January 18, 2003 - Seattle, Washington

I got a call early in the morning (about 8:00AM) from our tour manager, Danette Albetta. She said she knew I would be up since she knew I would be awake talking to my wife on the phone. (I didn't know I was that predictable!) I went downstairs to help her load her luggage on to the tour bus.

I got a call from Victor who was out with a friend right before bus call (bus call is the time we all have to be on the bus to head out to the venue) around noon. He asked me if I wanted to ride with him & his friend to a bass store called Bass Northwest. Bass Northwest is a music store that sells only basses and bass related equipment. So of course, I was into that! After we left Bass Northwest we went around the corner to a magic shop that the guys at Bass Northwest told us about. Victor is a big fan of magic and he has a couple of magic tricks in the show.

We got back to the Crocodile Café just in time to set up the gear. Since it was the first show of the tour, we took our time making sure everything was right and going through some of the tunes. After sound check, Divinity & I walked down the street to a Thai restaurant. This waitress, who was from Thailand, said to us that she had seen Divinity in a dream she had 2 nights before and they had never met before! That was real cool!

The show was starting pretty late in the evening (10:00 PM hit) so I knew it was gonna' be a late night. This is Derico Watson's first tour so I knew he was definitely gonna' be excited. You shoulda' heard him play - he was amazing! Of course, everybody else in the band is amazing too. Aviva Steigmeyer, a young bass player we knew from Bass Camp was on stage with us the whole night. She played on a couple of songs and did a great job and she's only 16!! Victor called me out for a solo - it felt like I took kind of a long solo. Well, at least it felt long to me! Then me, Vic and Divinity traded licks. We'd been talking about shortening all the shows from 3 or sometimes 4 hours long, down to 2 hours. Of course, we played 3 hours anyway!

After the show we do a meet and greet with the audience and fans and sign autographs. There were other Bass Camp alumni including Jim Matthews and Sam (who's last name I can't remember…sorry!!) After we finished packing up Jim Matthews gave Vic & I a ride back to the hotel. I got back to the hotel at 2:30AM and I talked to my wonderful wife on the phone for about an hour.

(He knows that since I'm the web master and I'm going to be posting this, that he'd better say something nice about me!! --Toné.)

I'm only gonna' get about 3 ½ hours of sleep before the next bus call…

peace,

anthony