One time my agent in Minneapolis told me she had a good paying gig for me... but it was at a nudist camp. I said "no", "that would be a little too weird for me... and I've done some weird gigs." So I decided to list the weird gigs. If you ever wonder why I'm prematurely gray, you will wonder no longer. Here they are, MY WEIRDEST GIGS: (and they are all absolutely true)

I've played for a communist party meeting in Torino, Italy, after which some of the audience argued with others about whether I had the right to have performed a Christian song there. I've played for a blind children's school in Warsaw. I've played singing into a microphone duct-taped to a Christmas tree at an outdoor mall in Goteborg, Sweden. I've played at a Mormon wedding in Zeeland, Holland. I've played in a bar that was so dead I literally fell asleep and hit my forehead on the microphone in the middle of a song. I've played for two old ladies who were rocket scientists (for real) at a street cafe in Utrecht, Netherlands. I’ve played in a wedding with an amateur singer, who when I played the wrong chord, kept singing the same word over & over ten times until she finally gave up (sounded exactly like a skipping record). I've played a Swan Festival in northern Japan, where they gave me a tea ceremony. I've played in an orchestra in front of two hundred people, and as the conductor tapped his stand for silence to start the concert, I pushed my rear chair leg off the edge of the stage and flew onto the floor with guitar and music stand, onto another guitar, dislocating my shoulder. I’ve played alone in a hotel room for the head medicine man of the Souix Nation with Willie Nelson’s son Billy. I've had a person dancing bump into my mic stand so hard that she chipped my front tooth, and then get huffy with me because the music that she was dancing to (me) stopped. I've played on the street for hours in falling snow in Goes, Holland. I’ve sung in a maximum security prison in Amsterdam. I've had a guy in Paris steal my hat off my head and run, while I was in the middle of a song. I've had ladies stuff money into my pants while I was playing. In the middle of a song, I've kicked a drunk in the chest to protect myself and still finished the song I was performing without dropping a beat. I've sung a pop song in a church and had the lady who booked me leap up, stop the performance and send me home. I've been featured on a prime-time national TV show in Holland called "Frau Zijn" (To Be A Woman). I’ve played and passed my hat a number of times at a Dunkin’ Donuts in Sendai, Japan, without permission from the manager. I've performed at a youth retreat only a few hours after breaking two ribs, a finger, and seperating my bicep. I’ve played and sung eight 45min sets in a row, ‘cause I needed the money. I've played for change on a ferry boat to Tallinn, Estonia two weeks before the boat went down with 800 people on it. I’ve had President Bush’s people call and try to book me for a dinner party with the President at Tamarack Resort in Idaho, and then not discovered the phone message until after the dinner party was over. I've been arrested for street playing in Sweden, and if my friend wouldn't have bailed me out, I would have spent the night in jail, and then been put on a ship to New York, whereupon I would've had to pay for the ticket. I’ve played the same single song going back and forth between two Paris subway stops for hours and days, with a street guy from London passing the hat. I've had the US Ambassador to Denmark walk up to me after a show and invite me to dinner at his house in Copenhagen. I've played for a guy dressed like a gorilla and his two buddies in ballerina tutus at a train station in Malmø, Sweden. I've performed in the front row of an orchestra only to realize at the end of the show that the fly of my black pants had been open the whole time with my white shirt corner sticking out. I've sung a song in Dutch about how much I love peanut butter with 5,000 Dutch teenagers singing along. I’ve sung at a best friend’s daughter’s huge wedding, tried to put her name into a romantic song to personalize it, and got her name wrong. I've played with a torn fingernail and blood dripping down my guitar and onto the floor. I’ve been the headliner at a festival in a hockey stadium in Helsinki, Finland, for 10,000 people and afterward had a young guy tell me I’m "uglier up close". I’ve sung in the yard of a prison in Honduras where the guards are other prisoners with sticks. I've sung a song with a 12-string guitar and then had two guys from Wisconsin wearing shorts, tights, and logging boots grab my guitar from me and jump on it, smashing it to bits. I've been given a chance to showcase my talent in front of 800 Dutch people who might book me in the future-- one three-minute slot, one song, one chance, and then broken a vital guitar string on the first few beats of the song...

"It was the best of times, and the worst of times" :¬)