DAY 11 Another long sleep and I should be ready for five gigs in a row and lots of kilometers in between!! (A lot of prayers too!) After lunch we went to the Tavastia club to do a long sound check and make some small changes to the set. This was very useful and we had dinner before returning to the hotel. Now I am waiting to leave for the show and I can feel the excitement/adrenaline already. The venue is cool… a real rock club… so if we get a good crowd it could be another great night! More later… Well… it was packed, loud and it rocked!! The crowd reaction was really enthusiastic and again the audience showed their great knowledge of the songs by singing louder than ayone so far. The band is starting to really gel now and I sense that we have something very special here. Dave's solos really are breathtaking and Andy & Pete are getting tighter all the time. We have changed the set a little and it runs well but my guess is that we will still do more fine-tuning as we search for that "perfect" combination of power and pace. As always we finished the night in a "meet & greet", signing t-shirts and CDs and anything else that people put in front of us! Privately I hope that the band as a whole will achieve an independent level of recognition. I am certainly trying to "involve" them as much as possible. A highlight of the shows so far has been the performances and reaction to "The Return" which has always been one of my personal favourites. We have arranged it for the road with a nice change of tempo in the middle over which Dave solos and then written a sort of "anthem" type ending meaning the song is now almost 12 minutes long. Nobody seems to mind though! Next day...

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