Shawn Colvin at Sea

Yesterday was a day at sea, which means music from early afternoon till early morning. With 4 days in front of us, Maria and I decided to have a relaxing day today. We hit the gym, which was packed, walked around a bit onboard and took a midday nap. Late afternoon I headed out to the pool area to see Gaelic Storm; an Irish rock band out of Los Angeles.

Standing out in the sun with the wind blowing and the beer flowing, there is no better setting for an Irish drinking band. I was tapping my feet and singing along to songs about… well pretty much all of the songs seemed to be about drinking. Deb and Linda found me about half way through and we watched some classic fiddle playing along with an electric bagpipe (wasn’t really impressed with the sound of it… he mainly played a standard bagpipe) power this 5 or 6 piece band (remember the part about the beer flowing?).

There was a tacky Mardi Gras parade immediately following the show. The only highlight from this was that they played Dr. John over the sound system as necklaces were raining down on us from the upper deck. About half way through, several streamers were shot into the air and the colored paper was swirling around the deck as the wind picked it up.

The evening was set aside for Shawn Colvin. Deb and Linda saw her smaller show in the afternoon. It was a typical Shawn show with lots of laughs, screaming monkeys and a few guests. But the late night show was something special. Shawn was as focused as I’ve ever seen her. It looked like she had a set list taped to her guitar and was pretty much planning to stick to it. Part way through the show the requests started coming. And when the yelling died down (did I mention Shawn said tonight’s show was going to be about death and regret?) she told the crowd that she wanted to do things a bit different tonight. This meant no Polaroids and a few other classics were missing. But Shawn’s singing and guitar playing was right on and the show really seemed to have purpose. What a powerful show. Stories that you will probably never hear anywhere else showed up just for us. I don’t expect to hear the theme to the original Poseidon Adventure any time soon. Joining Shawn on stage were Lyle Lovett and Brandi Carlile. I hope to post videos of them when I get on dry land. And so, it just seemed a step down to sit and listen to anyone else this night, so after a bit of gambling and some ice cream, we called it a night. It’s Lyle Lovett tonight!