September on the Road, between, sound checks, riding to the gig, and recording my

Next CD here in Linz Austria, every day on the 5^th floor with no elevator.

I¹m getting my Stairmaster workout for free. I¹m counting my blessings here everyday.

The crowds are usually sold out, and the most enthusiastic I¹ve seen anywhere.

It¹s back to school week, remembering Katrina, September 11, and also the 10^th anniversary of my Father¹s passing in Monroe Louisiana. It¹s a strange time of

I listen to NPR every morning online, and watch some of the clips from CNN from Louisiana. The night the Hurricane hit, I was onstage at the Danube Pavilion, on the banks for the beautiful Danube River that is the Mississippi of Europe that flooded it¹s banks 2 years ago. I asked the Audience to Pray for our people there, as I sang ³Do You know What it means to miss New Orleans².

I wanted to capture New Orleans in a DVD I¹m making this year, as I told my fiancé Judy 2 months ago, ³I feel that our southern culture will be lost some way, I don¹t know how but I felt it in my heart that someday this would be gone.² My first reactions were fear, horror, then anger at our Government and tangled bureaucracy. It is also compassion. We can blame the looters, and the ungrateful exiles, or the government or get to work and solve some very old problems. Fixing the Levees is the tip of the iceberg.

As I travel around the world playing music, I see America from a very different perspective. In my travels to New Orleans, I found the people there to be the most generous and kind of the States. As Randy Newman said, it may not be the place to get your car fixed, but it¹s the city that time forgot with a carefree spirit that created Jazz and blues, which is part of my soul, my work, play and puts food on the table. Playing the music of this city has allowed me to travel the world, and to live a life I only dreamed of