THE HEARTLAND

So after a couple days of international travel we began a weekend trek through the heartland. We began in Wichita, KS. We packed about 1250 into the Cotillion on a Thursday night. It was a very cool room, it reminded me very much of The Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, IA where we've played a couple times. It's been there for over 50 years and just has history built into the rafters. This was a good shot our keyboard player, Chris Kline, took from the stage...


We went from Wichita to Columbia, MO for a show at the Blue Note that we'd sold out in advance. Columbia is such a cool little college town. They've got great thrift stores up and down the strip and we had some phenomenal food while we were there. We had Italian for lunch from a place called Bambinos and then ordered from the Jamican Jerk Hut for dinner. We had a buffet of jerk chicken, curried shrimp and brown stew chicken. All of it was great. Despite being a production nightmare, the show went really well. The folks ate it up. We've got an opening act named Adam Hood out with us playing solo acoustic and riding with us and he did a great job in Columbia, the crowd really dug him. After the show we all went to a little bar called Mojo's, which Alex told the entire crowd we would. It was good getting to hang with everyone for a few minutes in a non-work environment. I headed back to the bus pretty quickly and got a great nights sleep.

On Saturday we rolled into Des Moines, IA to the Val Air Ballroom. It's probably a club we'll never play again. The owner was this guido looking Tony Soprano assmuncher and the club had about as much ability to rig as my bathroom. We ended up with 1000 people which wasn't bad considering we got no radio support for the show.

Tomorrow (Sunday) we drop Adam at the OKC airport and roll into ML's neck of the woods. We're going for a day off at her and Blake's places and plan a lazy day of eating BBA and fishing and sitting around. I'm up for it after the busy couple weeks we've had.

THE FUN CONTINUES

7 PM

Aden, Newsom, Kline, Keith and I all went out for some local fare at Champion House, an island fave. I had the curried goat/oxtail combo with a bowl of conch chowder. It was very reasonable...about the only thing on the island that was. The whole meal cost me $20 Cayman, equivalent to $25 USD. On the way out, some local drunk was picking up some to go food and apparently had never seen a mohawk. He looked at Aden and began yellong "Fuck mon...that's fucking great mon." The whole place began watching us watching him. He than let out a large fart and began laughing uncontrollably. Different strokes for different folks.

We headed back to the hotel but stopped off at a cigar bar just across the street from the Westin. We all went in and smoked a cuban cigar. I went with the Montecristo #2, a fav I discovered when in the Netherlands several years ago. We also had Cristal, a light Cuban beer. I didn't like it as much as I did Caybrew, the beer brewed on the island, but still good. Tired as well from the time change and all the traveling, we turned in shortly after the party broke up around 11 pm. Those "heavenly beds" at the Westin are just that...I slept like a rock.

MAR 10 - 9 AM

Tony and I went for breakfast at the Westin buffet. Mistake. The buffet was about like a Shoney's, the only saving grace was the fresh mango. All in all, it cost us about $25 USD. Aen went across the street to the cafe and got a buffet and coffee for $10 USD. Live and learn.

At 10 am, the crew was going for load in and realized we'd left a piece of gear at the airport. I headed that way with a claim ticket, my driver helped talk me into the back door of the baggage area and I found the bag. I took it over to the Ritz where the crew was getting set up. If you haven't been to the Ritz in Grand Cayman you haven't seen what heaven looks like. It's amazing and serves to remind you that you need to make a lot more money.

12 PM

Back at the Ritz for soundcheck. They have a nice stage set up in the Courtyard behind the Ritz. It backs up to a lagoon with stairs leading down to a small boat ramp. I walked over to this boat ramp to sit dow and call my wife. As she answered, I noticed something about two feet from me shuffle a little bit. It was this...

Yes folks, that is an island iguana that measured about three feet in length. You can imagine my surprise when the little fellow turned my way. It was enough for everyone to stop soundcheck and come take pics of the thing.

After soundcheck we had a couple hours so I ran over to the beach for a little time. Keith and Kline went sailing. This is what the beach looked like. Very much like the Corona commercial.


After all this fun, we still had a show to do. A corporate gig at that. It went really well. A beautiful set up that probably cost way more money than I'll ever have, the party was made up of a bunch of financial people that probably wait a whole year to cut loose. When it was done, Kline and I made our way back to the cigar bar for one last Cuban treat.

We flew home very early Tuesday morning. The only thing worse than the Cayman airport is probably the Miami airport. It's a zoo. I made it home shortly after lunch and instead of catching up on rest I'm writing this blog and dreaming about blue water and white sand.

Off to Wichita...

CRS BEGINS AND ENDS, THE BEACH AWAITS

CRS started with a bang. We got the call on Thursday night that CBS Early show would be broadcasting live from Nashville and wanted us to play. It was their "ACM Nominations Revealed" show. After talking production all day Friday, Chris Newsom and I showed up to The Wildhorse on Monday for a walkthrough of our battleground for Tuesday. They're also shooting another TV show there in addition to it being the site for CBS Early Show. We loaded in at 7 pm that night...well, we were scheduled to but TV is always late so it was more like 9 pm. That lasted until bedtime at 1 am and I had to wake Miranda at 3:30 am for glam. It ws worth it, ML was nominated for three ACM awards...a great honor for all of us. We had a successful show and wrapped at 8 am. Our day continued with promo and more TV. We taped the Crook and Chase Show which is back on the air after ten years off. Don't worry, they haven't changed a bit. Charlie CHase is still wearing the same turtleneck and the average age of the crowd was 77. It was somewhat comical. Wednesday was more promo and Thursday we performed on the Sony Boat. For any of you who don't know what this is, Sony rents out a huge riverboat and fills it with about 800 of our closest friends in radio programming. Then they bring in ten to twelve major touring acts to share a ratty drum kit and mediocre backline to perform with minimal set change in between. Makes for a fun time, at least they have an open bar.

So we wrapped CRS in Nashville and snuck out just before the snow creeped into town. We pulled out at 5 pm on Friday and it took us 5 1/2 hours to make it to Memphis. Then Nashville got saddled with 6 inches of snow. I'm a little depressed I didn't get to see it, my wife tells me she built a snowman.

We drove all that way to Austin for the rodeo and when we got there ML had no voice. I called an ENT doctor we know in San Antonio who gave her a magic shot but aparently it wasn't magical enough. By early afternoon she still had no voice. We were forced to cancel but luckily my buddy (and former employer) Jack Ingram was able to step in. He did a pretty dang good job given the five hour notice. So after all that work of loading in, soundchecking, doing will call lists, stuffing envelopes and changing my shirt we never even played a note. Not one. Silence. The alternative to alternative.

SO, that brings us to 7:48 am, which really feels like 6:48 am because of the time change last night, and is going to feel like 5:48 am once we fly into Eastern Time. We're sitting at DFW ready to board a big ol' jet airliner bound for Grand Cayman (via Miami). Unfortunately, we have to fly down for three days for a private party on the beach. They're having Seal the following night. I don't mean they're dining on it, I mean Seal will be performing. You know, the "And we're never gonna survive, UNNNNNNNNless, we get a little Crazy." The guy who's nailing Heidi Klum. So, some insurance company is bringing us in for 250 of their closest friends for a down home Grand Cayman beach party. We are traveling on work visas where apparently I will be a Tour Coordinator instead of a "manager" and my sound guys will be "Technicians" as opposed to "engineers". Weird shit...for some reason work visas are cheaper if you don't use important titles like engineer or manager.

11 AM

So we just landed in Miami on the first leg of our flight to Grand Cayman. Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz are boarding a plane across the gate from us for some other tropical destination. Our guitar player, Alex, is star struck. He wants to do a walk by to check her out. Oldest trick in the book, you see them coming a mile away. By the way, Miami airport is a total shithole with very little attractive dining options. Our choice in terminal E is either Pizza Hut or some deli that serves their sandwiches on 18 inch skinny bread (Cuban style). Their menu that hangs over the counter is that old yellowed Coca Cola menu you used to see at snack bars in the mid-80's. Makes you hunger, doesn't it?

Our flight is delayed 30 mins, I'm really ready to be there.

3 PM

WE"RE HERE! Just arrived at The Westin Casuarina, our place of residence for the next two nights. Our rooms aren't ready so I'm hanging in the lobby/bar drinking a mojito and waiting for Pedro to give me a room key. This is the place where they filmed part of The Firm. The scene where his wife is eating dinner with Gene Hackman happened about 30 feet from where I pen this creative diatribe of events. Very beautiful, I'm definitely going to make my way into the surf and sand shortly. i just text messaged our booking agent and told him to please book many more private gigs and especially when they're in the Carribean. I could surely get used to this. 

Grand Cayman adventures to be continued...Pictures to follow as well.

RETURNING TO THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

In early 2004 I had the lovely experience of doing a Pat Green opener at a club in Fort Myers, FL called Ricochet. The runner vehicle was monster truck which was later used in the video of Jason Aldean's "Hicktown." You can go watch the video on CMT.com to get a better sense of what we're dealing with here. It's about a 1000 capacity club in South Florida, widely known as the biggest redneck area of the U.S. Needless to say, when I saw it pop up on ML's tour schedule I was a bit worried. However, not nearly as worried as I was when I went to advance the show and the friendly club owner told me (two weeks in advance) that he already had the Patron chilling and he didn't know about stage size or security but that our drinks would all be on the house. Boy, what a relief that is for a tour manager.

The gig actually went really well. The runner is still driving a monster truck, though he has upgraded since my last trip to a newer model. While carrying the band to the hotel he informed them that his son had recently blown all the tweeters and horns of the $10000 system by listening "to that goddamned heavy metal bullshit." You can't make this shit up, people.

After a sellout in Fort Myers we headed to the Strawberry Festival in Plant City, FL. Charley Pride played the sold out afternoon show where the average age of the patron was about 74. It didn't get much better for us, we had a dismal crowd who were trained by security to stay in their seats and golf clap at the end of every song. This doesn't bode well for an act who gives their best high energy show. However, the festival was kind enough to send us on our way with twenty four dozen fresh strawberries (thats 288 strawberries if your math is a little rusty) in an attempt to bribe our return. My GI track is still recovering.

Then on Saturday we played for about 1200 new Army recruits at Ft. Bragg in Fayetteville NC. These shows are always fun. We wrapped and headed for Nashville where we're gearing up for a week of Country Radio Seminar. We've got a couple TV appearances and a bunch of promo. This show will likely resemble a money fucking a football. More to follow in the coming days, right now I have to go meet with CBS about our 2 a.m. load in for tomorrows show. Have I mentioned I love TV?