March 18, 2005 - Rochester, NY

I woke up while we were still in New York . We were stopping at a truck stop to refuel. I felt the bus stop which could mean one of 2 things,….traffic jam or truck stop. Truck stops are cool because the food is always unpredictable (interpret that how you wanna') and they make for good ‘people watching'. I love observing people. I think to become really god at understanding ‘human nature' you hafta' do a fare amount of people watching. It can be very entertaining. I can only imagine how I must entertain people who ‘watch' me.

I stayed up for the rest of the trip into Reading . We rode past the college that my stepdaughter graduated from. It's called Kutztown University . I gave her a call to let her know that I was riding by her Alma Mater. I also talked to my wife a couple of times too. She was driving up to the show today. Reading is about 3 hours by car from our house.

When we got to Reading I could tell that I was only about a mile away from where Gerald Veasley held his Bass Boot camp. I've been getting a whole lot of positive feedback about my classes at his camp. A lot of the campers have been calling and emailing me to let me know how much they appreciate my classes. One of the students, Michelle, said she was gonna' email me everyday until I see her at the Philadelphia show next month. And she has. She's a cool girl and a good player too.

We're playing in a place called the Scottish Rites Cathedral. I really didn't know what to expect. I may be wrong on this but,…I think of cathedrals as being ‘huge' churches. Are we gonna' be playing in a church?!

No,…this place is a very nice venue. It's like a ‘performance hall'. Those are my favorite kind of places. Most of the time the ‘load-ins' are easy and we usually have plenty of help.

We were a'lil late getting there because of the previous day. We hadn't quite caught up to ‘time' yet. We had a lot of good help so everything came in and got set up pretty fast. My wife, showed up during sound check. I love when she comes to the shows on tour. She has a ‘mellow' way about her and that seems to mellow everyone around her.

Victor called Gerald Veasley to see if he wanted to come to the show and ‘sit in' with us. Gerald had a gig down the street from us the same night. But his gig was starting later.

The show went very smoothly. People love the new songs.

A lot of friends came out to the show. There was George and Donna Grund. Donna' was at Victor's and Gerald's camp. There was Sevvi. He's Tone's hairstylist's son. He bought some musician friends of his out. Glenn Marrazzo bought his wife and son out. But, more importanatly,…he bought some great food (more about that later!). A LOT of it too. Glenn is a caterer in the Philly area and he always is “hookin' a bruhvah up” with some goodies. Sammie Stinson bought his family out too.

We signed a lot of autographs and took a lot of pictures after the show.

Saundra, Victor, Toné and I decided to go to see Gerald play after our show. The concert was more like the Heads Up Super Band. Joe McBride was playing piano and singing. The band was doing a tribute to Ray Charles. Man,…it was HOT!!!

They sounded great! Gerald was kind enough to give Victor and me a ‘shout out' during the show. He said some very kind things about my playing. Victor and I talked to him quite a bit after the show. He said he was getting so much positive feedback about me teaching at his camp.

When we got back to the hotel, we all decided to get back on the bus and eat some of the food Glenn Marrazzo had bought us. Man,…we were on the bus throwing down on that food. All you could hear was lips smackin'. There was angel hair pasta, Italian turkey sausage, bow tie pasta salad, potato salad, green beans, salmon cakes and cannoli. I know I'm leaving some food out but you get the idea. At one point Victor looked at me with a whole bunch of delight in his eyes and said to me,…”make sure you put this in your tour diary!”.

That was some good eating.

Later that night I was able to get online in the hotel room. A lot more hotels are using wireless internet. I don't understand why ‘wifi' isn't just ‘pumped' all around the world anyway.

I got an email from my friend Al Reshard in Jacksonville . I know that he enjoys reading the tour diary. He was emailing me to say that he was looking forward to it. The funny thing is,…whenever I start writing my tour diary he's always the 1 st person I think about because he has always let me know that he enjoys reading it. Yo Al,…thanks for checking it out. I'm looking forward to being able to hangout a whole day with you soon. I wanna' tryta' steal some of those great bass licks of yours.

Peace&blessings,

Anthony

“Smells Like,…bow tie pasta salad ”