Final view

Colin Henry rounds off his journal of this year's tour by Ferguson, Holmes, & Henry:

The last gig of this year's tour was in Boyle, Co. Roscommon, as part of the Boyle Arts Festival. This is a lovely riverside town with a beautiful forest park close by, where the kids had a long-awaited chance to stretch their legs. Boyle is not a large town but its Arts Festival lasts a week and is extensive and varied with regard to music, drama, and the visual arts. The town was very quiet on the night of our gig and we were initially concerned that we would not get a good audience. In the end we drew a good, appreciative, and knowledgeable crowd and it turned out to be one of the best shows of the tour. We even had a band shot taken (above) by a professional photographer who turned out to know as much about dobros and dobro players as I do! Anyhow, it was a fitting end to the trip.

My view of this year's tour is that it was one of the best yet. It was different having the kids along, but they were great. A dry run, perhaps, for a tour to the USA. I have thanked Gary personally, but I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank him for setting up the tour. Gary does all the booking, and it is a thankless and difficult task to secure gigs that fall on the right days but do not mean long tiring drives. He succeeded well this time.

And a final view - I mentioned in an earlier post that life on the road is not always as glamorous as one might think, and to share some of that with the reader I give you a shot taken from the bedroom window of one of our stops. What a view indeed!