September 23, 2003 - Little Rock, AR

I'm at the point in the tour where I'm losing all track of time and days of the week. The only thing I'm aware of is whether it's day time or night time. I think we're still on Central time, but I'm not really sure. I woke and showered, packed up and loaded my luggage on the bus, then walked down the street to Burger King to get a breakfast sandwich. When I got back to my room I still had an hour in my room before our 10:30AM bus call. So I checked my AOL mail with my palm pilot.

When we got on the bus I went straight to the back and took a 2 hour nap. I think that made all the difference in the world since I had been up so late the night before. When I woke up we were in Little Rock in front of the venue, Juanita's. We set up the gear faster than usual since the stage was small and Victor only used half of his usual rig. After we got set up the venue provided meals for us. Juanita's is a Mexican Restaurant so that was 2 days in a row I had Mexican food. It's a good thing I sleep in the back of the bus by myself!

I think the power was bad at the venue, so we had a problem with our PA system. We couldn't get our monitor mixer on stage to work, so Kurt was going to have to do the monitor mix from the front of the house board. After we got that all sorted out and had a short sound check, Victor and I went for a walk downtown. Downtown Little Rock is nice and quaint and everything closes at 6:00PM. They have a nice little amphitheater on the river. The promoter had given us a ride downtown but we wound up walking 15 or so blocks back. Right next door to the venue was an indoor skateboard park. We went in there and watched some people do amazing things on skateboards and bikes. Then I went into the venue and sat down at the end of the bar and started talking to one of the waitresses. I didn't know it at the time, but a guy at the other end of the bar was drawing a picture of me in chalk. When I got up to leave, he stopped me and let me know that he was drawing a picture and wanted to finish it. His name was Dave - he was a very intriguing guy. I sat at his table so he could finish the portrait and then we talked for a couple of minutes. The picture looks just like,...a Wooten brother with a hat on! After that I went up to the production office to check my email. I've been trying not to let it get too backed up, but it's been impossible for me to check every day. Brandon Brown, another Bass Camp alumni called me on the phone to let me know that he had made it in from Memphis and he brought 6 musician friends along with him.

The show went really well and the crowd was very enthusiastic. The sound system wasn't that great, though. We surprised Brandon by inviting him on stage to play and he got up and rocked the house! So far that's 3 people from Bass Camp that we've gotten up on stage on this tour. After the show the tear down went fast since we hadn't used all our gear and even though they had only one loader available for us at the end of the show, the load out went very fast.

We got on the bus and got a slice of pizza that had been waiting on me. I went to the back lounge and pulled out my pillows and blankets and got ready for bed. I called my wife to tell her goodnight, then I grabbed my book to read a couple of chapters, but who am I kidding! I put the book down and went right to sleep!

peace & blessings,

anthony