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March 25, 2005 - Roanoke, VA An 8:30 am bus call means I get around 7am. I’d rather get up kinda’ early and take my time getting cleaned up and packed. As opposed to waking up at 8am and having to rush to do everything. I called my wife just to let her know I was checkin’ out of my room and that I’d be on the bus shortly. I saw that they had breakfast in the lobby of the hotel so I ordered pretty much the same thing I had last night at the Waffle House. Derico, Kurt and I had breakfast together then we headed to the bus. I called my wife from the bus again then I jumped straight into my bunk and back to sleep. I woke up when I felt the bus come to a stop. We were in Roanoke at the venue. We played here at the Jefferson Center last year. It’s a cool venue. And like last year Victor had a’clinic’ scheduled in one of the other rooms of the Jefferson Center. I carried the basses into the clinic for him. Then I tuned and set them up for him. The audience was pretty much already there. He invited me to play along with him to start the clinic. It was time for load in but I jammed with him for a couple of minutes then I excused myself by saying I had to set up some gear. I got the rig set up fast. The crew at the Jefferson is top notch. I didn’t hafta’ change any strings since I had just changed them yesterday. I try to change the strings on his main bass every 3 shows. He only uses the tenor, 5 string and ‘light up’ bass on 1 tune every night so I can go a week or so without changing those strings,…unless he’s particularly aggressive with one of them. The clinic was to raise scholarship money for the Wide Angle Vision organization founded by former Bass/Nature campers. John Yates sponsored it. He lives in the Roanoke area. So does Cameron Mcglauphin and his family. Cameron is also a former bass camper. His mom made us an incredible peach cobbler. Man,…that thing was good. When we opened the top we could smell all of the butter on it so we knew it was gonna’ be good. Joseph musta’ ate most of it. But I got my share. Oh yea,…where was I,…I’m too easily distracted by the thought of food. I know I’m destined to be a ‘fat boy’. I’ve already made peace with that. I was able to get back to the clinic after I set up the bass rig. I caught a good bit of it. He had Kelly Gravely playing with him. Kelly is a funny dude. He reminds me, in some ways, of JD Blair. He’s a tall, skinny drummer with very good time. But there personalities are very different. But,..they both are very, very ‘country’. JD Pronounces the letter ‘R’ with 2 syllables. Not that’s ‘country’! Victor coulda’ went on talking and playing for a couple of more hours but we had to cut him off because the Center had another event schedule in the same room within an hour. After the clinic I got the promoter’s wife, Heather, to run me around Roanoke. I recognized some of the places from last year. When we got back we did a fast sound check. I had Divinity do some ear training exercises on my computer. I started drilling her on some interval training the day before in Charlottesville. I showed Divinity, Cameron and a friend of his some of the exercises I do with my students. Divinity did 100 intervals for me yesterday and I had her do 100 for me today too. She would do them when we had breaks. She’s getting good at hearing intervals too. The next step will be cords and scales. I also showed her some rhythm recognition exercises too. The show was great! But sometimes at theaters you can’t really tell how much the audience is enjoying the performance because they’re sitting down. And when you sit down to watch a band you tend not to ‘give it up’ for them. I guess you feel like you hafta be ‘refined’ if you’re at a ‘sit down’ theater. But we got them to ‘give it up’ a little bit that night. After the show we signed a buncha’ autographs. I don’t usually get to sign as much anymore because we moved the signing to the merchandise table which is usually far away from the stage. And I like to make sure the gear is broken down before I get away. Some of the fans came to the stage to get me to sign. I got to the autograph table just in time to take a couple of band photos for some fans. After we loaded up we went to the hotel. It was kinda’ chilly out tonight. I had to run down to the bus a couple of times to get stuff that I had left. It’s definitely nice to have a hotel room a couple of nights in a row. And,…more importantly,….Winston Salem is only 100 miles away so we’re gonna’ have a late bus call. We’re not leaving `til 10am. Very cool!!! peace&blessings, “Smells Like,….what else,….Peach Cobbler”
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