And so we’ve come to the last show of our Summer tour. It’s been quite an experience - 32 shows in 9 countries, over 48 days. Great shows in great cities, with some spectacular venues. I’m lucky to be able to photograph it all.

A bit sad to see it end, but also glad to be headed home, as I think we all are.

And it was a great to finish with shows in Venice at this lovely theater.

Up in the Production Office, I’m finally grabbing some photos of people I don’t often include in the stage pictures:

Our tour manager, Dave Salt

who, among the hundred other things she does for the tour, last night stood in for Jakko’s after-show fisting, when he was feeling ill…

Aha, I caught her changing into her true identity!

I’m trying to talk the band into a new look for stage… but no luck so far.

As everyone know who comes to our shows, no photos during the show, even for me.

So we jump to right after the last piece:

After the show, as usual there’s a ton of work to be done packing up our gear

and, something unique to this show; peeking out a window at the back of the venue, this isn’t some old Venetian painting, it’s one of the boats waiting to shuttle our equipment to a larger boat, then to the trucks waiting far across the canal system.

A ton of work for our crew tonight.

On the morning after this show, when I left our hotel, some of our crew were just returning from the all night job of getting the gear out safely. It seems a good time to thank them all and convey the band’s appreciation for all the work they put in throughout the tour.

For me, always special thanks to Michele Russotto, my good friend and bass tech since… gee, 1992. On this tour he also has other jobs than just setting up my bass gear, but you’ll also see him sometimes running up on stage behind me, to point out to me that I’ve forgotten to plug the instrument in, or some other bass player maneuver!

Meanwhile, back to tonight, the band is having our traditional end of tour toast. I think we’ve worked hard too.

For now, the band will head off in various directions, for various projects or just some down time.

But Crimson will be back touring in October, in England, France, and Japan… and you can count on more road diary pages then.

Next year too!