Seattle/Woodinville – anyone else going?

Woodinville, WA 7/15/06

Woohoo! Bruce and the boys totally ROCKED the Chateau near Seattle last Saturday night!!! (and I’m pleased to report all articles of clothing stayed on)

This will definitely be hard to beat as one of my top Bruce shows ever. I was there with my sister and a great group of gals (plus Dan, the token man), I got to dance on stage again (and almost the piano), and had a hat trick, or a trifecta if you will, of requests played!

I made up a two-sided 11×17 poster requesting “Song H/King of the Cascades” and put it on stage. Having just played his most recent (self-described) sell-out song “Gonna Be Some Changes Made”, Bruce commented that yes, he had sold out even before that, and how did anyone even know about this song (H) since the box set isn’t out for another 10 days? He started in on it, and a little ways in, just when the tempo picks up, a train went by at the back of the amphitheater. It wasn’t that loud (near the stage at least) but Bruce said something about how it reminded him of the movie “The Grey Fox” and took off on the up-tempo part that sounds a lot like train music.

A couple songs later, after “Wild Frontier”, as Bruce was setting down the accordian, I ran another request up to the stage and handed it to him, but this time, it was a challenge! I asked if he could play either “The Way It Is” or “Mandolin Rain” or any other song he could play in his sleep, but this time with his hands crossed: bass clef with his right hand, treble with the left. He groaned, but brave soul that he is, he took a hack at it and actually did quite well! [to clear things up a bit, the request *was* worded “with your eyes closed”, but by that I meant a song he knew really well – he didn’t actually have to play with his eyes closed – cross-handed is hard enough!] A real version of “The Way It Is” ensued, hands uncrossed, and then came my final request.

Along with the challenge, I also asked for “Jacob’s Ladder” with a little of Paul Simon’s “Graceland” mixed in with that awesome bassline for JV’s enjoyment. Bruce kind of started on Graceland, soon segueing into Jack of Diamonds and then unleashed a full-on Jacob’s Ladder and strapped on the squeeze-box. Ladies were invited on stage and not being one to ignore that call, I tossed my camera to someone else in our group, grabbed another gal and made a bee-line for the stairs; you snooze, you lose! I think we were the first up there, but the stage was soon filled and the rest of the gals had to dance down front. (Hopefully this doesn’t get them banned from playing at the winery again for another 7 years; security seemed OK with it, though.) I made my way to the back of the harem to say hi to JV, then sidled my way over to the end of the piano. Lo and behold – there was another set of stairs leading up to the piano! Bruce was back playing at the piano by now and after I took my shoes off so I wouldn’t scratch the lid, I motioned to him if it would be okay if I climbed up. He kind of shook his head ‘no’, so I was good and didn’t do it. 😆 (I should have just done it without asking, though – it would have made a much better story!)

Towards the end of the second set during Jack Straw, a ‘deadhead’ in the audience (tie-dye t-shirt and all!) got up and started dancing down in front of the stage, motioning for everyone else to get up and dance, too. Quite a few of us obliged and then stood/danced down front for the rest of the show. I got quite a few pics and even a short snippet of video, but the dumb drunk lady next to me was screaming so loud, you can barely hear anything but her on it, especially since we were behind the big speaker stacks. We managed to wring two encores out of them and were sent into the night with a lovely Mandolin Rain>Halcyon Days medley. Man, I hope a complete recording of this surfaces – it’s definitely a keeper!