January 7th - Rochester, NY

I couldn't sleep this morning, so I woke up around 6:00AM. I decided to go up to the front of the bus and talk to the bus driver for a little bit. When I opened the curtain that separates the driver section from the passenger compartment, I saw that Joseph was sitting up there already. So I sat out front with those guys. There was a major blizzard going on. I asked the driver where we were and he said that we were close to Erie, PA. That was still kind of far out considering what time it was, but the weather was so bad that he could only drive about 25 to 30 MPH on the interstate. There were a lot of tractor trailers that had run off the road all along the interstate. Our bus driver, Jeff, started to tell me about some of the people he's driven for. He's been the main driver for Britany Spears and Justin Timberlake on their last couple of tours. He just got finished driving for Godsmack. He drove the lead singer - I think his name is Sully. He's also the guy driving the tour bus in Eminem's video 'Lose Yourself'. I talked to him for a couple of hours. Tour bus drivers have the best stories.

Around 9 or 10'ish the rest of the band members started to wake up. We all just sat up at the front of the bus talking and watching CNN and ESPN until we got to the venue. It seemed like when we hit the NY state line, the snow just miraculously cleared up. I guess we arrived at the venue between 1:30 and 2:00 which wasn't too bad. When I stepped off the tour bus it was EXTREMELY cold. I haven't been that cold in years. Fortunately we loaded in and set up really fast. Danette was already at the venue since she had flown in to Rochester that morning. And Dave Welsh, Victor's Production Assistant and web guy was in town for the show. Sound check was relatively smooth, although we did have some problems with the monitors After sound check we all went back on to the tour bus and ate Chinese Food and watched the tribute concert to Chuck Brown on DVD. The interesting thing is that the concert was filmed at the 9:30 Club in DC. That's going to be our last stop on this tour.

After we ate I went in and tuned up the basses. We started the show around 8:40. We had a very good 'first' show. It's nice to have JD back out. He and Derico interacted very well. Victor was even kind enough to mention MusicDojo during the show. After the show the load out went very fast even though it was snowing heavily. It had snowed about 6 inches from the time we started to the show till the time we finished it. Also there were three bass nature campers at the show. Kris and his mom Kateri were there and Edgar Pagan and another camper who's name I don't remember (sorry!) It's 1:52AM Eastern Standard Time and I'm sitting in the back of the bus that's parked in front of the hotel and I'm talking to my wife on the phone and she's typing this tour diary entry even though her ass should be in bed since she has to get up early. Once everybody gets back on the bus, we'll head to Philadelphia. It would normally be about a 6 hour trip, but in this kind of weather, who knows how long it will take.

peace & blessings

Anthony