First time in Macedonia for us. The flights from Helsinki to Skopje, through Istanbul, took a very full day.

Unfortunately, morning showed us another snow storm (are they following us?) And, with us on the outskirts of town, I won’t be seeing much until we head in later today.

The club we’ll play at…

And afterwards, back at the hotel, we enjoy a bottle of local wine the promoters gave us. (We’ve been joined since Finland by our booking agent, and friend, Francesco Grieco, shown here with Markus.)

Alas, no time to remain in Skopje and see more. Morning has us headed to the airport, and flights through Ljubljana, to Frankfurt. Quite a geography lesson on this tour. The next show, in Dortmund, will mark the 11th country we’ve played in this month.

After setting up we usually move to having Robert setting all our levels, on his iPad. During the show he’ll be moving around in the venue, adjusting the house sound remotely with the same program. It’s improved our live sound considerably.

which gives me time to tune, drink, and take photos.

(If they’re using that telephoto lense on me, it’ll be a shot of only my moustache!)

I explained to Markus that the reason I kept shooting pictures of him in the show was that I loved seeing Jimi looking over his shoulder!

Okay, nice show.

The next day we have something quite unusual on this tour; a full day off. No travel, just day at the hotel. It’s on the outskirts of Dortmund, so I don’t get adventurous, just use the day for catching up on things (like doing this diary update.)

A chance, too, to think ahead. I have a lot coming up in April, after we get home. First I’ll finish up some music I’ve written to accompany some of my photos. Last December, after the Crimson tour ended, I took a trip to Chile, to the North, to visit the European Southern Observatory telescope arrays there and take photos of the stars. They came out very well, and being there was so inspiring, I decided to string the photos together as a video and write music to it. It’s pretty much done, but I have to be home to finish up and get it online.

In mid April I’ll go to Rochester, where I’m one of the people being inducted to the Rochester Music Hall of Fame. Wouldn’t miss that, at my old alma mater, and since Steve Gadd is also being honored, it’ll be a cool concert.

Then to England for King Crimson rehearsals. As usual, we’re adding some material for the upcoming Summer tour, and will also be going through all the previous material. Too early to tell what will make it to the shows, but it should be challenging and exciting.

Okay, days off are for looking ahead, but now it’s back to the tour!

More soon, from tomorrow’s show in Aschaffenburg.