January 13, 2004 - Harrisburg, PA

I set the alarm for 7:30 on Tuesday morning. Toné and I were traveling in our personal car and we were parked on the street. The meter was going to kick in at 8:00AM so I had to get down there before that point to put some quarters in the meter. I knew Toné wasn't going to get up and do it. I can count on her for a lot of things, but one of the things I can't count on her for is getting up early! But at least she's cute! So I dragged my ass downstairs before 8:00AM, put $2.00 worth of quarters in the meter. That still ended up not being enough, so an hour and a half later I ended up getting some quarters from Joseph Wooten. After feeding the meter I headed back to the room to get ready. Whenever I'm riding in the car, I make it a point to arrive at the destination before the bus does. Since bus call was at 11:30 I wanted to be on the road by 10:30 that way I would still have time to stop and get something to eat along the way and stop at the Ducati dealer in Harrisburg, and still make it to the venue before the bus does. Toné got her first Ducati from Koup's Cycle in Harrisburg, so I wanted to visit and see what they had. Toné and I both own Ducati motorcycles now. She owns a red ST2 and I own a custom painted Monster 750. It's humbling to have a wife with a bigger motorcycle, but her legs are 6 inches longer than mine. I originally had a naughty joke to insert there, but we both decided it would be best not to type that in! We both just recently go our bikes in the fall and we plan on doing a lot of riding together this spring and summer.

Anyways,... we ended up not stopping for food on the 2 and a half hour trip to Harrisburg. We went straight to Koup's Cycle and checked out their inventory of Ducati's. They had both of our bikes in stock. We also found riding boots that we both like and will probably get.

We left Koups and went straight to the venue. The Whitaker Center is a beautiful place. It has a couple of theaters inside. We saw Belá Fleck and Edgar Meyer there over a year ago. But we were performing in a different theater. The Sunoco theater is beautiful. The seating is 3 levels high. We laughed and joked while we were setting up. JD & I had our usual battle about Coke and Pepsi. So I want all of you who drink Coke to email JD and tell him that Pepsi sucks! His web site is JDBlair.net. Tell him the 'Flex' sent you. After we set up they provided menus for us to order food. I ordere shrimp lo mein and it was very good. After sound check I realized it was too cold to walk around outside and check out stores, so most of us walked to the hotel to chill out for a couple of hours. After chilling at the hotel for a couple of hours Toné & I stopped at a restaurant that was providing dinner for the band. In the restaurant we ran into our friends Wayne and Donna Parham. Our fron of house engineer Kurt Storey was chilling out in the bar and he bought Toné & I a glass of Pinot Grigio. While Toné was waiting on the food I went back to the venue to make sure the stage was in order for the start of the show. Toné came back with some salmon and I ate it in about 3 seconds.

Toné's daughter, Shauna, and two of her friends, Rachel and Robin, came to the show. Toné used to live in the area so she has some friends coming out - 'CoCo' Coleman, Geri Hoff, Chris Santiago & Vicki, Diane Dayton, Dave Shaeffer, John Pfeiffer, Alan Hill....to name a few. There were also some Bass/Nature camp folks there - Donna Grund, Marco, Earl Matthews and Glenn Marrazzo. Glen runs a catering service in PA and he brought us a whole lot of food. We ate most of it and shared the rest with some homeless people in the area. I personally wanted to thank Glenn for preparing all that food. He's going to come visit me for some lessons. I told him that I'm willing to trade food for lessons. That offer stands for anybody - I'm always willing to trade food for lessons (hee hee!).

The show was very cool. It's always difficult playing for theater crowds because it's harder for them to get into it when they're sitting down. It doesn't mean that they're not into it but it's just harder to get involved in the show when you're confined to seats. Seasoned performers realize that and take it into account. I played the 7 string again during my solo. I played pretty well. John Maghini from MBasses would be proud. The bass he built sounds great. And as big as it is, it's easy to play. I dedicated my solo to my wife and my step-daughter.

After the show, the load out went pretty fast. It was very cold outside. Toné hung out at the venue with her daughter and I rode back to the hotel. Some of us hung out on the bus for a while. When I got back to the hotel room she was waiting for me. We were too tired to do a diary entry that night. We went straight to bed.

Here is a picture of Toné and I with our motorcycles.

peace & blessings

anthony