March 7, 2007 - Waited TOO long to make this update but much has - and continues to - happen! I spent the second week on February heading down to Juneau, Alaska then over to Minnesota where Bill Isles invited me to join him and his wife Kate for two gigs - one in Superior Wisconsin, the other down in White Bear Lake near Minneapolis. While the crowd was small in Superior, it was an amazing evening. Bill's audience knows him well and I was warmly welcomed. I was also pleased to see my cousin Jeff's daughter Bri show up - popping over from Duluth and making me feel pretty good about music that transcends age : - ) The big suprise came in White Bear Lake where 16 members of my extended family and a number of their friends showed up making for a verrry friendly crowd. These were folks from both sides of my family, some who had never met and some I hadn't seen for over 25 years! Very cool and a great evening too. With a fond farewell to Bill and Kate, I stayed with my cousin Anna and her husband Gary and just caught up for a missed quarter century. Though much of the following weeks were also quite full, one highlight was in Hawaii where my friend Laura Nissan asked me to play after a conference for Reclaiming Futures (another of my many lives - you might have heard the tag on NPR "...and by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation which is sponsoring Reclaiming Futures..."). Laura and a small group of friends from New Hampshire to Oregon and beyond gathered around an umbrella and I was able to play a number of the new songs for them for about an hour and a half. Magical - and for all of us a good evening. Enough for now except one last thing - just found out that I'll be at Out North Theatre next Saturday (17th) opening for Samarabalouf - amazing French jazz trio! I saw them first on Paris TV when I was overseas this last year - mesmerizing. Life really is too cool sometimes!