A limo came at the crack of dawn to take us to the TV studio. I had slept okay, just not enough, and when I’m really tired everything feels painful. Like even coffee is painfully hot or painfully bitter–even after I’ve put sugar and milk in it. Remo directed the limo to take us through […]
That night on the bus back to Flushing, I asked Remo about stopping by Artie’s office. “I have the day off tomorrow, right?” We were sitting in the far back of the bus. I was in the very corner banquette, with the Ovation, making pleasant sounds with it but not really playing in any focused […]
The next night was Philadelphia, the Spectrum, another place I’d played before. Not that it mattered. The stage setup was different; the green room layout was different, meaning the mens room looked familiar. That was the show when I started making it a regular habit to find the backup singers and do a vocal warmup […]
When I opened the door to my hotel room I could see my leather jacket was on the corner of the bed nearest the door , as if someone had dropped it off in a hurry. I stepped on the day sheet on my way over to check that my wallet was in the inside […]
God, my heart. Even now years later I can still remember how my heart tried to beat right out of my chest when I caught sight of him, and what he looked like, leaning against the cinderblock under ugly fluorescent light, teal shirt, white jeans, face blank but his eyes on fire. Okay, maybe a […]
The way big tours are arranged you very rarely play three nights in a row. To hear Waldo gripe about it, it’s logistically difficult, it’s hard on everyone including crew and performers, a bitch to schedule, etc. But sometimes three places are close enough together to make it work or it’s the only way to […]
There were two more “warmup” dates after Atlanta, one in Chapel Hill and one in Charlotte, and I know I should know which one was which. But I have to apologize to the people of North Carolina for getting the names mixed up enough times that now I don’t know which was which. In my […]
The first show of the tour would be in Atlanta, at an arena officially named the Omni but referred to by the crew as the Waffle Iron because of the shape of the roof, which looked like a—you guessed it—waffle iron. We had several days off in LA before the actual show because the crew […]
We eventually got to actually rehearsing. To placate Louis we ran through the opening three songs, first one at a time with some chit-chat between, and then all three in a row. When the doors were shut and the house lights were off, it was as dark as a cave in the hangar, which was […]
(If you haven’t had a chance to go upvote DGC vol 4, now being serialized on Wattpad, go on over there and click that star icon, please? -ctan) — Nomad moved to a bigger rehearsal space the week before hitting the road. The new place was a former airplane hangar/movie soundstage on the edge of […]