News From The Road

We put SOS (from our Get Your Wings album) into the set at the last minute due to a request. We hadn’t played the song in a long time so we all stuck close to home base, which is Joey’s drum riser. Have you ever noticed in a Hockey game the team members all tap the goalie’s kneepads for good luck at the beginning of the game? It’s kind of the same thing. Joey’s like the goalie. We don’t really tap his kneepads because, well, he isn’t really wearing any is he? He has to have mental kneepads to deal with the barrage of suggestions he gets from pretty much every band member during a show. “Speed up!” “Slow down!” “Louder!” Too Loud! Hey, get that finger down!!” But the drum riser is the momma spot on the stage. Whenever anybody wants to re-charge they go to the drum riser. It’s the place where you can get with Joey and get really dialed in to the beat. Exotic mistakes can be warded off. Best of all it’s where the band hangs when we’re doing something new and off the cuff. That’s one of my favorite things about being up there; everybody gathering around Joey and jumping off some musical cliff together.

WOW!! A bird just flew into my room through an open window and got stuck trying to fly out a closed one. He flew around the room a few times and then wound up under a table. I got the other window open but he wouldn’t come out from under the table. It’s probably a homing pigeon from one of those ultra aggressive professional autograph seekers that hang around outside the hotel. Well I ain’t signin’ no bird. I figured he was hungry so I dug into my last night’s goodie bag from the gig but before I could pick something out for the little critter he flew back out.

So anyway we had a great time onstage last night. Sometimes it woks so everybody has a good night at the same time. A lot of times I’ll come offstage after a show and if I feel good about the way I played I’ll assume it was a good night for the everybody else too. Sometimes I’ll think I played like crap and everybody else will think it was the best show in a while. We do this confetti thing at the end of the show and it’s really cool to watch from the stage. The whole place looks like it’s in the middle of a snowstorm. Little white flakes start drifting down, spinning as they go, reflecting one color from the stage lights and then in an instant reflect another. Have you ever looked at something through a chain link fence and get that weird optical kind of 3D thing? That happens to me when I look out into the audience through the confetti. Another thing I notice is how the spotlight shines through like in one of those weird snow squalls where it’s blizzarding away but you can still see the sun shining through the clouds. Meanwhile over at stage left the monitor crew is paranoid about getting confetti in their equipment so they put up beach umbrellas. Chain link fence, snow squall, beach umbrellas. I just love reality. Oh, also there’s all the little LED pendants and stuff twinkling away through the whole arena. It used to be lighters, now it’s little flashing high tech LED things. It’s a cool thing to look at and we have a great view.

Speaking of the view, I think I should mention the spotlights. Some nights they’re up high so you can kind of see the audience and other nights they’re low so they’re right in your eyes and you can’t see anything. I think people sometimes think I’m staring at them but really I’m just groovin’ on what’s in my ears and staring into the spotlight. I call it spotlight face. Got a bad case of spotlight face. It is great to watch the crowd. They think the only looking that’s going on is them looking at us. Ha! We’re looking back y’know. We see all kinds of entertaining stuff going on in the audience. Maybe I shouldn’t mention it. Just keep doin’ what you’re doin’ and we’ll do the same.

See ya out there,

TH