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(ProgWest 2002 report)
Well, we did it! We drove from Vancouver B.C. all the way to southern California to attend the live performance of Kevin Gilbert's "The Shaming Of The True" by Nick D'Virgilio and friends at ProgWest 2002 on Sunday, November 10th. But the concert was just the icing on the cake. It was a week-long rock 'n roll vacation that we'll never forget!
This is how it all unfolded:
Spring 2002:
Rumours have it that NDV will perform Kevin Gilbert's "The Shaming Of The True" live at ProgWest 2002 in November.
The rumours are soon confirmed to be true.
Rene emails his friend Keith, who lives in the Bay area and who originally introduced him to Shaming, asking if he'd like to go. Answer: Absolutely!
Shawn and Rene begin to consider driving to California together and picking up Keith along the way.
August 2002:
Special advance "Sponsor" tickets go on sale. The 800 phone number doesn't work in Canada, so Rene has to get his father in Colorado to call for him. He is successful in securing three tickets.
A planned telephone interview with the four surviving members of Giraffe is cancelled in favour of a live session, to be recorded at the Treefort Studio the day before the ProgWest concerts.
Keith arranges a tour of the Plant Studios, owned by his uncle, for the same day as the Giraffe interview.
October 2002:
Shawn loses his primary source of income, and his ability to attend ProgWest is in jeopardy. Since he was to split costs with Rene, Rene's ability to go is also now in jeopardy.
Gruno and The Dividing Line listeners to the rescue! Gruno organizes the "Shawn-a-Thon." He broadcasts for 20 hours straight, bringing in guests like PapaJim, NDV, Richard Haitz, and Bubba, and collects donations from sponsors. Enough money is raised to allow Shaw and Rene to finance the trip.
November 5th, 2002:
Rene meets Shawn at his apartment in Vancouver and they drive to Rene's place in Abbotsford...about an hour.
The evening is spent packing CDs and making sure everything is in order for the coming voyage!
November 6th, 2002:
Shawn and Rene leave Abbotsford and cross the U.S. border at about 10:00 a.m. Packed with over 70 CDs worth of prog to help the hours go by, the voyage begins!
It begins to pour rain when they reach Seattle a couple of hours later. Traffic is thick, visibility is poor. This is the beginning of what will become the standard driving conditions on the trip.
The rain persists, only lightening up for brief periods at a time until they reach southern Oregon.
Thanks to Rene, Shawn was finally introduced to the older collection of YES tunes such as Close To The Edge and Heart Of The Sunrise. Rick Wakeman was inducted into Shawn's "Kick-ass keyboard players" list.
The day ends in Ashland. 10 hours, 934 Km.
It is very windy but the sky is mostly clear, so we have hopes that Day 2 will be drier.
November 7th, 2002:
We leave Ashland a little after 9:00. It's raining again.
Keith calls from Las Vegas where he had been working at a trade show all week. We had planned to meet him at Oakland airport and drive to his place, but he informs us that he has his own vehicle at the airport and will meet us in his home town of Clayton instead. He gives us instructions on how to find a sports bar where we'll meet.
We get lost for about an hour or so. Luckily we have a laptop with map software so we are able to find our way to where we are supposed to be.
Keith's plane arrives late and the bad weather causes extra traffic delays as he tries to make his way to meet us. During the wait we go over some of the material for the upcoming Giraffe interview.
Eventually the three of us are together in the sports bar, where we have dinner before driving the final few blocks to Keith's place.
Day 2 ends at Keith's place in Clayton...about 6 hours, 566 Km.
We are privileged to stay with Keith and his wonderful wife Jenny for the next 2 nights.
November 8th, 2002:
The three of us (Keith, Shawn, and Rene) drive to The Plant Studios in Sausalito, arriving at 10:00 a.m. We are given a complete tour. The list of recordings that were made there is impressive. Fleetwood Mac's Rumors, Santana's Supernatural, just to name two. The halls were lined with gold and platinum records. The studio is beautiful, and filled with state-of-the-art equipment. One of the rooms is where The Shaming Of The True, and Kaviar were mastered.
We drive over the Golden Gate bridge and through San Francisco to Sunnyvale.
We arrive with just enough time for a quick sandwich at a deli around the corner from the Treefort Studio.
J. Scott Smith greets us as we arrive with a yell of "The Canucks have arrived!" and he brings us inside the legendary Treefort Studo where we are introduced to Stan Cotey, Chris Beveridge, and Michael Abowd.
We sit around a microphone and chat for over two hours, recording direct to CD's.
We have a wonderful conversation / interview with the guys and gain a whole new insight into the Giraffe story.
The session ends with an acoustic performance of "The Light" requested by Shawn. Scotty on guitar and lead vocal, Stan on guitar and backing vocal, and Chris on backing vocal.
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- We leave the Treefort a little after 4:00 and drive to Castro Valley, where we have dinner before the final stop of the day.
- We arrive at Eric (CarnivalMan) Brooks' place at about 8:00.
- We meet Eric's son Patrick and wife Nora before entering the famous CarnivalMan Studio, a garage totally renovated into an office / studio type of room. Very cool.
- Eric's show on The Dividing Line starts at 9:00 and we recount some of our travel tales between songs.
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As the songs play we all relax and enjoy some of Eric's hospitality whilst we spend a very nice evening chatting and generally relaxing.
At the end of the evening we say our goodbyes and head back to Keith's place.
November 9th, 2002:
Rene, Shawn and Keith leave Clayton about 9:30 a.m headed for ProgWest 2002! It's a beautiful day - sunshine and big cumulous clouds, imagine that!
About half-way to the Los Angeles area the rain caught up with us once again. It never rains in California, but man, don't they warn ya? It pours! - "Oh, it never rains here! This is the first rain of the year!". We the Canadians from Vancouver take responsibility for bringing the rain down with us.
As we exit I-5 and turn east on 210 the rain becomes torrential and visibility is poor, but we're still able to keep to the speed limit and eventually we find our way into Claremont at about 4:30.
The Claremont Inn informs us our rooms are not ready. All they have is a single smoking room which we take temporarily in order to change and freshen up before dinner.
We arrive at the Seeley Mudd Theater a little after 5:00, meet a few people, including Mike Keneally, and our own Gruno, then go to a restaurant close by to have dinner with Nick D'Virgilio and his entourage.
We have a very nice conversation with many of the musicians to perform Shaming. We were sitting next to Mark Z who was a very genuine and nice guy.
After dinner we go to the hotel bar for a few beers, then call it a night.
Total driving time this day = about 7 hours, 645 Km
November 10th, 2002:
The big day! We actually got to sleep in a bit and spent the first part of the day just vegging and preparing for the awesome night that was to come. We arrive at the theatre at approximately 2pm. We mingle out front of the theatre for an hour or so before the show begins.
We meet fellow DLBN DJ Papa Jim Harrel...
and here's a picture of us with regular DLBN listeners:
We took our seat for the first band, Izz - they were excellent. Considering nobody was too impressed with the sample mp3s of any of the other bands that would be appearing, this was an unexpected pleasent surprise! Rene bought both their CD's and we talked to them outside afterwards. Expect an interview on DLBN sometime soon.
The second act, Azigza were...well...interesting. Imagine world music & instruments but playing progressive music. Very unusual but very cool if one happened to be in the "right mindset". Rene liked their rendition of Led Zeppelin's "Friends"
After a bit of a delay, the show was about to begin and Shawn was led to stage left where he was able to watch the show from! Some words from Shawn:
"Thanks to an individual who shall remain nameless, I got to watch the whole performance from the stage! Because I only see 10% vision, when I go to concerts I am lucky if I can see blobs moving around on the stage. To me that's normal. But, for this show I was actually able to see the people perform. I was standing just behind one of the stage amplifiers, no more than 3 feet from Mike Keneally's keyboard rig! It was nothing short of amazing to be this close! Not only was I able to see the whole performance, but I was able to see all the behind the scenes stuff going on around me as well. I have since gained a whole new respect for just how complicated a show like this is. From being able to hear every little comment that gets thrown back and fourth between the musicians on stage (and there are a lot of them, jokes and everything!), to watching the tech people slide seamlessly in and out of the production fixing things that have gone wrong that nobody else would have even known about. The speedy recovery time is flawless and totally unbelievable. Some of the musicians would come off the stage if they weren't performing in that particular song and they'd be asking me how it came off and if it was alright or not. I offered many words of encouragement and joked around with all of them. It even got to the point where a few of us started singing along. Once Shaming ended there was an intermission and I got to observe as the stage was magically (and with a huge amount of work) transformed into the arena for the 2nd half of the show. Ryo Okumoto appeared bringing in his very own vintage Mellotron which he told me had been given to him earlier that day by the other guys in the Beard. When the 2nd half of the show began I was standing literally 2 steps from his keyboard rig. Both Mark Z (who played during the Keneally set) and Ryo would look at me during their solos as if to say "Well?" and I would give the thumbs up, which ended up sending Ryo into convulsions of "Yeaaahh!" with both hands in the air. The experience was totally unbelievable. Spock's Beard did wicked renditions of "The Doorway", "Devil's Got My Throat", and "Go The Way You Go" which, seeing it form that angle was a memory I will take with me to the grave and beyond. After the show ended I just wandered around the stage talking to everyone and mingling. Chris G was a really great guy who did a fantastic job of learning a HUGE amount of material in a VERY short time. Mike Keneally was also very kind and extremely genuine. Always interested in what people thought and how they enjoyed it, Mike was always there. Unfortunately for me my voice was beginning to go out on me from a cold I had picked up a day earlier. But it didn't stop me from making many great contacts and friends. Expect many great DLBN special events soon! Thanks to the individual who shall remain nameless for making this all possible and giving me an experience I will be able to take with me for life."
The main event: The Shaming Of The True was simply amazing! In spite of some minor technical issues, it sounded great. The band did justice to the work and I don't think anyone was disappointed.
Following a break we were treated to a couple of songs from Ryo Okumoto's new CD, then a couple from the Mike Keneally band. Then Nick and Ryo were joined by Alan Morse and Dave Meros...the first performance of Spock's Beard without Neal. It sounded good to me. I guess we'll find out if Nick passed the "audition."
November 11th, 2002:
We leave Claremont about 9:30 a.m. As we were checking out, so were John from Izz, and Mike Keneally, so we bade them farewell.
Shawn completely looses his voice and is forced into silence during the journey back.
We had to detour from I-5 to drop Keith off at his place, then make our way back to continue north to Ashland. Driving time this day = 14 hours.
November 12th, 2002:
Left Ashland about 9:30 a.m.
During his period of silence Shawn is introduced to ELP, new Floyd, Shaman, plus many others.
After almost 48 hours of silence Shawn's voice begins to return slightly.
We arrived at Shawn's in Vancouver about 8:00 p.m.
I arrived at my place in Abbotsford a few minutes past 9:00. Driving time on the final leg of the trip = 12 hours.
Summary:
Shawn and I had one of the most memorable experiences of our lives. It was great to meet all the musicians, Dividing Liners, and to be there for the only live performance of Shaming. We'll never forget it!
-Rene, November 15th, 2002
