Beginning at the end of July...
Thursday, July 31, 2025: Dewey Beach, MD. 11 AM flight--not too bad. TSA flagged my backpack (the two spare mouthpieces in a pouch look kind of like a disassembled pistol), but the agent tasked with looking at them told the agent next to her that she "didn't feel like looking for it" and then gave me my backpack back without a detailed search. Uhhh....
Anyway, we flew to Baltimore, and the vans picked us up and drove two and a half hours to Dewey Beach, through some pretty heavy rain a couple of times.
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| these need another week |
With all the rain blowing through, it was really humid--I had to turn the sensitivity on my EWI down because it was trying to play by itself whenever the lower drums would rumble.
No Wheel of Chorus tonight.
We had a one hour van ride after the show.
Friday, August 1, 2025: New York City. We drove all morning to get to Pier 17 by noon (I slept most of the way).
We stopped somewhere in eastern New Jersey. Lots of New York sports memorabilia, including this sweet Keith Hernandez jersey from the 80s (he was my favorite player).
We did the "soundcheck experience" for about twenty-five people.
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| cookies! |
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| my view off the back of the stage |
Good gig here (finally!). I have a lot of anxiety because of the various ways I've sucked real bad when playing NYC, but I had a good time and actually played well, so yay.
I think the tenor reed I played in this show might be done. It felt really dull, and my chops were worn out by the end of the gig. The alto reed I used on this night...probably also done--I pinched it shut when I was trying to put a lot of air in the horn a few times.
Also, my effects pedal for my saxophones went nuts--the settings started changing on their own during the gig. I don't know if the riser was making it bounce, or if there was some leftover sand from the Windjammer in there or what, but the delay volume changed on one setting, and in the middle of My Old School, the octave that I had it set at changed to a major seventh or something. It was weird. I didn't have time to stop and fiddle with it, so I tried the ol' unplug-it-and-plug-it back-in, but that didn't solve anything. Gremlins!
Wheel of Chorus: You Can Do Magic and How Long. Piece of cake.
Post show pizza was good here.
Saturday, August 2, 2025: Asbury Park, NJ. Today's drive was only about an hour, and we stopped at a Wegman's grocery store for lunch. My sandwich was good. Kip ended up with some doofus waiting on him, and the guy took forever--we think he was confused because Kip wanted two identical sandwiches.
The gear beat us here--it was already on stage when we arrived--so I got to work setting things up. One of the crew guys had some electronics cleaner, so I blasted my pedal around the knobs. Hopefully that fixes it.
While I was at it, I took some q-tips and cleaned up a little more around the rods on my saxophones where the key oil has seeped out.
It was still pretty early in the afternoon, so I went for a run. We did the "soundcheck experience" for around forty people this time. Pretty popular.
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| tonight's dinner: this block of noodles |
This gig was great. The weather was perfect. The Wheel of Chorus was Baby Come Back, and More Than a Feeling (we played the whole song for a young fan with a sign).
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| no problems from the pedal tonight |
Big hang afterwards (I got to catch up with our friend Kerry Glennon), and more good post show pizza. This tour manager guy is doing a great job!
We drove for an hour after load out.
Sunday, August 3, 2025: Vienna, VA. Wolf Trap time!
Unfortunately, this was a long day of driving--I think it was about four hours. Everybody is tired, and we probably only slept for around five hours.
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| Chipotle for lunch |
We love Wolf Trap! The local crew is excellent and the room is beautiful. Kip doesn't like the way it sounds, though. Sorry for that.
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| free t shirt |
The gear had already made it on stage, so I went ahead and set up my gear, cleaned some gaff tape off of my pedals, and changed out my tenor reed.
Most of the band had yet to arrive, so I went out for a run (very hot and sunny).
We did a "soundcheck experience" for around thirty people, and then I got in a good flute warm up.
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| dinner was weird |
I wasn't in the mood to play this gig until we walked out on stage--it was packed! Pretty crazy, especially for a Sunday night. I guess that inspired me to some better solos than I've had the previous couple of nights, which I would describe as "disjointed crap."
Wheel of Chorus: Purple Rain and I Keep Forgetting.
We had tacos afterwards. Kip was in a big hurry to leave, and everybody jumped in random vehicles to get to the hotel, and then we left something behind and one of the vans had to go back and get it...big mess.
Monday, August 4, 2025: Dulles International Airport. This was supposed to be a Delta flight that left at 10:15 AM and arrived at noon in Atlanta. Twas not to be.
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| that's a lot of concrete |
Long story short, we spent the whole day hanging around, finally departing at 4:30 PM. The delay was so bad that Delta ended up also booking us on a 6 PM flight--leaving from Reagan International!--in case the 4:30 one didn't work out. Holy moly. What a mess.
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| dinner |
Thursday, August 7, 2025: Hampton Beach, NH. Ugh. We had an 8 AM flight out of Atlanta; I had to get up at 4:45 AM. I understand that some travel days are just crappy but unavoidable, butttttttttt...I'm getting to where I would rather pay for my own hotel room and fly up the night before so that I can get enough sleep. I don't bounce back from days like this very easily.
Anyway, we flew to Boston and then drove to New Hampshire, to this historic music hall. Duke Ellington has played here, Simon and Garfunkel have played here, U2, Led Zeppelin, and now us.
It's an oddly wide room. I don't think I've ever played a room shaped like this.
I went for a run along the beach after soundcheck. It was a beautiful afternoon.
Pretty good gig--and sold out! Things went ok. I left out two measures in the intro to I Can't Go For That and nearly derailed the band (Nick followed me, but the rest of the band did not). Let's blame that on me being braindead from lack of sleep.
Wheel of Chorus: Careless Whisper (our Anchorhead fan Pete Reindeau steered the wheel to it because he'd never heard us play it), bass solo!, and then we did a bonus spin and got I Keep Forgetting.
Pete also makes the shirts for the DBF Fan Club. Here's this year's model.
After the gig, the load out took an extra long time, and by the time the guys were ready, Nackers and I were dead asleep on the couches in the green room. Long day.
Friday, August 8, 2025: Boston, MA (Night One). I slept til 10:30 AM, and boy did I need it.
Leader Bank Pavilion is awesome in a lot of ways. We got there in time for lunch. I had this salad, and then I went back for a potato and some other crap (I didn't take a picture of round two).
I went for a run (Boston is still confusing, but I ended up along the Charles River, where I have run before). After that: warm up, soundcheck, dinner.
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| green room ice cream! |
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| an old set list of ours in the "hall of fame" |
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| huge crowd--another sell out! |
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| Wheel of Chorus tonight with Mrs. Roper: Love Will Find a Way, Purple Rain |
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| so close to getting the recycling right |
Yay for no load out (though I packed up keyboards, saxophones, flute, and my pedal (which is still working as normal), so maybe it's not as much of a bonus as you might think. Anyway, in bed by midnight!
Saturday, August 9, 2025: Boston, MA (Night Two). Slept late, went of a run, got a sandwich to eat for lunch, and then we headed back to the venue.
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| dinner! |
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| dessert! |
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| Galaga in the green room! |
Wheel of Chorus: Biggest Part of Me, Turn Your Love Around, and the theme to Cheers
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| another sell out! |
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| post show pretzels! |
Sunday, August 10, 2025: Logan International Airport. My flight was supposed to take off at 9 AM. There were delays. We at lunch at an Italian place when we were still optimistic about going home.
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| Monkeyboy's snack |
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| my lunch |
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| new fridge magnet I picked up |
Some serious bullshit. We did end up getting on this plane, but it didn't actually push back from the gate until almost 6 PM.
When I got back to Atlanta, the DOT had chosen tonight to repave one lane of the interstate.
I ended up getting 15,000 skymiles, which was fine. I got 5,000 for the day I spent at Dulles.
Wednesday, August 13, 2025: Lewiston, NY. I had the row to myself for a minute, before they moved some middle seat guy to the aisle. His presence had no effect on me at all--I slept the whole way to New York.
Lewiston (and Art Park, the venue where we're playing) is near Buffalo, NY, and right on the Niagara River. Canada is right there on the other bank. We've played here two other times: once, opening for Richard Marx, and once opening for Train. It's a pretty shitty backstage situation if you're a support band, but since we're the main act, we get to use amenities like indoor plumbing, and it's a much nicer time.
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| Canada! Right there! |
We stopped for lunch (Chipotle) on the drive from the airport, so when we got there, I went ahead and got my stuff set up and then went for a run.
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| acceptable, though a little sticky--prolly good by the weekend |
There was a "soundcheck experience" for the people who paid, and they got Ride Like the Wind (our usual first soundcheck song), Guilty, and Heart to Heart (those were special requests from the audience).
On to dinner. It was ok. Salad, potatoes, pasta with tofu, and a piece of chocolate cake.
Pretty solid two set gig tonight in pretty hot and humid conditions. I used a new alto reed, and the older of my two tenor reeds, which I think might be done (compared to the new guy that I recently put into the rotation).
Afterwards, we drove forty-five minutes to the hotel. Plenty of time to ruminate on Kip's comment to me after the show: "Can you hear when you're out of tune?"
Thursday, August 14, 2025: Travel day. The vans, trailers, gear, and crew would be driving from Buffalo to Chicago, but the band flew. Buffalo to Chicago, with a layover in Detroit.
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| Detroit airport |
Management invited us to join them as their guests in the Delta Sky Club in Detroit, and so we got to see how the elitist shitbags get to waste time in the airport.
I think I would have rather found a place to eat and avoid my traveling companions.
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| fancy coffee machine |
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| lunch part one |
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| lunch part two |
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| he doesn't like it |
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| she does |
We took a cab to our hotel in Chicago, The Drake. Cool place! The building is around a hundred years old, just off the Miracle Mile.
I tried to take a nap (ineffective), and then I went for a run along the lake (excellent). The weather was pretty perfect, and the air force was practicing their part in this weekend's air show (the "air and sea" show, which Peter Searcy misunderstood to be an unexpected opener at our gig--"Aaron See).
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| Indian food for dinner--yaaaaaaaaaaaay |
I got a ticket to see Charles McPherson playing at the Jazz Showcase. I was here with my college roommate in the nineties; neither one of us remembers why we were in town, nor whom we saw here at the Showcase.
Charles is really old, and he sounded like it, but the trio backing him up was made of local hotshots, and they were great. The audience was invited to stay for the second set at no additional charge, but I decided to bail and catch up on sleep.
The walk back to The Drake was mostly two miles up Michigan Avenue.
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| Prudential! |
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| Wrigley building |
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| the curse! |
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| Chicago water towers |
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| John Hancock building |
Hotel room tour:
Friday, August 15, 2025: Chicago, IL. I did another lakefront run before we left for work. More airshow stuff was happening.
Today's venue: The Salt Shed, former home of Morton Salt. We made it in time for lunch.
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| They had BBQ for us, and the vegetarian option was jackfruit BBQ. Totally edible. I had two sandwiches. |
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| bruh |
More airshow practice. It was impossible to get a good picture with a iPhone--the planes came by so quickly that by the time you'd get your phone out, they were long gone.
Set up my gear (the interstate ripped all the components out of my rack, so I had to take a few minutes to lock everything back into place), warmed up, and swapped out that old tenor sax reed.
We did the "soundcheck experience" bullshit for fifteen people.
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| green room |
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| cake! |
There was a caricature artist in catering (why?) doing portraits of us. As you might imagine, I was not interested.
I went back out the stage to do some more noodling, and I got called in to have my portrait drawn.
I stopped by the green room to let management know that I'd taken care of the caricature, and the rest of the band was setting up to shoot a promo video without me. "It's ok; we don't need you." So I got dressed off camera while that was going down.
Anyway, here's my picture. Maybe it'll end up on Pete's t shirt for next year.
We went out and kicked off the gig, and. the count off from Not in Love to All Right was so different (and different from what had happened at soundcheck) that it derailed both Mark Bencuya and myself for a couple of measures, and at that point, I was just totally done with being here.
Wheel of Chorus: Love Will Find a Way, Thank You for Being a Friend, and Cool Change.
Kip said that the crowd was so noisy he could barely hear the band, and I believe him.
Anyway, cool venue. I took a shower and ate a piece of the Salt Shed cake afterwards. We drove to just south of Gary, Indiana to spend the night.
Saturday, August 16, 2025: Indianapolis, IN. 9 AM lobby call for the three hour ride to Indy. We are tired.
We made it to the venue in time for lunch (yay!), but it was pretty crappy (boo!), so I opted for peanut butter and an apple.
After lunch and setting up my gear, I went for a run along the river. 4 PM was not the best time--it was sunny and hot, and I had to really boogie to make it back for soundcheck.
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| the Wheel of Chorus |
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| Dinner: meatless meatballs, glob of "pasta" made of squash, and lentil soup. Bleah. |
The gig was fine. In the past, we've had a lot of issues with radio frequencies in this area, but our monitor guy Van (and a rented rack of in ear monitors on a different frequency band) nailed it.
Wheel of Chorus tonight: Thank You for Being a Friend and Careless Whisper. Ooof. I bombed the sax part on Careless Whisper because I couldn't remember the first note, and then my wrong guess derailed me for a few seconds of more wrong notes before I finally recovered.
During the show, a line of thunderstorms approached Indianapolis, and Kip used his "voice of God" microphone to let everybody know that they had to pull the spotlight operators down from the ceiling because of the threat of lightning.
At the end of the night, we cut the encore down from three songs to one so that everybody wouldn't be leaving the venue right as the sky opened up.
I didn't go to the after party/meet and greet (no surprise there), so once my gear was packed up, I took a shower, took my contacts out, and made myself a second dinner--another peanut butter sandwich and another apple. Most of the band got trapped at the party because the security thought the weather was too sketchy to walk back over to the green rooms.
Thursday, August 21, 2025: Atlanta, GA. I got called Monday afternoon to see if I could fill in on a gig with Blair Crimmins and the Hookers. Sure! But also...I had no time to get ready. I did my best to go through the charts, and was surprised to find that the prep work I'd done for a previous gig was still rattling around in my head. It wasn't a big deal to get back up to speed.
Weird gig, though. It was an end of summer party at an assisted living place, and they held it on a sunny 90 degree day in the middle of August in a concrete courtyard at 2 in the afternoon, and they planted all of these old people with mobility issues out there. It was kind of mean.
The band was under a tent (thank god), but as the sun moved, we'd have to move to stay in the shade. At one point, it dawned on me that we probably should've been moving the tent instead of our gear.
Whatever...super hot gig, but I did well, and we had a good hang, and I was home before the traffic got too bad.
Saturday, August 23, 2025: Atlanta, GA. Chastain!
We (the band) have gradually worked it out so that we don't spend the whole day at the venue. I got there at 3:45 PM and all the gear was already set up (thank you Kip for building my keyboards). Most of the band trickled in over the next hour.
Good gig! Nick's daughter said I "slayed." The weather was the best we've ever had for a Chastain show.
Wheel of Chorus: Love Will Find a Way, I Keep Forgetting, and Careless Whisper (which I got right!)
Sunday, August 24, 2025: Atlanta, GA. Oooof. The gig hangover. We played this private fundraiser in town, and it was hot and we were sleepy. Better than playing my church gig, though.
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| carb loading for dinner |
It kind of felt like a party in some rich guy's backyard. When we started, people were paying attention, but they gradually tuned us out--when I went up front to play the solo in Heart to Heart, somebody walked up to her friends in the front row, turned her back to me, and started talking, all ten feet in front of me. Maybe I wasn't slaying today.
Friday, August 29, 2025: Syracuse, NY. Another early flight (left home at 6:15 AM). Pete's suitcase was found damaged when we got to baggage claim in Syracuse, and the Delta luggage guy immediately handed him a brand new suitcase from his office. How crazy is that?
We stopped for lunch next to Syracuse University. I went to this Indian place, which turned out to be pretty far below average (would it be too much for you to label the things in the buffet?).
I'll give you a dollar to shut up.
A quick lap on campus.
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| gross |
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| gross |
I just want to point out that earlier in the year (in Reno), we opened for Vertical Horizon, and now here they're opening for us. How times have changed! Maybe not, though. They were probably at the airport by the time we got everything set up.
Good gig, though. The weather was pretty perfect. As an experiment, I brought a heating pad to sit on, trying to see if that would keep me warm. It did not, just burned my butt. I was fine--it was breezy, but not intolerable.
I messed up the end of the Africa solo because I was thinking about something stupid.
Post show: a Pub Sub I brought from home and an apple. They had a fruit tray in our green room fridge, but they'd unfortunately put it in the freezer part, so everything was solid. Grapes were good, pineapple and cantaloupe were ok
We opened for DJ Pauly D of Jersey Shore fame. Still has the same haircut.
I ran on the treadmill at the hotel and watched the end of Footloose and the beginning of Sixteen Candles. A pretty wild Friday night in Syracuse.
We flew home on Saturday. The flight was delayed forty-five minutes. I wonder if that's worth any Skymiles?
The Syracuse airport had dogs for petting! I talked to this guy three times.
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| lunch! |
