located on its own planet. It is 28 degrees and getting hotter, but according to the locals it was snowing two days previously which might explain why the car park surrounding the place is lined with trees bursting with luxurious yellow blossom that gets visibly more abundant as the day wears on and the temperature goes up. Jergel’s is big, plush club with private rooms and a cigar and whiskey bar behind the stage. Read more...

Into the south, proper. North Carolina is lush and verdant. The skies are cloudless and the temperature is perfect. This feels like a different continent from Virginia, never mind New York. I set off from the strip mall where the Carrboro Arts Center languishes in the direction of downtown Chapel Hill. Walt’s Grill is en route and is quoted on the wire as a happening place for southern soul food. I stumble across it, but it is not what I was expecting. Read more...

The famous skyline has been anonymized by the towers of glass that rise above Hudson Yards leaving only a glimpse of the needle on top of the Empire State building visible as we drive in from the west but the heart still beats faster as the city approaches. We have a day off so I get up early and go for a run along the Jersey shore before taking the NY Waterway from our hotel in Weehawken across the Hudson to the W 39th Street ferry terminal. Read more...

The Crystal Ballroom is a chic club above the Somerville Theater, a very chic repertory cinema. There are people living on the streets but otherwise pretty much everything in Sommerville, MA is chic. It is a beautiful day with cloudless skies and Davis Square fills up as the sun warms but things go downhill when someone a guy who might be in his seventies appears with a semi-pro busking set up. Read more...

The World Cafe is surrounded on two sides by elevated streets. The stage door is under an elevated rail track and mile long freight trains with graffiti covered containers stacked two high on the flat-beds clatter past at walking pace fifty feet overhead. On the other side fifty-feet below street level the Shuylkill river cuts through the city flanked by an eight lane expressway and more rail tracks. The skyline is dominated by gigantic, shiny new Penn State University buildings. Read more...

Kris is very excited to be standing on the same square meter that was occupied for an hour or so by one Keith Richards on the evening of June 4, 1997 when the Rolling Stones decided to play an impromptu show at the Horseshoe Tavern during rehearsals for the Bridges To Babylon Tour. We can just about fit on to the Horseshoe’s stage and after the show at the Vic there needs to be a bit of conscious body awareness to avoid tripping over a guitar lead, or even your own feet, both of which I manage to do during the first song. Read more...

Monday nights can be a challenge: expectations need to be lowered on Mondays and after the reception in Minneapolis the Vic Theater looms as a potentially daunting prospect. The sun in shining when we arrive and the city is alive. Belmont Boulevard is full of purposeful people with coffee in hand. Trains run minutes apart over the alley behind stage door. Chicago is gritty and real. (No scientologists to be seen in this part of the world: goopy, west coast ideas like Dianetics are gonna get short shrift from these people. Read more...

Another Sunday in a deserted city. The Fitzgerald Theater sits in the heart of downtown Saint Paul not far from the capitol building and everything around is closed. Even the venerable Mickey’s Diner open 24/7 since 1937 is shut. There are a lot of churches—God seems to beget factions. A giant building across from the Fitzgerald advertises that the Scientologists have invested heavily here, presumably in an attempt to help the people of Saint Paul get over their schisms about conceptions of God and unite behind belief in the Truth of a third rate space opera written in the 1950’s by a fourth rate pulp fiction writer turned con man, now peddled by two contemporary con men, Tom Cruise and David Miscavige. Read more...

The indicators are good: one block off the main drag, just across from the Capitol building. Inauspicious looking, no view in from the outside. I head in and take the last remaining seat at the counter. Two types of ketchup, four different hot sauces and Goldy’s house seasoning are lined up a carousel at each seat. Bodes well. The place is small, maybe 50 seats but there are about a dozen staff; a guy at the door to greet, three behind the counter pouring coffee and walking out the orders from the tiny kitchen where four guys are doing everything to order. Read more...

The first mission of the day when Gary parks the bus in the morning, in fact the only mission of the day prior to sound check at 5 pm, is to find a good spot for brunch. Berkeley looks promising. I set off from the bus down Shattuck Avenue and every third door is a coffee shop. Presented with such a excess of places to eat eggs I ask a security guard outside a bank where would be a good place to have breakfast. Read more...