Dragons 1976 Krakow 2-25-2008

Our last date of the tour was at Alchemia in Krakow. We left Wroclaw pretty early and drove south in Poland towards the foot hill country. On the way to Krakow we stopped in a small town that had a historical park - a 17th century polish farming village was preserved there. We met Marek there, the man who books the jazz at Alchemia and other places in Krakow. We had a great lunch ther e- I had zupa di pomodora and trout with almonds. Trout two times in a week - I'm hooked. We walked around the village and enjoyed the weather - it may have been in the high 50s and it was very sunny and the afternoon sunlight made everything that much better. We drove the last 20 kilometers to Krakow, I fell asleep just as we entered the city and then Ajemian woke me up to point out some of the very old buildings that line the river. Alchemia is a great cafe on the ground floor with the venue down in the basement - it seats alot of people and is definitely designed for listening - the building is very old and its reputed that the owners bought it for $100 when the neighborhood (the old jewish quarter) was not the place to be.
I took a walk around the area and returned around 6 o'clock to do a rehearsal - the two trios combined that night on two songs, India, and my song Atlantic. I wrote a complimentary bassline and created a harmony for the melody and we learned the form. This was the rare night where we didn't have dinner before the gig. One of the best things about the Polish crowd is that they show up when the concert is listed to start - well the only place where it didn't happen was in Warsaw. The concert started at 8:30 i think, Dragons played first - a god set, alot of energy for the crowd which was our largest of the tour. The light also played a set full of energy, and when I joined them on stage for Straight Up and Down it felt very good. We saved the double trio for the third set - the two songs probably ended up being about a half hour long total. This concert was recorded too - it'll probably be the best playing documented. We stayed at Alchemia the rest of the night and stayed at an apartment close by. I talked to the fellows of the Light about the possibility of doing more playing together in the future - maybe this fall.. I've got to work on my Polish!
I woke up pretty early the next morning to give my self some time to walk around this old city. My flight left at 14:00 and after a transfer in Munich we followed the sun all the way back to the west coast. It was cool to see the sun almost set while we were very far north and then rerise as we started heading south. A great trip - hopefully we'll be back soon.