April Tour: Day 11

Friday April 20, 2012

Driving driving driving driving driving driving. We left Fairfield around 6:45am and quickly stopped at Café Paradiso for coffee and cinnamon buns and hit the road for our impending 10hr drive. Other than our cramped legs and boredom in the car, we had a smooth ride. Norah and I traded off on the driving, while Cillian watched pretty much a whole season of Deadwood, Fiona played DJ and Ailie read an entire novel! We all of course took turns sleeping too...because that's just what happens in a car after a while...but not the driver of course!! We were headed to Duluth, MN and luckily it was a beautiful day for driving. We arrived in Duluth and I was quite excited to see the gigantic Lake Superior! I've seen some of the great lakes before, but Lake Superior is the big momma of them all! I kept referring to it as the ocean by accident it's that big!

We were about 2hrs early, so we found a nice little coffee shop/bakery and hung out there for a bit. We then headed to the venue at the Duluth Congregational Church, and were greeted by their big billboard sign advertising our show: The Outside Track: Celtic Superstars! 8pm. It was awesome and of course we all wanted a photo of it!

We did our soundcheck, which turned out to not be much, as we mainly went acoustic with a few mics to help with the vocals. We then were treated by a lovely homemade soup & salad dinner by our lovely hosts, and got to chill out for a bit in the really big and comfy 'green room' before we got ready for the show. Ailie was a big hit at that show with all the harp players around town, which was great. The show was really fun and everyone was so nice! It turned out that Fiona had a friend from her town in Scotland that was living in Duluth and going to school there, and he came out to the show. Afterwards, we all went back to our hosts beautiful house and had a little hang out and session for a few hours...and were even treated to some home made popcorn! Despite the LONG drive, it was a really great day. Fiona and I even got to re-live our childhood that night by getting the room with bunk beds!