|
September 20, 2003 - St. Petersburg, FL
I walked into the St. Petersburg Hilton with Danette to help get the rooms. After we got the rooms, I grabbed my luggage and went up to my room. Since we weren't staying the night, we were doubling up on rooms, so she paired me up with Victor and that was cool, because since he stayed back with friends I got the room to myself. When I walked into the hotel room all the lights were off and I thought I saw luggage on the floor, then I thought I saw a leg and foot at the end of the bed. So my first thought was that Victor must have come in early. So I kinda' whispered, "Yo Victor, are you already in the room?" Then I heard a voice whisper back, "Yo it's alright - come on in." As I got further in and my eyed adjusted to the darkness, I saw that the leg was white! So unless he was keeping some deep dark secret, I knew it wasn't Victor Wooten! I remember saying out loud "Is this Victor Wooten?" and the voice on the other end said, "No it's not", so I said "They must've given me a room that was already occupied, sorry!" I went back downstairs and Danette was still at the desk, so I told them what happened and they gave me a key to another room. Later on that night I found out that the same thing happened to Derico. So when I finally go to my real room, I showered and looked at the view of Tampa Bay from the 12th floor. Bus call was around 12:30PM so on the way down to the bus I saw Danette talking to a group of guys. They were the gospel band, The Williams Brothers. They were doing a show in town also. Later I found out that the Canton Spirituals were in town also staying at the same hotel. I jumped on the bus and rode to the venue. It was an outdoor venue called Jannus Landing. It was in the heart of downtown St. Petersburg. Unlike the previous 2 shows, load in and sound check went really fast. We ended up having 5 or 6 hours to spare before show time. A young guy named Alex walked up to me and introduced himself and told me he was a fan of mine and my response was, "Oh, I'm not Victor Wooten. " And he replied, "I know who you are - I go on your web site all the time and check out your lessons." That kinda' made me feel good because when I first started working with Victor a lot of people started mistaking me for him and I'd have to always say, I'm not Victor. I guess at some point I have to realize that after 4 years of working with him that people do recognize me also. He wanted me to give him a lesson and video tape the lesson and I was into it, but I knew that after I got back from the walk and considering how tired I was that it wasn't likely to happen this time. So Victor, Eric (the guy that hosts Victor's web site) and myself walked around downtown St. Petersburg and looked at some pretty cool stores. Then Eric who lives in Florida drove us a couple of blocks down to Haslem's which is Florida's largest book store. It started to rain while we were there. We got back around 6 and I walked back to the stage I saw that everything was covered in tarps. I automatically started thinking that the show was going to be cancelled because the rain didn't seem to be letting up. I decided to go to the office at the venue to try to check my email and I was able to check my hotmail account by not my AOL account. Our tour manager Danette's father came in - he flew in that day. So I hung out with him in the dressing room and talked to him for a while. As it approached show time I went to the stage and hung around there hoping for the rain to let up so I could take the basses out of their cases. The venue decided to push the show back a half hour to 8:30 because of the rain. It was an 11:00PM curfew meaning the whole venue had to be empty of people by 11:30. Our show usually lasts 3 hours, so I knew it was going to be tight. The rain lightened up to a drizzle and stayed that way for the rest of the night. Beaver Felton came out to the show and hung out at the soundboard, so at one point in the show I went down to the soundboard and talked to him a long time. We had spoken a lot on the phone but we had never met and he had never heard me play before. The show was really great - everybody played really well. The tear down and load out was very fast. The Jannus Landing crew were very professional and it didn't take them long at all to get all the gear out. I had guests come to the show but unfortunately I didn't have time to see them until the end of the show. These friends, Donna Smith and her daughter Michelle Smith, are friends that my wife and I stayed with when we took a little vacation to Florida this past April. It was good to see them. Then we jumped on the bus and went back to the hotel so people could shower. Me and Vic went up to the hotel room and he showed me how to get on line with my Palm Pilot - that was very cool. After we got the bus loaded the guys hung out front
of the bus for a while listening to Joseph Wooten tell stories. He had
us all cracking up.! But everybody was also very tired and we had the
second longest bus drive of the tour 14 hours to New Orleans, so I went
to my little cubby hole in the back of the bus and crashed. I think it
was about 1:45 AM. I didn't even get a chance to talk to my wife. She
was out of town and I didn't get a chance to do a dictation then and I
knew it was going to be hard to remember the events of the day, so that's
pretty much what I can remember now! I'll holla' atcha' tomorrow!
peace & blessings, anthony
|