I got back home today with a suitcase full of new Peoria memories. What a weekend we had! It started on Friday night, when the Peoria Riverfront Museum held a grand opening gala for their new exhibit honoring Dan's life and career, featuring music by Russell Schmidt and the Fogelberg Review.

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The following day, photographer Henry Diltz gave two specially-curated presentations of his photography of Dan through the years. That evening, Dan’s friends and bandmates performed at the 3300 Event Center with Robert McEntee on guitar, Michael Hanna on keyboards, Mark Andes on bass, and Joe Vitale on drums. I joined them onstage, along with Nashville singer-songwriters, Templeton Thompson and Sam Gay and multi-instrumentalist and Peoria native, Tim Harr.

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Eric Mills, Henry Diltz, Hugh Higgins, and duo Bomar and Ritter joined us for the song Dan always finished his concerts with: “There’s a Place in the World for a Gambler”. Afterwards, the fans gathered at the Pere Marquette Hotel ballroom with their instruments and voices for the now-traditional After-Concert Sing Along circle, which went until almost 3am.

We were all exhausted, but happy to have wrung every drop out of the weekend with old friends and new. We also welcomed a few mega-fans in their 20s to the Dan Fam fold! Many thanks to Bill Conger for his amazing work on the museum exhibit and of course, Eric Mills for all his hard work to bring everything together so beautifully.

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Video and photo by Susie Chinn