October 2, 2003 - Birmingham, AL

Birmingham is one of the places that this band has never been to. Actually I've never been to Birmingham or anywhere in Alabama. For some reason I was expecting it to be a rural town and expecting to be on Eastern Standard time. Neither is true. We're staying in a pretty nice hotel. I went into the lobby while Danette was getting the rooms finalized. I was giving her a hard way to go in the lobby. One of the toughest parts of her job is trying to arrange for our room to be ready so early in the morning. So while she was busy trying to handle business with the woman at the front desk I was busy asking her questions about the venue, load in, sound check...she kept responding, "All that information is in your itinerary! Look in your itinerary!" She told me to make sure that I put in my diary that I harassed her in the morning and giving her a hard time. Believe me, the last thing I really want to do is harass Danette at 8:00AM after 2 cups of coffee.

So I got up to the room and called my friend Susan Robinson. She was a camper at one of the early bass camps and at the reunion camp and she also helped out at the most recent camp. I called Victor in his room to see if he wanted to hang out with us for a while. Victor and I have been hunting for gadgets this whole tour. He's a 'gadget guru'! Lately we've been trying to find the new Tungsten T3 Palm Pilot. He just bought the Tungsten T2 a month ago but he's already ready to trade up to the T3. I kinda' use Victor as my gadget discount man. Every time he trades up I try to 'inherit' the old one or at least buy it heavily discounted. So Susan took us to IHOP first - I had the best bowl of grits that I had had in a long time. They sure do know how to make them in the South. Then she took us to a book store where one of the employees commented, "Y'all must not be from around down here" with a very heavily Southern accent. Then she took us to Office Depot, Office Max, Staples and Circuit City. We still never found the T3.

After that we went back to the hotel and hung out for a while and then Susan and I rode to the venue which was only a couple of blocks away. Somebody had given the bus driver wrong directions so they ended up WAY across town. The venue was called Work Play - it was an incredible place. It was like a mini Paisley Park. They had a venue, a sound stage, recording studios and offices. But it was maybe half the size of Paisley Park. I was excited because I knew that Oteil Burbridge was going to come and sit in with us. I knew it was going to be one of the best gigs. Everybody was "feeling it" before the show. Victor's booking agent Barron (or Baron) brought along Steve Mays, another former bass camper. Rudy Wooten caught a ride down and Keio, another drummer from Nashville came down. Victor was going to bring out Oteil and Rudy on Yinin' and Yangin'. I decided to forfeit my solo so the song wouldn't go too long - plus I'm not stupid enough to take a solo after Oteil! But guess what...Victor ended up calling me up towards the end of the song to solo anyway. I was a little nervous because I've been scattin' a little bit while soloing on this tour and Oteil is the master at that. But I try to do it much differently than he does - with the vocals way in the background just for ambiance. Then Victor decides that he wants him, Oteil and I to trade licks. It was an incredible honor to be trading licks with 2 of my favorite bass heroes. A lot of people told me after the show how well I played and Ted Atwell, our lighting director, gave me a lot of compliments also. At one point during our 3 solos I stepped out of the spotlight to give Victor & Oteil more of the spotlight and Ted got on me about that on the bus. He said that I deserved to be in the spotlight just as much as the other guys. He said he knows what kind of person I am so that it didn't surprise him that I did it, but told me not to do that again! I thanked him for the kind words.

Load out went incredibly smooth. Venues that have been built from the ground up to be venues usually have direct access to the stage from a loading dock. The staff was very courteous and helpful. Thanks to David, Alex and Amanda at Work Play. I forgot to mention Oteil's drummer Chris Friar sat in with the band also. Rudy Wooten was smokin' on the saxophone - he played his butt off! At one point he held a note for like 10 minutes...and I'm not exaggerating! He was using a technique called circular breathing (I think). He held the note for so long that at one point all the band members left the stage and came back 5 minutes later! He kept holding it until they started playing again. When the band jumped back in he played an amazing lick and the crowd lost it's mind! It's always good to see the Wooten brothers on stage together. Future Man was the only one missing.

Later on we got on the bus to head to Charlotte, NC. Earlier, Victor had purchased the new season of 24 on DVD so he popped that in. I made it through about 20 seconds of it and then I realized I was done for. Don't think I talked to my wife again - mainly because she had spent the whole day driving to Charlotte and was probably asleep in her hotel room and it was 2:30AM Central time and an hour later in Charlotte. Plus I was going to see her bright and early in the morning.

peace & blessings

anthony