March 23, 2005 - Baltimore, MD

Today was a sad day. We had to euthanize our cat, Yoda. He had developed Lymphoma. He wasn’t doing well at all last night when we got home. Actually, he hadn’t been doing well for quite some time. The morning was pretty tough for us. We got up early in the morning to take him to the vet. We stayed with him when she injected him. He gracefully slipped away. I was pretty shook up. My wife and stepdaughter were even more shook up. I was tryna’ be strong for them but I couldn’t hold back the tears as he ‘drifted’ off into kitty cat heaven. Yoda was my ‘boy’. I never really liked cats until he came along. And I would still jokingly tell people that I didn’t like cats. But,…I’ll never say that again. Yoda was my,…well,…he knows what he was to me. I miss him.

(...and Shauna and I thank you for being there, Ant)

When we got home we fell asleep. Our cleaning lady came shortly after we got home. She knew that we had a rough morning so she didn’t run the vacuum. She just let us sleep. She didn’t even charge us for cleaning the house.

I didn’t hafta’ be in B’more `til 5pm since we were already set up. All we needed to do was sound check. Of course, I was there early. I think I may have gotten there by 4pm. My friend, Rayfield, showed up again for soundcheck. He works in B’more so he just came to the venue after he got off of work. He wanted to introduce me to his co-worker, Ed, who is also a musician. We walked around the Cross St. Market which is right across the street from the venue. Rayfield keeps me in the loop with what’s going on with our childhood friends that I don’t get to see as much as he does. Plus, we love talking about cars. We both have been car ‘nuts’ all of our lives. He wanted me to go to the Detroit International Auto Show with him a couple of months ago but I was busy. I think he’s planning on going to the New York Auto Show too. But I’ll still be on tour when he catches the train up. One day I plan on catching a ‘real’ auto show because the one that they have in DC isn’t as good as the shows they have in Detroit, New York, Chicago, LA or Tokyo. But the DC show was a lot better this year. The new convention center is great.

Toné rode up with me today. Shauna came up later with John and Beth Luskey. John and I gig a lot together locally. He’s one of my favorite musicians/singers ever. He won Billboard’s songwriting contest in `04. We also were in His Boy Elroy together. He’s one of the best frontmen in the business. He performed with me at my NAMM show gig. We’ll be doing duo shows throughout the year when I’m not on the road. You can buy John’s CDs from his website at:

http://www.jlshow.com

You just gotta’ hear his CD called Anything’s Possible. The guys from ‘Elroy’ played all of the music on the CD. All of the songs were written by John. We’re gonna’ be bandmates for life.

Oh yea,…the gig. The rest of the band got there about 5pm. We sound checked really fast then the rest of the band went over to Mother’s restaurant again to eat. By the time Toné and I got there most of the band had ordered. The restaurant has all of the tables covered with a big piece of white paper. They leave crayons on the table so the patrons can color on the paper. Saundra drew an amazing picture of a woman. It looked like Lucille Ball with a blue afro. The colors were vibrant. She later gave the picture to Joseph. She titled it “When I Dream, I Dream In Color”.

Joseph and I we playing ‘Guess the song’. We were writing out the notation of famous bass lines in crayon on the paper. That was fun. He wrote out the bass line to ‘Slide’ by the group Slave. I wrote out ‘Brickhouse’ by the Commodores. We were acting like kids.

Showtime was scheduled for 8pm. I changed and did my pre-show ritual of tuning and changing batteries. Of course, they were more students and friends in the house. James Dorsey, Kevin Epps, Mike Gentry and Victor Douglas to name a few. My good friend Mike Montgomery was there and Rob Haynes came back for more. He also threw some more RAM into my laptop (Bass Geeks to the rescue). Sammie Stinson from Victor’s Bass/Nature camp and Gerald Veasley’s Bass Boot camp drove all the way down from Philly.

Victor wanted to do a very different show from the previous night. So we added and subtracted some tunes. He wanted to call some bassist up from out of the audience but we didn’t do that. The magician from around the corner came to the show. Victor saw him in the audience. He told me to get him out of the audience to see if he wanted to do some tricks about halfway through our set. The audience was not expecting that. Ain’t no tellin’ what Victor might do at a concert.

Man,…we were jammin’ onstage. I think the band sound better on small stages. Of course we like the room of big stages but when we all can hear each other directly I notice that we play better. Regi ‘turns it out’ every night. Joseph adds a buncha’ Soul to the show. Saundra has been singing her butt off. She’s a real sweetie too. She always has something nice to say about everyone. Divinity has been smoking too. I can hear her bass playing growing by leaps and bounds. I can hear her taking chances every night when she plays. She definitely gets that from Victor. Derico’s playing is awesome. Plus, I can hear so much more maturity in his playing. He’s lost 40 lbs too.

(....and he's lookin' pretty hot, too!....ooops! I mean, for a guy that's almost young enough to be my son! ...as a matter of fact, he's close to Shauna's age...hmmmm....the wheels are turning.....as only a mother's wheels turn...! Yo Derico....what's up?!)

Of course,…Victor is da’ Man!!! I told him that I just wanted him to ‘let loose’ for these B’more shows because I wanted the ‘locals’ to see what I’ve been tellin’ them for years. HE DID NOT DISAPPOINT!

After the show we packed up. But we hung around as Spencer, the magician, performed tricks for us. He’s amazing! What’s really funny is,…he looks and dresses like a magician (which isn’t much different that how a pimp dresses). If you saw him walking down the street you would say to yourself,…”Self,….that guy looks like a magician”.

Although we all had hotel rooms at a very fancy and expensive hotel we all decided to sleep on the bus. We had a 6am bus call. It’s just so much easier to sleep on the bus than to have to get up at 5 or 5:30 am to get on a bus just to go back to sleep. We just went back to the rooms to shower. I probably stayed in my room to almost 3:30am just to get caught up on Sportscenter but I eventually went down to the bus to go to sleep. I called my wife to make sure they got home safely but I was too ‘wore out’ to have a conversation. I can’t believe how much I enjoy sleeping in the bunk. If I had known all of this time how comfortable it is I woulda’ been doin’ it.

peace&blessings,
ant

May the FORCE be with you, Yoda!