February 5, 2004 - Spokane, WA

I was awakened by a phone call from Mark and Pat. I let them use one of the other rooms since the band headed to Spokane the previous night. We decided we would leave about 9:00AM. They figured it would be about a 3 hour trip plus we would gain an hour as we headed into Pacific time. It's so weird,...you start to get used to one time zone, and it's time to go into another. I'm gonna' be really messed up and confused when I get home. They kept telling me how beautiful the ride would be during the day. We headed West on I90. Mark informed me that I90 ran all the way from Boston to Seattle. Even though I know the interstate system pretty well, I didn't know about I90 going from coast to coast. Seems like it would be a beautiful drive in the summer. Maybe I'll try to talk Toné into trying to do a cross country motorcycle trip. The scenery was so beautiful it was like a moving post card. When we started our ascent into the mountains we could see the snow fall from the previous night. It looked like the snow was 6 or 7 feet high. Pat told me they had to use big trucks called 'augers' to clear the road. The snow was so high on the side of the steep mountains that it looked like an avalanche could happen at any second. When we got to Lookout Pass, the snow mounds were so high that I couldn't see over the cliffs. Thank God for that!!!!! We stopped to take a picture under the 'Welcome to Idaho' sign. The snow was almost up to the sign. When you're leaving Missoula you have to travel into the top part of the state of Idaho which is a little over 100 miles wide at that point. Then you get into the state of Washington. We passed a resort called Coeur d'Alene that sits on a beautiful lake. As we got closer to the state of Washington the highway leveled out and the scenery became more suburban. We were riding down the highway and I was taking in the sights. We passed a building and on the building I saw a Ducati banner. Whoa! I had to check that out. I convinced Mark to turn around to take me to the dealership. I had been so concerned with trying to make it to the dealerships in the cities we were playing in that I hadn't thought about going to any in the cities we were traveling through. We were in Post Falls, Idaho and the dealership was called Beaudry. The salesman told me they were the largest Ducati dealer in the Northwest. They had some beautiful bikes in there and they had a special edition version of my bike that I had not seen yet.

After we left the motorcycle dealership we stopped at a mall to get something to eat. Then we headed on into the city of Spokane (that's pronounced 'spo-can' ), which wasn't very far away at all. I decided to go straight to the venue even though I would get there a lot earlier than the band would arrive. When I'm not traveling with the band I make a conscious effort to arrive earlier than they do so they never have to wait on me. The venue was called The Big Easy. We had just played a venue by the same name 2 days ago in Boise, ID. The same guy who owns that club opened the one in Spokane. The Big Easy in Boise is nice, the one in Spokane is incredible. The building was actually built from the ground up to be made for live music. The audio and video system in the club was state of the art. When the band arrived we loaded in and set up...blah blah blah. After sound check a couple of us went to the other side of the venue where there was a connecting restaurant. Mark, Pat, Joseph Wooten and I ate dinner together. We had the most incredible conversation about relationships. Joseph has so many great concepts when it comes to relationships. Mark and Pat wanted me to include some of the details of the conversation into the tour diary, but I'm not because I could never express the conversation as well as Joe did.

Our waitress was a beautiful, young, black woman from DC. We had a short conversation about home. She told me that she had lived in Adams Morgan and had been to Georgetown University. Mark had agreed to take some pictures of the band setting up. He had taken some really nice pictures of the show in Missoula and he got some really candid shots of us before and after the show. I wanted him to do the same at this venue. The show was incredible, ...blah blah blah.

(One of our good friends, Cindy said that she tried to read some of the tour diary and wished that Anthony would stop talking about what time he woke up and when bus call was,...blah blah blah...and just get to the guts of the story, so....this is for you Cindy!! )

My solo was pretty good,...blah blah blah. Toné read an email to me from someone namedJoe Maccolini. He said that he really liked the tour diary but that his one critique was that I criticized my playing too much. I can see how he or anybody else would think that I'm hard on myself about my playing. But I do want to clear one thing up. I know that I'm a very good player and I'm fond of my playing. I don't consider myself to be arrogant and most of the people who know me would say that I'm quite humble. But, if anybody were to ask me who my favorite bass player in the world is I would have to say, "Anthony Wellington." I'm not saying that I'm the best, but I do like what I have to say on my instrument. But I'm also an educator of the instrument and one of my jobs is to see the 'holes' in peoples' playing and help them to try to repair those 'holes'. I'm just as aware of the holes in my playing as I am in other peoples' playing. Because I'm willing to point those 'holes' out in my tour journal doesn't mean that I don't think much of my playing. It just means that I'm aware of my strengths and weaknesses.

Before the show a guy introduced himself to me who was named Jeremy St. Pierre. He's from British Columbia, Canada. He was in town to see the show. He knew who I was and told me he'd been checking out the website. We've been in contact through email since the show. One of the places I want to visit the most is British Columbia. If I get the chance to go there,I'll certainly look him up. After the show I started really feeling the effects of being on tour. The time zone changes didn't help matters at all. By the time we got back to the hotel to shower I was too tired to even go up. I sat in the lobby and chatted with Mark and Pat awhile, but they could see that I was fading fast. I said my good-byes to them then I went on the bus and we watched a little bit of the 'Blue Collar Comedy Tour' featuring Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, Ron White and my favorite comedian right now, Larry the Cable Guy. We were on the front of the bus cracking up! I only made it through Ron White and Larry the Cable Guy. If you see this DVD, you should buy it. I found it in Walmart in Utah for $14.00. After that, I went to the back of the bus, called my wife and went right to sleep in the back lounge. We're headed to Seattle. There are some people there I'm really looking forward to seeing.

peace & blessings

anthony