CMT Blog: Archive

We were playing at a huge two-day festival in Ireland called the Midlands Music Festival and we were being shuttled over to the site from the hotel. This guy had on a pair of those atrociously ugly shoes called Crocs (yes, I have a pair) so we started talking about how ugly they were but soooo comfortable at the same time. Turns out we both live in Austin, so we talked about missing Mexican food. I have no idea who he is, but he says he’s a tour manager and says to the bus driver, “We’re all here but we need to wait a minute for Richard.” There are a lot of Richards in this world, so I think nothing of it. Anyway, a guy squeezed past me and gets on the bus. (Is this Richard?!?!) Then, I get in the bus and there are no seats. This nice man offers up his seat to me, and when I look, it’s Richard Thompson! My band was about to DIE! We were all like, “Uh, that’s Richard Thompson and he just offered up his seat for little ol’ me.” We got to talk to him about music and where we live and what kind of music we did, etc. We watched him play later in the day from backstage, and can I just say, he was so awesome.

There were so many unbelievable people on that same bill. I got a T-shirt just because my name was on the same shirt as all them, everyone from Steve Earle, Allison Moorer, Kris Kristofferson, Glen Campbell, the Be Good Tanyas, Blind Boys of Alabama, Gillian Welch (who is the sweetest thing ever!) and Ricky Skaggs. Jim Lauderdale was a hoot to hang out with. He surprised me and got up on stage during our set to sing the duet, “Lavender Blue,” that he sang with me on my CD. We got the whole performance on video and there’s a really funny part I can’t wait to put up on my Myspace page! Stay tuned! I hope they invite us back another time because we had such a great time!

We have one more festival in Sweden before we head home on Saturday. I will be sleeping the whole way home on the airplane, because I am so tired I can’t even see straight. But when we get home, I will have been playing music in five different countries for five weeks and nothing much can really compare to that!