Ok, just to get things started off right...on the rail right in front of trey the whole night. This led to some great interaction between him and our group. Especially my (ex)wife.

Before the show brad sands walks across the stage and we all tell him happy birthday. He talks to us for a few minutes and one of my friends pulls out a vile and offers him some for himself and trey. He gets that huge grin on his face and we proceed to squirt down 2 pieces of big red (haha) and hand it to him. When I say squirt, I mean puddled. This led to a great night.

So the show is stellar, trey conducts his orchestra amazingly and great times are had by all.

Cut to after at the gazebo. I had a small pad of paper with me and scribble down sultans. I knew he had played it a couple of times but hadn't heard it yet. As I'm holding it, ray looks at me, points to trey to look at me. He sees it, gets that big goofy grin of his and strikes the first chords.

I don't think my feet touched the floor for the whole song. Hearing the horn section play knopflers solos for the first time blew my mind. Then of coarse trey rips up the last solo for himself. I was on cloud nine. Sultans of swing has been one of my favorite songs my whole life.

Encore time: push on till the day. I'd love to see a video of this because this is where it got especially fun for us. At the end of the song, trey starts hitting the imaginary ball around. He'd hit it'd around on the stage using his guitar as a bat and hits it out to the crowd. The crowd throws it back and he sinks it into his chest. He then walks over to us and hands it to my ex wife. She almost melted into the floor right there. Utterly amazing moment. Amazing night and one of the most fun and intimate times I've ever spent with trey.

After the show was over brad came over to thank us and we head out into the cold Asheville night.

Once again in Asheville for TAB, this year the show moved from the amenable Thomas Wolfe to the bigger and badder Civic Center. Tough call though, the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium is smaller, has a tidy, mellow vibe, and above average acoustics. The Civic Center is the staight forward 1970s-style entertainment arena, echo-y, lots of concrete and feels like Ringling Bros. circus, Globetrotters game, or Disney on ice go down at any moment. Not that there is anything wrong with that. But 'music venue' seems to be a distant afterthought compared to the lovely Thomas Wolfe next door.

The concourse at this show was stocked with surprisingly cheap microbrews, mostly of the locally owned and operated Highland Brewing Co. persuasion. It was Halloween. In Asheville. Tops off! Total pandemonium. I dressed as Martin Brodeur in full goalie regalia.

The performance was solid and Trey and Co. rocked the heck out. The crowd was super sloppy, lots of costumes, etc. Complete free-for-all. After the 'Saints' and 'Yellow Submarine' shenanigans from the previous year's tour, a lot of folks had high hopes for a Halloween TAB engagement, though the show ended up being pretty standard fare. Not to say it was a let down, but the feeling was in the air that something crazy might go down but didn't in the end.

The highlight for me was 'Sultans' - I had not been keeping up with the TAB setlists much (early interwebs days kids) and I was really pleased to hear Trey rip in Knopfler territory.

The great thing about going to an arena on Halloween dressed out in full hockey gear is that if you tumble down the stairs because you had too many beers it doesn't hurt. Stay safe y'all.