More from the tour! We got to fly home June 1 after the Denver show for a couple of days while the crew and buses continued onward to the Pacific Northwest. A couple of days later, it was time for us to fly out and rejoin the party.
Wednesday, June 4, 2025: Atlanta to Portland, OR. An afternoon thunderstorm made the trip to the airport an adventure, but we took off without any delay. A four hour, thirty-eight minute flight!
As usual, I took an airplane nap, and woke up somewhere over the middle of the country. It took a while, but I finally got hooked up on the WiFi, so then I wandered the internet for another hour or two before dinner. Pub sub time!
Thursday, June 5, 2025: Portland, OR. We spent the night in a hotel where the buses were parked. The venue didn't open until lunch time, so I got up and went for a run around the neighborhood before we left. It also helped that I was still on east coast time.
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| dog park action! |
Today's venue was Revolution Hall, an old school that has been converted into a music venue (with a few small offices also in the lower level). We've played here multiple times. It's a cool place. This show had been sold out for quite a while.
The school's athletic field has been repurposed as a dog park!
There's a small restaurant/bar place in the ground floor level of Revolution Hall (Rev Hall if you're cool), so I had lunch there--delicious and convenient! I had a salad and a veggie burger.
There was still ample time before I was needed inside, so I went ahead and shuffled my clothes between the duffel bag that lives in the bus and the suitcase that lives under the bus. Some of the stuff that I'd washed at home needed to go in the suitcase, and some things that didn't need to come home with me needed to get back in the Patagonia bag.
For a lot of venues we're visiting this summer, we're not using the big video stuff, but they still wanted something similar, so we got banners! This was the first attempt at using them. It took damn near forever.
Meanwhile, Kip was out in the hall trying to figure out how to straighten the bent plate on this mangled caster.
Still nothing to do, so back out to check on the dog park!
Then it was finally time to set up my gear and soundcheck. We did the V.I.P. "soundcheck experience" thing where people pay to come to soundcheck. This one had about a dozen people. I can't decide if it's more of a waste of time for us, or money for them.
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| production office corgi! |
There's a good Thai place across the street from Rev Hall, and we got food from there. Great success!
Then I tried to pour the last of the juice/rice/soy sauce into my mouth, and instead poured it in my lap.
Kip wrote me this awkward melody on the board in one of the classrooms, and I couldn't play it. I don't know...maybe I got close? I was also trying to transpose it to alto. Anyway, he probably will show you the video of my attempt if you ask him.
The Indiana guys were trying to watch the Pacers' first game of the finals--it went down to the last second, and Kip had already started the walk-on music and we nearly missed the downbeat.
This gig was good! I got the intro right on All Right, and I my solo on Just the Two of Us felt really solid.
What else...Bencuya is still fighting with his upper keyboard (the Fantom). In Tucson, he thought it was a bad file, but it was still doing strange stuff today. Then he thought it was a bad expression pedal, but the screen did glitchy stuff, and then he thought it was the sustain pedal, but that didn't fix it, so now he's wondering if the output jack is dirty (or dying). Or maybe it's bad electricity, or a bad power cable? The possibilities! Gear can be a real pain in the ass sometimes.
The Wheel of Chorus tonight was Rich Girl (we practiced our plan for it at soundcheck since we had really messed it up in Denver) and Love Will Find a Way. Both were fine. We're back!
Friday, June 6, 2025: Woodinville, WA! D Day!
We woke up in a parking lot at a winery (not exactly set up for buses). Also, no coffee nearby, so I used the machine in the bus, but there were no cups! Good thing I had my trusty Thermos cup.
Just like yesterday, there was a lot of production stuff to set up (today they used the video screens), so there was plenty of time to wander off, so I hit the trail behind the venue...
...which later on became a freshly paved asphalt path. Not pictured: the emergency porta-potty stop at a construction site. Thank you.
Anyway...lunch time! I had a hummus/veggie wrap and a large bowl of vegetarian chili.
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The grounds of the winery were really nice. From the stage, we walked past these terraced fountains and around a corner to this house where the catering and the dressing rooms were.
After lunch, I set up my gear, went back to the house for a shower, warmed up a little bit, and played the soundcheck. Dinner was rice and veggies--nothing too great.
This one...very hot for the first set! We were facing the setting sun, and it was distractingly hot. I missed the entrance to All Right again (no count in this time), and I also missed the first note of the Heart to Heart solo (the reed pinched shut). Damnit! On the other hand, I liked my solos on Reminiscing and Just the Two of Us. I guess the latter has kind of become the one where I can let it all hang out this summer.
Wheel of Chorus tonight: Fooled Around and Fell in Love, and I Keep Forgetting.
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| an Amazon purchase |
Saturday, June 7, 2025: Bend, OR. This place is amazing, and the venue is amazing, and the weather on this day was amazing. Pics from my not-so-amazing run this morning along the river.
At one point during my run, the trail that I was on dumped me into a neighborhood, and there were a bunch of people running in front of me, so I followed them (because I get lost pretty easily), and we ended up in a park with a bunch of booth/tents set up, and there I was crossing the finish line and getting a high five from somebody, and then I kept going. From what I could tell, it was the end of a 5K for Pride Weekend.
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| Lunch! vegetarian chili and risotto. High five! |
After setting up my gear on stage, we still had a few hours before soundcheck, so it was time to go tubing! The venue had tubes and a golf cart--they will drive you up river to the place where you get in, and pick you up with the golf cart fifty minutes later when you get to the spot where you get out.
Nick, Hans, Irma, and I went. Pete followed around a half hour later. The water was cold, but it was a pretty incredible tour experience.
My own dressing room tonight. I think we were all spread out among the seven or eight buildings. Last year with Train, I think we were all crammed in two of them.
I spent plenty of time warming up, mostly on flute. My face was tired today--seems like my chops are fatigued. The question, therefore: should I warm up more (but really easy) to try and sharpen things up, or do I maybe take a day off and let my face rest? I'm hoping we have a day where there's no good spot to noodle without bothering somebody, so I would be forced to take a day off. The compulsion to use the time doing something musical (and not look at my phone for an hour) gets me every time.
My tenor has felt dull again, so I tried changing reeds to bring back some of the zip. It was a little better, but not the dramatic improvement I was hoping to achieve. I have a spare mouthpiece and reed in my backpack, so I tried both of those, but everything felt the same. Maybe my horn has a problem (especially after bouncing around in a trailer traveling across the country)? There were a couple of days off in the future--one in Las Vegas, and one in Los Angeles--a trip to a repairman may be in order.
This was a really good gig. At soundcheck, we sorted out the All Right intro so that I would get it right (and the count in would be consistent).
My solos all started off strong, and then somewhere in the middle, I started playing a bunch of bullshit.
Wheel of Chorus for Bend: Hey Nineteen and Guilty.
We had Pizza Hut pizza after the show. I used to love it. It doesn't do anything for me now. Turns out, just about everybody out pizzas the Hut. So greasy.
Sunday, June 8, 2025: Jacksonville, OR. The bus woke up in a mall parking lot. No access to the venue until 11:30 AM. Also, no coffee in the immediate vicinity, so another day of bus coffee.
The venue was up on a hill with limited parking, so everything from the trailers had to be loaded into a smaller box truck to get to the stage, so...it took extra time. I'd already had my coffee, so it seemed like the time to go for a run had arrived, and there were trails that extended out from behind the seats.
Oh man, it was hot, though. Bright and sunny and approaching ninety degrees, and I didn't have any water and the trails kept dividing. Sometimes the trail would end in a neighborhood, and if you wandered for a little bit you could jump on another trail, but also, it seemed like there was no way I'd be able to turn around and backtrack. Eventually I discovered a loop that circled and hill, so I did that a few times to accumulate some mileage, and then I was able to get out to the main road and work my way back. Only four and a half miles total, but I didn't die, so there's that.
| Meanwhile on the bus...Smokey and the Bandit while I ate a peanut butter sandwich (I missed lunch at the venue). |
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Yeah, this was a terrible soundcheck. It was 98 degrees and the stage faced west. Even though they had a sun curtain that came down across the front of the stage, it was sill unbearably hot, and we had to tarp everything to keep it from overheating.
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| I found a place to noodle a little bit between soundcheck and the gig |
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| Dinner! nothing great, but definitely edible |
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| Dessert! Some kind of Dole Whip Mango/Pineapple thing. Twas magnificent. |
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| a little pre-gig Back to the Future after the NBA finals game ended |
This was a pretty decent gig. The sun had set enough by the time we started, and that made the heat pretty managable. We did two sets (with a break of almost thirty minutes)--plenty of time to recover in the air conditioning!
The Wheel of Chorus on this night: Biggest Part of Me and Turn Your Love Around.
Monday, June 9, 2025: Fairfield, CA. A day off! We had hotel rooms here, so it was a pretty easy day, and the weather was incredible compared to the day before!
All the usual stuff...played some flute in the back of the bus after everyone went in the hotel...
...went for a run in the evening...
...had veggie fajitas at the closest Mexican restaurant...
...and did some very quiet playing in my hotel room to finish out the day.
Tuesday, June 10, 2025: San Francisco, CA. The drive from Fairfield to San Fran only took about an hour and a half, and we didn't have venue access until the early afternoon, so I got up and dragged myself around Fairfield one more time. There was a good path near the hotel (yay!), but there was also a vicious headwind out there (boo!).
We played August Hall in San Francisco, a room we've hit a couple of times, but never with enough regularity to establish any kind of following. It's an ok place--the stage is small and they keep it pretty cold.
I ate my lunch on the bus ride (shout out to Chipotle), so I killed a little time walking around San Fran and talking on the phone while the gear was loaded in.
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| Kip, doing a little cable repair |
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| Indian food for dinner |
My horns felt the best that they have in a while. The alto is better because I changed reeds, for sure--occasionally I end up with a weirdly soft reed (seems like a synthetic reed would be extremely consistent, but from time to time I get one that's junk).
The improvement on the tenor I attribute to:
1. my own insanity/anxiety about how the horn/mouthpiece/reed feels (completely in my head), and
2. I cleaned the pads and tone holes with damp Q-tips, and maybe I wiped away some crud that was causing a little bit of a leak.
Anyway...not a great turnout. It felt like a hundred people. Ganesh gave us a different count off again for All Right. Here's a thought--maybe I'm screwing it up because I can't get my shit together, and I shouldn't be blaming someone else. I knew the count was going to be different, so why wasn't I expecting it? Why panic? I can do it.
I quoted Family Affair and Everyday People in my Lowdown solo (Sly Stone died two days ago), but it got no reaction from the band.
Wheel of Chorus tonight: Biggest Part of Me and Careless Whisper--both big sax solos. I did ok both them. Nothing great. This was the first time we'd landed on the George Michael.
Wednesday, June 11, 2025: Yosemite!!! We had a day off, and were fortunate to be passing close enough to the national park, so hell yeah! Let's go hiking.
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| first we waited for the bus here |
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| then we waited here |
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| and it finally showed up forty-five minutes late |
The bus ride to the park took over an hour, and we almost died several times because the driver was "in training" and went off the road and almost rear ended a few cars and drove like a maniac.
Here are my pictures. I didn't have a plan when we arrived, so I just wandered off on a walk, and eventually decided to try and see El Capitan (because I'd seen the movie Free Solo). I ended up walking 13.25 miles.
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| El Capitan |
Everything about this day was epic.
I had lunch at the end of the day--lentil soup, a hunk of bread, and two bottles of water--just before we got back on the bus to go to the hotel. We were trying to figure out why bottles of water were $4, but cans of beer were $1.50 in the park!
The bus back was another long (but much safer) ride, though we did have a planned stop at Fish Camp General Store for twenty-five minutes, which we all suspected was some sort of scam between the bus company and the store. Total bullshit. Nobody bought anything, but a few people I know walked over and peed behind the Fish Camp Post Office, because the General Store wouldn't let anyone use their restroom.
Most of our crew went to the BBQ restaurant across from the hotel in Oakhurst when we finally returned, but Pete, Irma, and I went down the street to a really satisfying Indian restaurant, where they were nice enough to seat us at a table where I could charge my phone while we ate.
Thursday, June 12, 2025: Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA. Another short morning bus ride (8 AM departure). I got up at 7:30, walked out to the bus, got in my bunk, and immediately went back to sleep. I woke up at noon in the parking lot. Time for coffee!
After a peanut butter lunch, and the assembly of my gear, I was off on a run. What a beautiful place!
I took a shower (accidentally flooding the bathroom), then it was time for soundcheck and some flute warm ups.
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| we had Chinese food for dinner-yum! |
After eating, I played some saxophone. Melissa Manchester will be sitting in with us in Los Angeles and sent over some charts, so I went through them again.
This gig...pretty good. The building looked like a Catholic church that was built in 1980, but it sounded good. I guess it looked pretty cool, too, for a music venue. Better than a House of Blues. Anyway, the crowd was all old people. I guess those are the only people who can afford to live here.
I played a terrible solo on Lowdown (it got better, but my first idea was a clunker, and it took some time to find a better stream of ideas). Just the Two of Us was good, though.
The Wheel of Chorus this evening was Biggest Part of Me, bass solo (Greg played the Smooth Operator interlude), and then (bonus!) I Keep Forgetting.
On the bus, we watched the end of Becoming Led Zeppelin. Most of our bus has been watching it in episodes, and I just happened to catch this last one. Monkeyboy was mad because it ended after the recording of Led Zeppelin II--there's still more to come!
Cool pic and video from our friend Chadwick, who was at the show tonight.
Friday, June 13, 2025: Saratoga, CA. The ol' mountain winery place. When I woke up, the bus was parked in a shopping center, and somebody pointed me in the direction of the nearest coffee shop, where I found about a third of our people caffeinating.
Just before lunch, we drove up the mountain, carried our bags in, and went to eat lunch. Not the greatest meal, but a veggie burger and some beans will do the trick.
The gear was slowly making it to the stage (another place where everything was taken out of our bus trailers and put into a smaller box truck to get to the venue), so I did my run, but since we were not in a spot where I could go for a run, I ran laps in the parking lot, and it was as lame as you might think.
Eventually, I got my stuff set up (no noise until 4 PM), and we did a "soundcheck experience" thing again, this time for five people, and I warmed up a little bit on flute. Dinner at 6--potatoes, rice and veggies, salad, and minestrone soup. Good stuff.
There was a meet-and-greet on the schedule for 7 PM, so we all went to the spot and nobody showed up to meet us, so we fled.
Two sets tonight, and it was definitely colder once the sun went down. Glad I had some hand warmers to help.
Wheel of Chorus tonight: the first contestant got bankrupt twice in a row before spinning Biggest Part of Me. The second person spun Easy, and I almost got it right. It's coming around just infrequently enough that I'm never one hundred percent sure.
Saturday, June 14, 2025: Reno, NV. We drove overnight to Reno, but first...several of us woke up in the middle of the night (maybe 3 AM?), because the bus was stopped, and then there were loud voices outside, and I was sure we were under some sort of attack!, and then there was the sound of water being sprayed on the side of the bus. Never mind. Our driver decided to wash the bus at a truck stop in the middle of the night. No big deal. Everybody go back to sleep!
Later on, I woke up and the bus was parked on the street, a block away from the stage. I went to a casino and found a Starbucks, and then Nackers and I did a quick tour of the area (I took us to the wrong stage).
Kip arranged for my gear to live in an unused back corner of the correct stage, so I got that done around noon.
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| lunch |
We had rooms in the casino, so I took my clothes up, and eventually changed into my running clothes and wandered down to their gym. The room was 80 degrees (yuck), and the treadmills were noisy and probably hadn't been calibrated in years (I had to change treadmills once I'd decided that the first one I chose wasn't level).
On to the gig! It was sunny when we officially set our stuff up before the set, but pretty soon, it had dipped behind the buildings and the temperature was much more comfortable. I didn't move any of my stuff forward, so I ended up ten feet further back than everybody else on stage! There were several guitar and microphone wireless problems, but somehow I escaped it. Over the course of our show, all the guitars changed from wireless packs to instrument cables.
This was technically a blues festival, so I was deliberately very bluesy on my Lowdown solo (I liked the way it turned out). On Just the Two of Us, my sides were hurting by the end. Maybe I'm blowing harder? That's the kind of stuff that makes me think there's a problem with my equipment.
Once we finished, there was a frantic effort to get the gear off the stage (we did it in less than ten minutes), even though this cheese grater of a ramp was hot and slippery. Luckily, nobody fell. This thing was an accident waiting to happen. One of the monitor racks had three guys on the front trying to slow it down, and it still managed to pull Kip down the ramp.
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| casinos are weird places |
Everybody eventually ended up at the Mexican restaurant, and we had so many food credits (each of us had $100 to spend) that I ended up giving $50 of credits to the couple sitting next to us.
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| veggie fajitas were great |
Sunday, June 15, 2025: Las Vegas, NV. It was unbelievably hot here. When I woke up, the buses were parked in the lot behind the casino. We each had a hotel room here, but the walk was long. At least there was coffee. I went up and drank my coffee in peace.
The stage was outside (it was covered, but still open and extremely hot), and once the gear came in, I had to go out and set up my stuff, and I was mad about all of it. It's not good for the people or the gear.
We had key cards that allowed us to go and eat in the employee cafeteria for free, so Nackers and I went up there to check it out. Pretty bleak (though the fruit supply was decent--check out the ripeness on those bananas and that watermelon!). We also got lost on our way back to the casino floor.
Maybe an hour later, I put on my shorts and went to the gym to run on the treadmill (and the casino gym was pretty dang nice!). From there, it was out to soundcheck, which was predictably miserable. Somebody described it as "singing into a hairdryer." After that, I went back to my room and hid in the air conditioning for as long as possible.
We played at 8 PM, and by that point the sun had gone down behind the buildings, so it was hot, but not insane. The crowd was mediocre at best--who wants to be out in this heat?--but we got through it without any gear falling apart.
I went back to the cafeteria afterwards for dinner, and the food was still bland, and the choices were few. I would not recommend it.
There must've been some kind of power outage or something overnight, because the thermostat reset (from 68 up to 76), and the TV turned on. Or it was the ghost of the cafeteria, maybe. It happened to other people in the band, too, so I'm not crazy.
Monday, June 16, 2025: Las Vegas, NV. We had a day off on the schedule, and it was either here or Bakersfield, CA, so...
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| the hotel lobby |
I went back to my room and wandered the internet for an hour or so, and then hit the pizza place right outside the elevator bank. It turned out that our key cards to the employee cafeteria only worked yesterday. That was fine with me.
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| these light switches are stupid |
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| my hotel room view |
I did some very quiet playing in my room, but I wasn't into it, so that only lasted a couple of hours. After that, I put on my shorts and went to treadmill. Also boring, but I managed to hang in there long enough to run a half marathon.
Then we all went drinking. First location was Mexican food at Letty's.
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| margarita #1 |
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| dinner (outstanding!) |
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| margarita #2 |
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| second location! |
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| Bruce and Nack |
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| Nack in motion |
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| moving on to beer |
Eventually we headed back to the hotel. Our bus call was midnight, so I took out my contacts, brushed my teeth, and carried all my stuff down. Not a bad night. Goin' back to Cali.
Tuesday, June 17, 2025: San Luis Obispo, CA. Same story, different day: we parked in a shopping center parking lot in the morning, fortunately near a Starbucks. For lunch, most of us walked down the street to the Madonna Inn. It was weird, like a Disneyland Denny's. Apparently it's a central California landmark.
Having eaten brunch, I went ahead and attempted to go for a run around town, though the timing was not ideal, as it was warm and sunny, and the hills were tough. My waffle was not enough fuel.
At soundcheck, we officially started taking on the Melissa Manchester songs (Whenever I Call You Friend and You Should Hear How She Talks About You), trying to make sure that we were getting all of the important details from the sheet music PDFs. Some of us learned the music off YouTube performances and some of us (I guess mainly me) were looking at her charts, so it took some time to get it to line up.
My approach was to play what she asked for in the music, so had only a sax solo in Whenever I Call You Friend and horn parts and a solo in You Should Hear How She Talks About You. The music was very detailed, so I figured that I should just read the parts.
Before the doors opened, we all got dressed and did a quick photo session, too.
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| Thai food for dinner |
Our sad little gig: less than 200 people in this room (190 was the official count, I think), but then again, it was our first time here. Not a bad room, though.
Other notes: I played a bajillion notes on Just the Two of Us, and I broke Pete's tambourine during Sister Golden Hair.
Wheel of Chorus: Monkeyboy's family relocated from Pennsylvania to San Luis Obispo after his dad retired, and his stepmom was the first contestant to spin the wheel. She did it so hard that it cut Nick's hand. Her spin landed on "bass solo," so Greg played Talkin' 'bout my Generation (excellent choice!). The second spin was Hey Nineteen.
Post show, the downstairs green room became a Dannells Family Reunion. The rest of us stayed in the upstairs green room until they finally dispersed.
No showers here, which was mildly disappointing.
Wednesday, June 18, 2025: Los Angeles, CA. We made it to our hotel in LA. First stop, the coffee shop down the street.
The Hollywood Hotel had rooms for us before lunch (yay!). I had a peanut butter sandwich on the bus and then hauled my things up to my room.
Nick and I hiked to the Hollywood Sign and several of the accompanying hills.
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| we made it over to the Griffith Observatory |
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| and then headed down the hill, back to Hollywood |
After all that, it was time for a shower!
Melissa Manchester wrote Whenever I Call You Friend with Kenny Loggins. In an effort to beef up the arrangement, I offered to play rhodes (Bencuya on piano), so I got the practice keyboard off the bus and spent an hour and a half learning how to play it. Did I mention that it had a lot of chords? Jeez. It felt complicated just for the sake of being complicated.
I took a break from practicing piano and walked to the nearest Indian restaurant. The food was great, the service was bad, the restaurant was empty, and a homeless guy walked past with no pants on.
I went back to the hotel and spent another hour and a half on Whenever I Call You Friend before handing the keyboard off to Bencuya at 11:30 PM so that he could run through it a few times on his own.
Thursday, June 19, 2025: Los Angeles, CA. I woke up thinking about the chords to Whenever I Call You Friend. Agh! My run was difficult (probably still tired from the hike), and I just barely made it out to the bus for the ride to The Wiltern at 11:30 AM.
The whole band went to a burrito place around the corner while the gear was getting moved in.
Soundcheck: the great Elliot Lurie joined us for a few songs (Tropical Illusion, Dancing in the Moonlight, and of course, Brandy). Melissa Manchester came out next. She was very...terse. Tense? Yes. It seemed like she was very focused on hearing all of the vocal harmonies in the monitor, and yeah, the way she asked to hear them was terse. Like, I thought she was going to bail on the show at soundcheck.
Anyway, once that got squared away, she suggested that she play Bencuya's keyboard (and the piano part), so he moved over and played rhodes on my keyboard, so...all my homework turned out to be for nothing. Bummer! At least I still got a sax solo.
After soundcheck, there was ample time for me to noodle, so I played until 6 PM, ate dinner, and then played some more, but I was kind of wearing out my chops.
We had a great gig! Everything went well, and the crowd was right around a thousand people. Elliot and Melissa both gave good performances, and the audience ate it up.
This show's Wheel of Chorus: Guilty and Careless Whisper.
As far as the Melissa Manchester stuff, it sounded like she had just finished re-recording her greatest hits, and was playing some gigs to promote that. I definitely didn't get the impression that she'd heard of us, liked what we were doing, or wanted to partner up with us. More likely, someone who had heard us recommended that we could handle her music and we had gigs with sizable audiences, and her management made it happen. She disappeared as soon as sound check was finished, reappeared to sing her two songs, and left immediately afterwards. I don't think she ever even spoke to anyone on my side of the stage.
Friday, June 20, 2025: San Diego, CA. The first of two sold out shows at Humphrey's by the Sea, the yachtiest place we play.
The trip from Los Angeles to San Diego was short--maybe two hours--and ended with the bus bottoming out when we pulled into the parking lot in San Diego. Ouch! Nick said he couldn't fall asleep until with finally parked--that's not good.
Anyway, I didn't have that problem. I made some coffee on the bus and hung out with the crew guys as they started to unpack the gear, then made myself a peanut butter sandwich, and went for a run.
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| these trees are cool |
After setting up my gear on stage, we were notified that all the hotel rooms were available, so I got all my stuff off the bus and moved to my room.
By the time we headed back to the venue for soundcheck, the clouds had rolled in and it had gotten pretty chilly! So much so that I put on my suit to keep warm after dinner.
Good gig tonight! This place is pretty great.
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| Monkeyboy missed the first song because he left his in-ear pack in the dressing room |
Other moments from this one:
1. I quoted The Sailor's Hornpipe (like from Popeye the Sailor Man) in my Lowdown solo
2. I played the Heart to Heart solo perfectly, something that rarely happens
3. My Just the Two of Us solo was just ok
4. Wheel of Chorus: Guilty and Biggest Part of Me
Since this was a two night stand, we left our gear on stage, (tarped, of course). I put away my saxes, flute, EWI, and keyboards, but left my keyboard stand and my boxes set in place.
Post show burritos! Olé!
Saturday, June 21, 2025: San Diego, CA. I slept as late as I could today, then ventured down to the lobby for some free coffee. I finally went back to my room, where I wasted way too much time watching YouTube videos about scales and reeds and music theory.
Finally, I got out and did my run, and swung by the Subway near our hotel to grab a sandwich for lunch.
I played flute (very softly) in my hotel room for a while after I got cleaned up, but at some point I realized that I could just ride over to the venue and play full volume, so I got dressed for a cool soundcheck (pants and a jacket!) and called a car.
We did a "soundcheck experience"--supposed to be for twenty-two people, but only four people showed up. Clearly, these are not working! The four were treated to Greatest American Hero (tonight's opener), Take Me Home (tonight's encore), Arthur's Theme (also in the encore)(aaaaaaaaaand I sucked real bad at the string part, but remembered the sax solo), and Hey Nineteen.
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| wild rice and empanadas on the dinner menu tonight! |
This gig took a long time to get going. The audience was pretty stale.
Monkeyboy passed a kidney stone earlier in the day and he was pretty worn out.
The Good: Nifty motivic solos on Lowdown, Reminiscing, Just the Two of Us, and I got the little synth solo in the middle of Greatest American Hero right (which I tend to rush and then mess up).
The Bad: I messed up the solo on I Can't Go for That (I played a wrong note early on, and then got so fixated thinking about the wrong note that I played some more wrong notes and eventually just had to play my own solo) and the "California" lick in My Old School.
The Wheel of Chorus: Hey Nineteen (we let it run all the way through the solos to the end tonight), and I Keep Forgettin'.
Sunday, June 22, 2025: San Diego to Atlanta. Let's go home!
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| lobby coffee! not good, but free! |
It was good to see my dogs again!
I've been trying to make this video for months, and other stuff kept coming up. Enjoy! A flower is indeed a lovely thing.
