January 11, 2004 - Albany, NY

We had a 10:00AM bus call to leave the Hilton in East Brunswick, NJ. That's where last night's gig was and that was our home for the last 2 days. It's weird because I've been noticing that Hilton for years when I would drive to NY. It's right on the NJ Turnpike on the left if you're heading north at exit 9. A lot of times when I would go to NY to visit Fodera or whatever I would stay in East Brunswick I would get off at that exit and ride past that hotel. I never checked for rooms at that hotel because I always assumed that I could never afford it. From now on, I'll look over at that Hilton with a fond memory of gigging with the Victor Wooten band and seeing Joey Lauricella play.

I think the ride is going to be 3 hours to Albany, NY. If my memory serves me correct, I think that Albany is the state capitol of NY. I decided to make the whole trip sitting up front with the bus driver. There's a seat to the right of the bus driver's seat right next to the door to get on the bus. We call it the suicide seat. I talked to my wife on the phone during the trip to do one of the other tour diary entries. We kept losing reception in the Catskills. Toné is my life line to the 'real' world while I'm on tour. She keeps me informed on what's going on in the world and she checks all 4 of my email accounts for me while I'm gone. So we end up spending a lot of time on the phone. That was particularly a good thing today since my wife had been kinda' down and moody today. It was the 5 year anniversary of her brother, Joe Compito's death.

On this trip I also spent a lot of time talking to our tour bus driver, Jeff McCardle. He is ONE FUNNY dude! He just totally cracks me up. I can't even repeat most of the stuff he says and it probably wouldn't be as funny if I said it anyway. Like I said earlier, he drives for Britany Spears and also for Justin Timberlake. His last trip he drove for Sully, the lead singer for Godsmack and said he had a ball on that tour. He said Sully loved disco music and had the tour bus set up like a discotheque. That particular bus also had a slide out which increased the lounge area a lot. Normally I make a point not to mention personal stuff about individual people on tour because I don't want to violate anybody's privacy. But Jeff OK'd it for me to mention that he is known as the 'naked bus driver!! He just likes to drive the tour bus naked. Now, I don't know if he's being funny or not, because he's the closest person I know to being a stand up comedian without actually being one. He said that he likes to wait for when the artists are asleep, then he closes the privacy curtain and strips! I just keep having this bad vision of me going up to the front of the bus in the middle of the night, opening up the curtain and seeing him Butterball naked! I hope he doesn't take off his clothes while he's driving! He said that sometimes when he knows he's about to ride past a coworker in another bus, he'll strip before they pass each other so they can see him naked through the window! (Both Toné and I are laughing as we're doing this entry). He also said that once when he was driving for Sully, that he was sleeping on the front sofa naked. He wasn't expecting Sully for a couple of hours. He said that Sully got on the bus with a bunch of friends and everyone asked, "Who's that naked on the sofa??!!" Sully just said, "Oh, that's just my bus driver." Jeff's been driving since 1989 and now he's talking about taking over his dad's real estate business. I'm going to try to talk him into writing a novel about his exploits. I'll definitely keep in touch with him after the tour.

Between doing the diary with Toné and talking to Jeff, the trip to Albany seemed like it only lasted 20 minutes. The next thing I knew,...I looked up and saw a sign that said 'Albany 4 miles'. From the interstate you could see the Egg Theater on the left. It looks like an egg sitting on a pedestal. Actually, it looks more like a satellite dish. Since it had just recently snowed, it looked like a satellite dish covered with snow. It's a very cool looking building. It's amazing that they could get a 1000 seat theater, a 400 seat theater and a convention center in that building. The loading dock and parking lot it inside a regular road tunnel. It just splinters off from the road. We parked the bus and loaded out and set up extremely fast. I love playing in performance theaters because they are built from the ground up for these events. So the load ins and set ups go very smooth and we always have a lot of room on stage. The crew was excellent. Shortly after we got there a student of mine named Dale Dudley showed up. Dale also teaches bass. His wife is from Albany and he was in town to pick her up, so he figured he might as well catch the show while he was here. He stuck around for a little of the set up but he had to leave to take his stepson somewhere. Some friends of JD's from Canada showed up. Actually they are the opening band on the Shania Twain tour. I think they drove down from Toronto for the show. Victor was kind enough to jam with the bass player after sound check. My friend Caryn Samuell drove all the way from Cape Cod, MA. She was treating her son, Brian, to the concert as a gift. He's been on a submarine for the last year or so and he's on a break now. He's also a bass player and while he was on break he and some friends of his set the Guiness world record for continuous performance by a band. They played for 42 hours straight and the previous record was 40 hours. 42 hours!! That's almost as long as a Victor Wooten show (hee hee)! Brian also brought his friend Sully who also lives close to Albany. They hung out with me the whole day until showtime. Caryn owns a glass show on Cape Cod. If you're ever in the area visit her shop and tell her that Anthony sent you. I talked to her about my stepdaughter, Shauna doing an apprenticeship with her. Shauna is majoring in fine arts at Kutztown University in PA and she likes making little 'doodads' and jewelry.

The show started at 7:00PM which was very early for us. The show went pretty well, though I seemed to have a lot of little technical problems. Unfortunately when I have technical problems, it usually affects my playing. It's hard for me to give 100% to my playing when I'm trying to work through technical details in my head. That might be the only disadvantage to me multitasking on this tour. Danette's been saying that people have commented on how good a bass player I am. Then she jokingly says, 'Yeah, but he sucks as a tech!" It's funny, but there's some truth to it too. I'm a musician first. I'm really good at setting up Victor's gear, but I'm not really qualified to run a monitor board or to go inside his bass and rearrange some wires. Kurt Storey and Ted Atwell are the REAL technical wizards on this tour. They are amazing at what they do and they bail me out a lot. They deserve as much credit if not more as I get for being Victor's tech.

Anyways,...

The Victor Wooten band 'turned it out' as they usually do. I know I haven't spent much time in my tour diary describing the details about the show, but that's because I we have a lot of surprises the happen during the show and I don't want to spoil the many surprises that we have during the show. Besides, my words could never fully describe what it's like to see the Victor Wooten band. You'll just have to see it for yourself. After the show we did our usual meet and greet with the audience. Of course there were folks there from Woot Camp, including 'Upstate' Al Marcantonio. Roland couldn't make it but he sent his wife with pictures for me.

Load out was extremely fast and we didn't have an overnight since we had an 8 hour drive to Baltimore. So we just headed on down the road.

peace & blessings

anthony