Hey y'all, it's been a while, but I'm back. It's been a pretty crazy month, I hardly know where to start. At the moment we've just crossed the border into Canada to do a few dates. I guess I'll start with the Late Show with David Letterman.

A few days ago we played the Letterman show. It was a pretty surreal thing--from start to finish. We got to the show at three in the afternoon and at about half past they let us on the stage to do our soundcheck. The first thing we found out was that all rumors about the show being cold were absolutely true. It was freezing in there. Paul Schaeffer came over to us and said hello as did the rest of the band--Letterman himself walked by and said "hey, it's the band". He was tall. We soundchecked for about half an hour and then went down into the studio downstairs to listen to it--then we waited for about two hours.

At five-thirty, we were in the dressing rooms while the show started. We watched on monitors as Dave did his monologue and introduced the line-up of the show. There it was, he said "dog's eye view". Suddenly I realized that it was inevitable, the show was underway, and in less than an hour, we'd be singing on national television. Time flew by and in what seemed like seconds we were on stage and getting ready to play. They tape the whole show as if it's going out live, so they cut to a commercial and set up our gear within about 60 seconds, after that we stood there for a few seconds and suddenly Dave was introducing us. We played (it seemed to last about ten seconds) and then Dave came over to say hello and we were whisked away to the backstage.

The best part of playing Letterman was being able to watch it that same night at our hotel. We got a bunch of friends to come over and gathered together in front of the television. It was a blast.

We've had a pretty great month in general. We did a couple of shows in Europe with some other Columbia acts. Fiona Apple played and she was terrific--her album is really great as well. The Fugees were also really cool. In addition to that we managed to take our first week off since January. Tim and Dermot went home to London, Alan went home to NY and I spent a week off in my newly adopted home of Seattle. I'm still hoping to move up there when we get some more time off. We also played a really fun show in Seattle with Richard Thompson, Suzanne Vega and the Wallflowers.

Speaking of the Wallflowers--they'll be out on tour with us starting June 3. From June 3 through July 11 we'll be wandering around the country listening to the Wallflowers every night and playing shows. I can't think of a better way to spend a summer. We'll also be joined by Ron Sexsmith for some shows and starting in Vancouver we'll have Joe Henry on tour with us as well. The Joe Henry record and the Wallflowers record are both amazing. We've been listening to them non-stop out on the road. We hope to see you at those shows.

Other records I've been listening to are the new Elvis Costello record (the best of his in years), last year's Spearhead record (especially the track "hole in the bucket"), Michael Kroll's record (still rules). I'm reading a book called "demon box" by Ken Kesey at the moment which is alright and I've just gotten a couple of Borders books gift certificates so I'm gearing up for some new books--any suggestions??

We played a really fun radio show yesterday for DC101 in Washington, D.C. with a whole bunch of other bands--they raised over $300,000 for kidney research. It's nice to be a part of an event like that--not to mention playing in front of thousands of people on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

Our second single--"the prince's favorite son" has officially been released to radio, so if you feel like calling your local station, go for it. We're also hoping to wind up on "The tonight show" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brian", and we're scheduled for The Today show on Sunday June 9, so if you're up early...

Anyway, we're in Montreal now, so I'll catch up with you later. Have a good day. See you soon.

Peter