James Dalton, a performer and songwriter from New Jersey, is performing at Glory Days - a Bruce Springsteen festival in Italy. He will be blogging for NJ Stage from the festival.

Thursday, 9:33am, breakfast buffet alone in the Cage Club, upstairs at the Hotel Admiral, a couple blocks from and in sight of the Adriatic Sea. The owner sneaks in to makes some jokes and hellos in Italian, which I confess, I don’t speak, but a few words here and there are recognizable, so I can sort of understand that this “breakfast room” with custom rainforest wallpaper, birdsongs mixed with Floyd and the Beatles on the speaker system, wrap around deck and windows, but also with a stage, baby grand piano and mic stands doubles as a music venue and somewhere in the pleasant hotelier’s jokes are something about me having to sing a few songs to pay for the lovely spread that I am slowly working on. Good morning, Rimini.

So, I am very excited to be sharing this trip with you all! Many years back, I had been given an opportunity like this from an early version of New Jersey Stage magazine, notably, AsburyMusic.com from the same editor. Back then, in the early 2000s, specifically Summer of 2003, I was reporting from Rose Street in Edinburgh, Scotland while doing a string of singer/songwriter shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

These were the days before everyone hosted their own travel journals and web logs, or “blogs”, before we shared our food, sunsets, opinions and, well, everything from our own social media profiles. Back then, we created content with the idea that it had to get past some sort of editor, the the newspaper or website was possibly going to say “no” to us for being overly opinionated, or being controversial or even because our grammar was off-putting. That's all done now, for better or worse, and we share whatever we want, whenever we want. We’ve replaced our editors and screeners with much more amenable ones, a few echo chamber puppets that give us praise without consequences on what we share: ourselves.

But who really cares about that...

So, I have returned after a long absense to Italy, as a guest of Lorenzo Semprini and I am drinking my cappuccino in Rimini, a beach town resting in the northern half of the country. As a beach kid myself, the trappings of such a place are not foreign to me. Sandy promenades, blocks of hotels and postcard shops, salty breeze and characters in the streets. Two planes, a train and some automobiles, I’m still at home. 

Tonight, I am the opening act for a Glory Days in Rimini with different sets and appearances at a variety of venues across the city from now until Sunday. I had been invited to come over in 2020, but it was delayed. Something about the whole world shutting down...

Anyway, thank you for clicking over and following along. I’ll do the best I can to create some interesting content. Some days there will be more pics than words, maybe I’ll get to record some interviews or post some video from one of the concerts. We’ll see.

In the meantime, feel free to check out some of my sites like www.jamesdalton.bandcamp.com or @jamesdaltonjr for the Insta.

I'm honored the NewJerseyStage.com is hosting this and hope they will keep an eye on me, I definitely need a good editor!

Here are a few photos from the start of his trip.

Breakfast in Munich airport

Air Dolomiti Flight over the Alps

The adorable airline

Lorenzo Semprini in action

First dip in the Adriatic