Feb 6, 2010
Day 2 Part 1
11:51 am

Wow, what a night! Cousin Joey sprung for a few hotel rooms in Columbus so we didn’t have to trek all the way back to Dayton. Before sleeping, he made sure to feed us as he had the concierge place an $80 order of Italian food that was delivered just before 5 am. After the gluttony, Matt (bassist/tour manager) and I retired to our room to recap the day and go over our accounting. I just recently upgraded our touring vehicle from my Ford Explorer to a nine passenger van, but since we bought the van the day before the tour, we didn’t have the luxury of having a mechanic look at it before driving across country. We haven’t experienced too many problems aside from having to replace the battery in Cali, change out the windshield wiper fluid in Colorado and replace the starter in Pennsylvania. Keeping things interesting, the valet needed to jump start the van this morning at the hotel so we immediately took it to a local mechanic for inspection. Something was up with the anti-lock brake system so homeboy dismantled it which made us feel that much more like ice truckers trudging through the frozen tundra.

There was a brief instant when the sun decided to peek its head out from behind the heather-grey clouds and light up the sky with radiant shades of orange, red, and purple. For just a moment, I missed LA. But a pair of deer trying to extract some drinking water out of the melting snowy meadow immediately reminded me why I was here. Once again, the show must go on.

Feb 7, 2010
Day 2 Part 2
3:31 am

Another sold-out night and Newport, Kentucky was ready for us after Happy’s awe-inspiring one-man band set so we had to bring it. Apparently the Southgate House is the former residence of the gentleman that invented the Tommy Gun and supposedly the house is haunted. I didn’t see any ghosts but I did see a few patrons who appeared to have ingested too many spirits and too much Ecstacy and were breakdancing on the beer-soaked floor. Milk went and got security and they mopped up the situation before it got any worse. Nevertheless, this spot is a rad venue with pretty good acoustics and an upper balcony perfect for a bird’s eye view of the performances. It’s always a new experience coming into unfamiliar territory and having to leave it all on-stage. Though it’s an aspect of the business I’ve grown incredibly fond of over the past two years, I don’t know if performing in states where smoking is still permitted indoors is something I can ever get used to. Fortuantely, RJ shares a similar disgust for cigarette smoke and asked the venues to disregard their normal policies and ban smoking on his behalf. What a G! I’m extremely thankful for that measure because I don’t think I could perform my best in such smokey conditions. The obligatory clouds of smoke associated with most Hip Hop shows were ever present, but those puffs don’t seem to have the same effect on me as the kind Phillip-Morris enthusiastically promotes.

The set went extremely well and the response was tremendous overall. From the first track, “Enjoy,” to the last song, “Good Day,” the party people were pleasantly surprised and by the end, folks were wilding out. Unfortunately, tonight we bid farewell to the newest member of the band, Ben McSherry. The guitarist went out with a bang and took a wicked solo during the Pink Floyd ”Have a Cigar” remix. RJD2 continued to kill it and when he performed tracks like “Smoke and Mirrors” and “The Horror” with his four-piece band, people lost their minds. The crowd wouldn’t let him skip out without an encore and he graciously obliged.

Second down, twelve to go. Please excuse the football reference, but being that it is Super Bowl Sunday, you can’t be mad at me. While you’re all gathering around a big screen at the homey’s house eating chips and dip, I’m on my way to Louisville, KY to share myself with another unsuspecting audience. Ahhh, this is the life! The world is my oyster.

Nice Life.
Good Night and Good Day,
KAB

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