It's so fun to watch an artist so comfortable on stage that they can share such personal stories barefoot.  Yep, I caught Glen Phillips again this weekend, at one of the finer neat little venues of the countless in San Francisco, the Great American Music Hall.  The only place I can compare it to is the Little Fox theater in Redwood City, except maybe three or four times larger.  Balconies on both sides surround the artist, with a wide open space in front filled with chairs grouped in small round tables. 

Glen was solo acoustic which I've finally come to realize is the only way he should be!  Performing in a band, as he did two months ago, his strongest feature, his vocals, is just too drowned out by overwhelming instruments.  Solo acoustic, however, ya get the whole thing and nothing sounds better.  As far as banter, Glen was quite the potty mouth this weekend, though ironically he described his annoyance of those who do so for cheap laughs.  Great stories such as getting a vesectomy by an admitted Toad fan who kept asking questions like, "Wow. You were in Toad?  I bet you got a lot of girls." as he was , um, swabbing.  Talking about the best Vietnamese food in San Francisco.  Huge food courts in Chinese malls that don't use disposable dishes.  Performing Pico De Gallo when someone advertantly blurted out "salsa picante".  Telling stories about crazy lab experiments his dad performed.  You know, typical concert banter   Amazingly fun and oh yeah, the songs were great...

A few hours later.... A bunch of us decided to hike up Mt. Diablo, a high altitude mountain in the East Bay of the Bay Area.  Fun, don't wear sneakers, remember to bring lots of water, and I'll let the pictures take care of the rest.


This is so cool.  Taken at around 10AM, this is at the summit, above the clouds and fog!  That, I think, is supposed to be pointing towards the west, either Frisco or Santa Cruz. 


Taken at the same time, the other side, the East Bay, much less clouds!


I forget, but it's nice to see how high we are!


So we hiked up from where this picture is taken all the way up to the tip of that peak there!  My lack of hiking ability/skill/endurance left me crawling the last few moments up... And then I realized we had to do it all again to get back to where we started.


Empty Nalgene bottle there.


A part of Mt. Diablo dubbed, "Rock City".  Hard to tell from this shot, but we had to climb up into this... rock.  I'm sitting on the left.

That Nickel Creek review will come one of these days...