Saw the pinched faces of Boston in a mist of city grayness, also beautiful tree bouquets of cherry blossoms and magnolias and also tulips. But I'll bet apart from the flowers, dancing is allowed only at college formals and officially sanctioned, sensible shoes events. No dancing allowed in THESE streets. It's a button-down town & closes down at 11 pm. No kidding. Even the Jazz joints.

Glad to be back in the city again after long drive with swinging Prez and O.P. along tree-lined blossoming upstate NY. Home to beautiful lithe dancer-wife come to the city to roost full of kisses and happy-faced conversation. We are happy. Also, she has brought along some of my books and socks (much needed now 10 days into the tour). After hurry-up run the car back to Avis we're back @ the apt in time for 5pm phone interview and quick eats. Then it's focus on the get-ready 'cause there's another show tonight.

Now The Flying Fox from the outside looks to me like the kind of joint I'd never check out on my own - not because it looks treacherous or burned-out but because it looks too cool or attitudinal for a cat like me to really dig, relaxationally speaking (There is in fact a giant scary looking fox above the front door in red lights which reminds me of Dante's gateway. Inside blue neon foxes hang from the rafters of this converted church and the place is upholstered like a red scene out of Anne Rice). In my terrible midwestern earnestness I'm the outsider in joints like this, all filled up with fashion-plates, ravers & gothic, pierced kids. But it's on the schedule, so here I go, Pony Girl in tow.

Young Rob at the door surprises me with open-hearted enthusiasm and graciousness - likely it doesn't hurt that Jennifer is decked out for her first night in the city in striking, eye-popping NY threads. I'm a lucky so-and-so to have such a lover - What a dream girl: slim, toned and gorgeous from dance classes -exactly made for me but still clearly the most compelling AND the nicest, funniest and smartest girl in the room if not New York City! Rob sees all this at once and digs how strong the vibe is for me to be with her. Plus, Jennifer jumps right in with business details I routinely forget about so's I can (for once) walk right into the joint feeling like a care-free king and just focus on making good music.

At one hour before the hit the crowd could still go either way - at the tables are possible listeners: couples wearing colors and some white-shirted after work business types even families (even parents who've brought their five-year-old twins who sing along & dance in their seats and know all the words! In The Foxy! Terrific!) Meanwhile, upstairs are the hipsters in brown & black - sleek and opinionated - looking down from over the railings with drinks and loud-mouthed talk. They are friends of the band to follow us and the session after that. If they feel like it they can shun us, even drop their cold drinks on my hopeful head.

So how to play it? Absolutely straight. Pull no punches but pull no beauty either. Silence implies consent. In a crowded club in NYC it implies attention and the possibility of victory. By the second a cappella note of my segue away from the first tune I hold silence in my hands like a fragile soap bubble. How is this possible? Even without the against-me-stacked-odds of ambivalent hipsters above I've got troubles: a constant buzzing in the mains thanks to the host of ceiling-hung neon fleidermausers, worthless monitors on stage and an ungrounded microphone that ouchfully shocks my lips whenever I get to close. I mean, maybe thirty or forty times that night - "POP!" goes the sound of the charge - right into the house sound! (Eventually the sound cat brings me a can of "Static Guard" & tells me I should spray the floor around where I'm standing like it's my fault. Static Guard!? So I work it into the show & go for laughs.)

We plow through our set with muscled arms - Yaron and Essiet are no strangers to heavy lifting on the scene & LH is impervious as always. We just keep the momentum going 'til the last crash of Nature Boy. I guess they liked it well enough - autographs and free drinks after - also photographs, handshakes and even good vibe hipster greetings. Those among that tribe who had continued blathering after the show started had been dealt with by the downstairs crowd - a blessing I've come to count on at my shows and a trademark of an intelligent, strong-willed audience. So that those same three or four shunned hipsters (who had reconvened their gabfest elsewhere in the club) now came dribbling back into the main room with sideways glances in my direction. These slide right by without impact 'cause now I'm being taken up into friendship be the oncoming band and by people who've waited & who have to split (it's 12am, Monday morning!).

What else? Magazine photographers and European reporters who tell me they've sought me for two or three years and some famous to-be-named-later Jazz cats who've come out to dig the scene. Bravo to the residency plan for making these hook-ups possible. We make our own breaks. Then home to normal off-the-job happiness with the woman: mint milanos & toasty kisses at 2.30am. Nothing wrong with that.

Dreamed of nightmare rehearsal with 3 pianos and double_booked drummer & not enough space or time before the hit - pretty basic stuff, really, except that it also involved some evil cutting bartender from hell, smoking and making comments about my "junior boy" weenie drinking habits. Also there was a second dream intertwined about the president or some such VIP coming to listen. Not that frightening and even a little silly on paper, I know, but that bartender chick was the kicker for me to want badly out of that dream. Of course, it didn?t keep me from sleeping in to 11.30.

But then got up to brunch of groovacious eggs tomatoes toast mustard & Sco (for rhythm). We had an internet interview with the cool Jazz Central Station folks to do, and there was a car waiting for us.

Our driver, Jason, is a proud native son of this island, and he showed us all the history and personality of the neighborhoods we passed on the way from Grammercy to the Battery. He's a smart guy and has assembled a city full of friends from his years of three-jobs-at-a-time-just-to-keep-place-in-the-city dues. He's got no regrets at all. Just pride and gratitude, 'cause I figure by now I've walked just about every street in the city & I got a friend on at least every block so I know how to get around traffic every time.

"And if you can't get around it you can just park 'cause you've got a place to stay," says I with a hint of congratulatory jealousy in my voice.

"My dad is sorta' like the mayor around Grammercy East," says he. See, he's been a policeman up there and has been for, like, 30 years and he knows everybody up there. When we drove back from a Florida two week's vacation last year he wouldn't even stop at home to drop me off. He just drove up to Grammercy & at 11oo at night we just drove around the neighborhood with him sayin' "Hey I'm back!" you know' "Hey, Jerry! Good to see you! Yeah, Florida was hot all right..." You know, just lettin' people know he was back on the job. He couldn't wait to get back - He loves it up there. He showed us his grandmother's building on the way, too, 'cause we were interested - also his aunt's house on Houston street before dropping us off around the corner from Wall Street.

There we do a little 1/2 hour internet conversation with maybe 8 or 10 people online: Cleveland, Pittsburgh - even Paris & Milan! I guess they must've known who I was 'cause they asked about the records and the Bulls (It's playoff time & Chicago will be dominant once again, I assure you) - tough questions too and some easy ones.

I was in decidedly big company for this interview - they'd already hosted Bob Mintzer, OP, Metheny & Charlie Haden - real cats! - even Chick! And here comes little, tag-along me - Yow! But people take it for granted & so here I am answering questions about the state of culture like a pundit - all the while hoping not to step into the Le Brea tar pit of foolish stupidtalk. I guess it works out ok 'cause they still give Pony Girl and me coffee when we're through.

World weary and sorta' sad in beautiful sunlight day after 2nd Izzy's night. We needed that Village Voice review to come out today to get some momentum happening. I'm told it's written and even on the net but it's not in the edition on the stands. So we had only 2/3 house for our two sets. I guess things were bound to be a little anticlimactic after last week's debut victory. Still, we're here to create our own momentum, and last night was the first of six dates in a row at six different joints.

I even had the kindness of new friends warning me to take it easy on the voice. They don't know I've been through all this before - not that I'm cavalier about my instrument. It's just that a more vital concern to me right now is trying to come up with enough interesting musical and poetical ideas to keep the band and my own self interested and in a fresh dream space over six straight nights of impossible shenanigans. In that dreamy-dream space everything is available to us and that's good. Except that everything in life is just that: a dreamy scheme, a walking shadow (W.S.) and none of it's real -the songs and audiences and food and laundry and beautiful girls asleep in quiet impossibility - even friends and books and angel-wife are phantoms of beauty. Not even my own weary swirling watery blush-and-peach colored elliptical glove of the soul is for real. Nor yours. Nor anyone's.

Today I woke up alone and stupid and hungry for company but no one's on earth. Trees sway outside the window like gangly long seaweed in a great aquarium of light. No one can tell me where the sensible space is (except some silent waiting guru somewhere maybe who can point me toward the hidden door). There's no writing to be done, no real work - not even shedding. "God is busy today, sir. He cannot come out to play."