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July 27th 2005

Show day in Seattle,

There are some things about the road that make it hard to function on a comfortable level. The number one culprit for me is arriving at our hotel at 4 in the morning, knowing that we have a 6:00PM show. Now, I really don’t sleep much anyway. But this sucks :-} I know that if I cannot get my body to relax by sunrise, then all hope for sleep today is lost. I get into the room and try to tell my self to leave the television off. The temptation of watching those early morning infomercials is just too much (click), and my night’s sleep is gone. I stare at the screen in search of a classic movie and there is nothing (what the heck am I going to do now?) I know! I’ll go out into the parking lot and jump rope for a while. I am wide-awake with nothing better to do than jump rope in a parking lot at 5:30AM, what a dope.

We always love playing Seattle, the people are very into what we do. And today the show is at the zoo. Now the only problem with performing at the zoo is, we cannot do a soundcheck. This means we are going on without knowing what the stage sounds like.

This can be a hit and miss deal, sometimes it works out and sometimes it does not. I think today is a miss, at least for me. We hit the stage full of energy and excitement and right from the start there is a low hum. We look around trying to find it… piano? No! Drums? No! Bass? Yes!!! Oh no! Why me? I think. We play thru this with knowing that our sound dude will work it out. He is also working under the handicap of not being able to really test the sound system. As the show goes on the sound gets better. But not for me, sound dude never could get a handle on the bass. I think most of the audience had a good time. But, I had my on private hell going on. During the show Bruce would look over and ask if I was miserable. “Yes!” I would say. And we would laugh. Sometimes you just have plow thru :-}.

As I wrote earlier, we love Seattle, but what is up with the weather? We played the zoo in 2002 and it was cold and rainy. Today it feels like Africa. I feel like a piece of bacon (burnt to a crisp).

I also want to take a second and say thank you to the nice people that came up to say hello. Thanks to Allisa. The sign with the sand crab on it was great. I will see you in Portland (that was funny). I told Bruce and the band about your sign on the bus and we all laughed. Thanks to Paul Mitchell for driving 11 hours to see this show, I found out too late that you did not get a chance to have B. sign your book, he was bummed about it.

And once again all credit for the site to Si T. Thanks my brother:-} Well, tomorrow is another day off. Can’t wait to see what the day brings.

Peace JV;-}