Message Board | NOTES FROM THE ROAD 2

SVALGARD said:

New Yawk, just like I pictured it. Skyscrapers and everything.

I love BB’s. The sound guys and the whole crew are great.

Overall it was a good night.

Hi Eric,

The first two sentences are exactly what you said to me when I met you in front of BB King's and helped empty the truck!  It was great doing the load in & set up and hanging out with you all. 

I have some good photos; I don't know whether to post them on this site, on FB, or to mail them to Andre'…

I thought that it was a really great show, and that you all nailed everything!  I didn't think to ask Andre' or the nice audio guys about the possibility of (me) scoring a soundboard of the evening, until later, though, when I thought how awesome the sound was…

Thanks for the quick post mortems on the road.

Revolution Hall, maybe for the last time, or so the rumor goes. The current owners are renting the space back to the former owners and the word is that they are going to do a complete redo, with food and meeting room style focus. Either it will become similar to a World Café Live venue where they do both corporate and live music stuff, or it will just become another banquet hall. No one involved with the venue now is really sure. 

We had a great crowd and that has pretty much been the highlight of this tour. We had 186 walk-ups tonight (i.e. people who didn’t buy tickets in advance).  It has been sold out or packed houses everywhere but East Lansing.

I am kind of glad this is a short run as I have having multiple equipment failures. The internal light in my Triton was working only part time the last week and stopped altogether last night. I had to use a flashlight to see my program changes. My Roland stereo volume pedal that I use for my Hammond broke last night. I have a spare for that. The power supply input to the Yamaha piano has to be taped into place or it doesn’t work.  If we were continuing on I would have to take a full day just to shake out my equipment. Oh, yeah and my laptop’s display is acting transy.

Last night while we were setting up an auction that I had been watching on e-bay went off and it was kind for funny/geeky as I was setting up with my lap top off to the side everyone was watching me watch. It was a pair of EV T-18 sub-woofers that I won and will now have to pick up in New City, NY on my way home from New Haven. So nerdy.  The sound guys were freaking out, "what are you gonnna do with those?…good price… etc". Now I have three of the things so I will have to sell off one. Paid only 70 bucks more for this pair than I did for the first one I bought about a year ago when Medley Music went out of business.

Started really fooling around with using the Theremin as a controller for the Voyager last night. We are doing fewer space jams on this tour, so I get to do less with the theremin in a freeform, atonal framework. I still want to use it, as it is right there in front of me. I talked to Amos Gaynes at Moog about this about a month ago, but have been so busy I wasn’t able to completely try out any of my ideas until last night. It is fun and although I could do anything I am doing with a pot instead, it adds a visual aspect to the show that I like. I have always liked the mad scientist aspect of my stage persona and this stuff multiplies the effect, as well as bring all the wonks up to ask me what the hell I am doing. Awesome.

Another homecoming tonight as I lived in Fairfield County, CT for 20 years. Too bad my sister and her husband are sick, as they were supposed to show.

One and DONE! I am really looking forward to getting back to the school.

New Yawk, just like I pictured it. Skyscrapers and everything. The new parking rules for commercial vehicles made me a little crazy with the truck, but my old boss Joe Arena came to the rescue with his parking card. Why can’t the street meters take a credit card, as they do in Chicago? Got to have Pasta Fagioli at a place I used to eat lunch all the time when I used to work in Manhattan. Would have loved to pick up some fresh mozzarella in oil but had no time to fool around. I love BB’s. The sound guys and the whole crew are great. We had J-Ro on keys and mando, Katie on Violin (STOP ROCKING SO HARD) and the ubiquitous Ed Palermo on Alto. Overall it was a good night. We will not play Big Swifty again on this tour unless someone woodsheds it hard. I screwed up the end of RDNZL. I play the same melody on two keyboards at the end and when I reached for it my hands just were in the wrong place. I think if I move the keyboards a little closer together this won’t happen again. Got to try it in soundcheck. Shout out to my old friend Owen Yoest for showing.  On to Boston.

So it is has been a couple of days. I have been slacking. Sometimes when you are on the road it is hard to keep up, especially as I have been driving the truck for most of this run. Let’s see. The second night in Chicago was uneventful…We played a lot of new material, but mixed it with some of the stuff we did Friday. Andre was smart in not trying to stretch (or stress) us out too much. We did the Enema Bandit, which is always a big crowd pleaser. I hung with Ray, the owner of the bar until about 5 AM and then he was trying to talk me into going out and seeing some avant-garde jazz band and I thought the better of it and went back to the hotel. I was already 5 sheets to the wind so it was the right decision. I was kind of surprised at myself at that.

Milwaukee was a nice surprise. It was a new venue for us, not Shank Hall, and it had great sound, good backstage accommodations and great people. We had a great crowd and played well. Overall a great gig. The band has really hit it’s stride now. We sound better and better. Ray is still feeling under the weather.

Monday was a travel day and we drove back to Chicago and had to drop some loaner amps off and basically we waited around for about 4 hours. I had a bean, egg and rice burrito. I knew as soon as I started eating it that it would follow me around for a couple of days, and boy was right. I feel sorry for Dave who has to live with me for the next 48 hours. Whew.

Tuesday we were in Harrisburg and this is the best crowd we have ever had in this brewpub. They changed the load in policy so you don’t have to load in through the warehouse any more. It makes much more sense and I had tried to explain that to the guy last time but got nowhere. So then we start sound check and there is this crazy thing going on with my in-ear monitors. It keeps cutting in and out and it is making me insane. Basically it makes it impossible to enjoy myself. I thought it might be radio interference or some shit, so I suggested moving the transmitter closer to my rig. We did that and then there was no more sound check time so I just thought it we had solve the problem and it would be okay. Not. As soon as we started playing it started cutting out again. I finally had to run a separate line out of my own mixer and get my monitor that way. I finally got it straight after 2/3 of the set was done, and anybody who watched me closely up to that point could tell that I was not having a good time. Other than all the monitor problems It was a good night. Jim was really loose and doing a lot of good shit. Lots of fun. We did Enema as an encore and then Peaches. The crowd loved it. Great crowd almost twice what we had last time we were here. So after we are done, I walk up to the soundman and say, "You really need to check out the feed from whatever channel my keys were on into the aux output that you are using for my monitor" and he gets all defensive. "I use that channel for effects and it is fine"  Whatever. Sometimes I can identify with these guys who think that everybody is an asshole, cause when you’re trying to help someone with a problem and they won’t listen it can get REALLY FRUSTRATING.

After the gig I drove the truck into a hole in the ice and got stuck. Good thing Ray was there to help out. He jumped up and down on the back of the truck while I rocked the accelerator and the rest of the band pushed from the front. We got the thing out, but my sneaks an socks are soaked. Crazy way to spend the morning after.

So the East Lansing gig was a replacement for a gig that got cancelled. I kind of had a feeling about it and I was half-right. How weird to have a New Years Eve gig that ends at 11 PM. Plus, East Lansing? Really? So, as anyone who knows me knows, I hate being right. It was a bar with a small stage, good soundman but a backstage that consisted of a couple of couches in the basement next to the compressor and the water heater. Awesome. So crazy to go from playing for 300 people to playing for 30. Got to say, it was just what the band needed. Sometimes you need to get into an intimate setting like that to find your balance. We only played for 2 hours, a short night for us. It could have been the cramped way we had to set up, or the lack of eyes and ears, but Jim really upped his game. We played our asses off. If I try real hard I can think of maybe one section that was a little sketchy, but I have to think about it. Overall a great night. The crew at the place were awesome, from the soundman to the bartenders. Then we had to break down in a hurry so they could start the techno dance rave for New Years. We had a champagne toast in the basement on New Years. I had to bring a glass out to Andre who was running the crew loading the truck. Ray was better, still not 100 percent, but he sang most of the night. On to Chicago for two nights, a welcome break in the setup and break-down routine. We should be able to really hone in on some of the material there.

Great night at the REX last night in Pittsburg. I don’t know what it sounded like out in the house, but in my ears it was great. Not to denigrate the other venues we have played in town but one has a stage the size of a postage stamp and the other sounds like you are playing in a shower stall. Great people, easy load in, comfy backstage, decent pizza and salad, plenty of beer, good sound, jeez is there anything else you could want? Well, more unescorted females in the audience would be nice, but we are playing Frank’s music, so the majority is always going to be nerdy guys.

 I had a pretty clean night, very little to complain about in my playing. My index finger on my left hand hurts like hell now, but it was fine last night, making stuff like Little House a pleasure instead of an embarrassment.  I had real fun on Blessed and Inca.

I started this new topic because I can’t always get a good enough connection to view large files online. I really appreciate the photo post, but if in the future it could be in another topic that would be helpful.

Thanks….