Thursday: Head west! We flew to Tucson, a three hour and forty-five minute ride. Long enough that I could sleep for a few hours and still wake up and watch a movie.
On this trip, I watched Darkest Hour, chronicling Winston Churchill's rise to prime minister at the dawn of the second World War.
We landed, grabbed our bags, and boarded a spacious limo bus to Marana, AZ, on the north side of Tucson.
Unfortunately, that wasn't our bus! We had to get off, grab our bags, and walk to our much smaller van parked in the next ring of parking.
First thing first, we checked into our rooms...at the frickin' Ritz Carlton! Sweeeeeeeeet.
With a few hours to kill before soundcheck, I went for a run on the nearby Wild Burro Trail, which ran through a canyon directly behind the hotel!
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| (not part of the trail--the cart path behind the hotel!) |
The weather was in the low 80s and kind of overcast, so it wasn't too brutal out there. Off to soundcheck.
A stage with no cover and some pretty rough rental gear met us. Everything worked, but everything felt old and dusty. I guess there was only one Nord Electro available, so I ended up with a Nord Stage, and the sustain and expression pedals provided wouldn't work with it. I tried all the usual stuff (flipping the polarity on the pedal, flipping the polarity on the keyboard), and nothing fixed it. Eventually, I put the Fantom sustain pedal on the Nord (which worked), found another sustain pedal in the gear box that worked on the Fantom, and played the gig with only one expression pedal. Not a huge deal, but kind of annoying.
Back to our hotel rooms for an hour (and a snack).
Ready to go...
The weather was pleasant for the evening, and I didn't mind the bugs that congregated on my keyboards. The crowd wasn't rabid by any means, but they danced, and this gig was a pretty easy 100 minutes.
Our set ended with a fireworks show.
We were back at our hotel by 10:45 PM, which was good because our lobby call was at 4:15 AM. Ouch. "It's 7:15 Atlanta time!" you say, but that's still early for The Dave.
Friday: Head east!
We got back to Atlanta just after lunch, everybody went home/fought through some hellacious Friday traffic, and then we regrouped in Piedmont Park for our annual Purple Rain show. I'd practiced the hell out of this stuff last week when we didn't have any gigs, so I was ready to go.
Earlier in the week, we'd packed all of our gear in the van and trailer, and so when we arrived at the stage, everything was roughly set up. Hallelujah. This must be what the next level of gigging feels like.
After soundcheck, I went for a short run around the park.
The gig was one giant set with the album on the back half--a little over two hours long. It was a great gig with somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 in attendance, and we gave them a really good show. That tent we were in sounded terrible, though--too many sound reflections and too many microphones. I got used to it, but there was nothing Kip and Zach could've done to fix it.
Once the gig was over, I packed my gear up and left it in a pile on my corner of the stage. Home by 11:30 PM. Oh yeah.
Saturday: Head west! We had an early afternoon flight to Austin for a fundraiser. I felt a hundred percent better after a good night of sleep in my own bed.
There was no line at security. Nick's backpack got pulled for closer inspection (his harmonicas are mistaken for gun clips), and the security guard pulled out a bottle of vodka that he'd taken from the green room/tent the night before. Whoops! He said, "I thought my backpack felt heavier."
We got upgraded to first class. Ha ha ha ha...I don't know what to do with myself up here. At least they didn't bring around the hot towels on this flight.
Aaaaannd...I couldn't sleep! Maybe I'm dying. Anyway, it's about a two hour flight, so here are some pics of the world. I watched Black Panther. It was ok.
The big story of the day...this Roland Fantom had a broken compact flash card reader, so none of my settings would load. Usually I just pop the card in, "restore" my stuff from the card, and it's just like my keyboard. This one would not. The same thing happened to me last year in Santa Fe, and the backline guys had another Fantom brought from their warehouse. I asked the backline guy about getting me another keyboard--"I'm from Oklahoma City, so the warehouse is seven hours away. That's not going to work." No, it's not. Hmmm. Or should I say, HOLY FUCK!!!!!!!!!!
So, I'm freaking out. I tried a different card, I tried a different card reader. It's not happening. I did have a backup of my settings saved onto my laptop, but 1. The file was over a year old; 2. I've moved the files from the keyboard to the computer, but never from the computer to the keyboard. How do you do that?
The internet wasn't terribly helpful, and I had almost resigned myself to having to program the entire night's setlist from scratch. I could get as far as being able to see the "backup" files in the menu on the keyboard, but I couldn't figure out how to make them load. Finally, I found a page on Roland's website that helped--when the icon pops up on the laptop, delete the existing files and replace them with hour backup files. Ah ha! Did that, powered down the computer, powered up the computer, and bang! My keyboard was back, and my stress level went from one million to zero.
The Tito's Vodka RV was set up close to the stage.
After the whole keyboard thing, this gig was really easy; the weather was great, the food was delicious, and the sound on stage was excellent. No problems at all. Also, most of the women in the audience were really good looking. Thanks for that, too.
Sunday: A pretty good night of sleep in a familiar hotel, and a late morning flight home. Home by 3 PM.
We're back at it this coming weekend, with public and private gigs in the northeast. Check back here maybe Tuesday for an update.