January 9th - New York

I'm always a little apprehensive about going to NY. The town is a tad bit too 'hyper' for my taste. It seems like I'm in NY a lot since my in-laws are there and because Fodera is there. Dealing with the traffic is always an ordeal. At least this time I don't have to drive. On top of being a very funny guy, our tour bus driver is a great driver. I can't image having to drive 65 feet of tour bus and trailer in NY traffic!

This trip is to NY is a little different. It's very cold and the cold has a way of calming people down. So the traffic wasn't bad. We didn't have too long of a drive from Phili. I stayed up for the whole trip. VERY BAD IDEA!! Since I had hung out very late the night before with Victor and Gerald Veasley, I should have slept during that ride. I would pay for that mistake later. We got to the venue, the Irving Theater, about noon, but we weren't going to load in until 2:00 PM. It looked so cold outside that I just decided to stay on the tour bus. Our tour manager, Danette, went next door to order a turkey burger and some fries, and I took a couple of bites - it was VERY good. The satellite TV was out on the bus because the signal was blocked by all the tall buildings. Our loaders showed up around 2:00PM. We loaded in and set up pretty fast. We realized after setting up that we forgot a very important piece of equipment back in Phili. It was a digital cable that connects our 2 mixing boards. This cable allows the 2 boards to talk to each other. We just had the venue in Phili overnight the cable to the venue we were performing at the next day, but we were going to have to make do without it tonight.

At some point we had to get the guest list together. I think we had well over 40 guests and we were only allotted 20 tickets. So I think we had to buy a bunch of tickets (I think that's how it works, but I'm not really sure). My 2 guests were Jon Maghini and his girlfriend Christy. They caught the train down from Connecticut. Jon built my beautiful 7 string bass. You can find out more about him and my 7 string bass on mbasses.com. Tonight I was going to debut the bass. I hadn't played it live yet. So I decided tonight would be the perfect night to play it since he was coming to the show. A friend of Danette's named Sandra came to sound check to rehearse a couple of songs with us. She's a very talented singer. She's also going to be featured on the upcoming Victor Wooten release. Not long after sound check, it was almost time for them to open the doors and let people in. I walked around the corner to the drug store to pick up some stuff then stopped at Starbuck's on the way back to pick up some Chai tea. I usually get a Chai made with soy milk and the guy behind the counter recommended that I get it without water. I didn't realize that they used Chai made with water at Starbucks. I have to make a mental note to order my soy Chai's without water. I practically ran back to the venue because it was so cold. I think that the temperature record was broken.

Once inside I ran into a bunch of people I knew and saw some folks from bass camp, talked with Jon Maghini and his girlfriend for a while. Then it was time to go tune up the basses one last time before the show. The show was HOT!!! Of course everybody played their butts off. Sandra came out to sing and she lit it up. She is definitely one soulful woman. At one point she was ad libbing and scattin' while Divinity was rappin' - it sounded so good! Victor invited a ukulele from Hawaii named Jake. He was also on tour and was performing at the Knitting Factory the following day. I had gotten an e-mail a couple of weeks earlier that mentioned something about Jake being in the area at the same time we were and that they were going to try to catch both shows. What he did with the ukulele could only be described as truly amazing. I won't even try to describe it because my words couldn't do it justice. Him and Victor played a duet - they did the tune 'Spain' - AMAZING! When the time came for my solo I was getting a little nervous because I hadn't played the 7 string on stage before. So I took my bass into the dressing room to tune it. Right after I tuned it I had to go up on stage to do some tech stuff for Vic. While I was on the stage, a stage hand motioned for me to come to him. He informed me that my bass had fallen not long after I left the dressing room. I ran down to the dressing room to check it out and make sure it was OK and to retune it before my solo came. It looked like the bass was fine and right when I was about to start retuning it, Victor started introducing me. I wasn't going to have time to retune the bass, so I ran on stage and grabbed my 5 string Fodera Imperial and took my solo on that. I played a pretty good solo and kept it kind of short. I was a little bummed out that I didn't get to play the 7 string for Jon, though.

After the show I invited Jon and his girlfriend Christy backstage. I had him check the bass out and he said everything was fine. Jon told me a friend of mine that I recommended to him had ordered a 9 string bass for her boyfriend. So he's going to build me a 5 string. After we loaded up my friends good-bye and we headed off to New Jersey. We have it in our rider that we get 2 pizzas delivered to the tour bus after every show. And NY pizzas are VERY good. This band has a very interesting rider. We have cereal, milk, yogurt, lunchables, Peanut butter and jelly, and Bubble-Yum. I have to think of something interesting to add to the next rider.

The next venue was only a half hour away in NJ, so we decided to load in the gear tonight instead of in the morning. I was so tired and it was so cold, but it was worth it because it would allow us to sleep in the next morning. I didn't get to my hotel room until 3:00AM. So I called my wife and woke her up and it was so late that we decided not to do the tour entry that night since we both needed some rest.

peace & blessings

Anthony