Las Vegas NV Friday Aug 1,2003

Rode here overnight. The air conditioning was ok or maybe it was cooler because it was at night.

Surprisingly good crowd. I have played here before, and it’s always weird playing a casino.

The lighting guy had his little girl who was about Ruby’s age at the soundcheck. I gave her a t-shirt because she was so cute. She said to me, “My Daddy wouldn’t get me tickets to see the Dixie Chicks!”

“Oh, did they play here?” said Mike.

One of the stage hands said, laughing, “Yup, we get em on the way up, and we get em on the way down!!” He said that right in front of me.

“Guess we are on the way up, huh?” I said, joking, in a not very funny sort of way.

Bob said, “It doesn’t apply to singer-songwriters. We just sort of go around. On the same level.”

“Yes, or through, from one place to another.” I said.

Anyway, it always seems weird playing there with everybody eating as much as they can eat, gambling as much as they can gamble, and satisfying every lust they can conceive of, unhindered.

When I came down for the show though, the room had a good crowd and they loved Bob, appreciated all his humor, and I thought well, this is not so bad. In Solana Beach, that was the one bad thing is that noone listened to Bob at all and he came offstage mad.

When I went on, it was a great audience, and I felt bad that I had preconceived the whole gig. I wore a sequined shirt in honor of the occasion, which actually looked pretty good.

They had projected the whole thing onto some screens behind the stage, so when I did Tom’s Diner and I looked over to see “the woman on the outside, looking inside does she see me?” I was actually looking at an image of myself, which was a comic moment. This has never happened before.

The audience was really nice. I told them, I’m not the sort of act that most people come to Las Vegas to see.

We LIVE here! shouted one woman.

Well, I am really flattered! I said. Most of the time people never go out and see things that are local. I had never gone up in the World Trade Center, for example. Have you seen Celine Dion? She said she had not. Another lady shouted that she had, and it was fabulous, she goes to see everybody. Yet another lady shouted that she had NOT seen Celine Dion, but she lived there too! So I praised everyone for living there and coming out to see me, and then went on to the next song.

[ Next: Los Angeles, CA - July 2, 2003 ]