Fri., Sat., Dec. 19-20, 1997, Chicago, IL, B.L.U.E.S. Etcetera -- Well, back to work in cold, cloudy and, of course, windy Chicago. This time we're at the twin club to B.L.U.E.S., called BLUES Etcetera. The club has large poster-size color and black and white photos of past Chicago blues greats performing in the club, including Lonnie Brooks, Koko Taylor, Pinetop Perkins, and several others. With concrete floor and low ceiling, I had no trouble getting plenty of "sock" out of my drums with just a kick drum mike, despite the fairly large room size. For Friday, the crowd was light, which was expected by the club, as for some obscure reason about one-third of the club's floor and seating space was cordoned off by ceiling-to-floor partitions (maybe to reduce the amount of flying furniture available for launch should the musical act really suck). We had earned a visit from the pres of Blind Pig records, Jerry DelGuidas (sic), who loved our live performance, as though he'd forgotten over the vast amount of time that had passed since he'd seen Joanna last. On Saturday, Joanna and I hurried across the street to chow down on some excellent mid-Eastern food, managing to return to the stage just as the doorman/MC boomed over the PA, "It's showtime!" Partly to alert the audience, but more to tell the band it was time to start. We received a visitation by "Black Elvis" Tommy McCracken, who brought along his guitar player. McCracken was certainly entertaining, gyrating King-like, screaming and bellowing to a fast shuffle and a slow blues, stopping short of shoving the microphone into his pants, as apparently was expected by McCracken observers--and all this at 60 years of age. Impressive. The band played on until 2:30 a.m., a good work out after nearly two weeks off. The crowd was never really fully involved in what we were doing, although Joanna did have a bevy of midwives gathered at a table with a couple of men friends. These are the midwives who will be delivering Joanna's child, and who were so curious about what exactly Joanna did for a living, they braved the cover charge and less-than-antiseptic ambience of a blues club to discover the truth. They were decidedly impressed with the magnitude of what Joanna does--so much so, they stayed the whole night. Darnell's friend Bobby was visiting from Indianapolis and somehow had been left off in a "bad neighborhood" necessitating Darnell and Joanna to pick him up after we were through playing. By the time they returned, everything had been packed and ready to go for nearly 15 minutes, prompting the club employees to make impatient noises and comments, stopping short of rudeness, but just barely...