The Roadie Show

Hey folks! It’s that holiday season again and Rand and I had a pretty hectic late November/early December. Late December was a bit slower, but I have a new gig which I hope to tell you about soon.

So, our holiday season was a bit different this year. We finished November with our Thanksgiving tradition, “The Machine.” This Pink Floyd tribute is one of the best out there and the band members and crew are the coolest. They travel light, with a sound guy, Randy, and a lighting guy, Jim. They show up, we all catch up for a few minutes, then we get to work. Within an hour, the stage is ready for the band and the rest of us are just hanging in catering. What a gig!

On 11/29 we rocked with the Brian Setzer Orchestra. It was an early day with alot of work (check the pics). But it was fun and, being a Setzer fan, I had a fun day.

THE STAGE before the Brian Setzer show

BRIAN SETZER and his Orchestra

BRIAN SETZER’S guitars for the Christmas ‘07 tour

SETZER rockin’ out. His guitar amp is inside the jukebox!

We started December with a doo-wop show featuring Bobby Rydell, Shirley Alston Reeves (original lead singer of the Shirelles), and others. What happens on those days is we set up one band, then the singers take the stage, do a few hits, and leave while the next group walks on. It’s fun and easy.

Then we had our traditional Peter White Christmas featuring Rick Braun and that hot Mindi Abair. I hit on her all night and you know what? She is quite friendly! Again, this is a show we do every year. The road crew and band know us and the whole day goes smoothly.
Hoping for a new Christmas tradition, we welcomed Kenny “Babyface” Edmunds to our stage on 12/7. He wrote alot of hits in his career and he is quite a showman. He plays guitar very well and is a pretty good singer, too.

Continuing with the holiday traditions, we welcomed back “Hot Tuna.” It’s just one of those gigs we look forward to because we know it’s gonna be a painless, easy day with a good show and an energetic, happy crowd.

HOT TUNA

The following night we saw the return of Wynonna. Or as the crew refer to her, “Y”. They brought alot of stuff with them, but it made the stage look pretty cool during the show.

WYNONNA in the red Moomoo

WYNONNA with the LED backdrop lit up

Next we had 2 nights with Genesis tribute “The Musical Box.” They brought alot of set dressing with them to re-create a Genesis tour during which the scenery was changed. Apparently during the original Genesis tour this show re-creates, the original set became too much of a pain in the ass, so it was scaled down. These guys did both shows. Cool, right? They are from Montreal and the road crew was made up of some very smart and friendly guys. We talked gear, beer, hockey, travel, you name it. Pasqual, Jean-Marc and the rest are a great road crew to work with and if you’re a Peter Gabriel-era Genesis fan, check out “The Musical Box.”

Genesis tribute “The Musical Box”

All we have left this year is our 12/29 show with Jo Dee Messina and our rockin’ New Year’s Eve with Grateful Dead tribute “Dark Star Orchestra.” See ya in ‘08!

Iggs……………………

Not much to say about the 2nd day… I know that sounds horrible but we were all exhausted. The thing about PodCampNYC is the bar hopping. The bars are open till 4am or later, allowing for a lot of drinking. I was drunk and awake all night (although resting comfortably in a small bed with Nicole and Edyn) and was first in line for registration at 7:30am. DRUNK. Everyone else was dead asleep. As soon as I received my goodie bag my eyelids dropped and my speech became sluggish (matching my movements).

I woke everyone’s ass up and herded them downstairs. We caught the tail end of the opening ceremonies and went right to breakfast. Edyn’s eyes are bigger than her stomach! She ordered eggs, bacon, french toast, home fries, coffee, orange juice… After taking a few bites she was obviously full and sleepy again. So was I.

We sat through a few sessions, learned a little, networked a lot and tried to get a decent buzz going for the live Best Damn Tech Show, Period taping later that day. It worked well! We had a decent crowd that was full of energy, legendary blogger CC Chapman co-hosted and Drew bought the beer! All in all it was a kick ass PodCamp (except for the traffic we fought through getting out of New York City…)

Click To Play

check out some of the photos at Flickr.com . Too bad I can’t keep my eyes open in pictures…

Or maybe he’s just a complete idiot. I haven’t quite made up my mind yet. Check out some of the shit that has poured out of his mouth recently while promoting his new “Album”:

“When I was 15, a cabdriver asked me if I was Paul McCartney’s daughter,” the 31-year-old singer told AP Radio in a recent interview. “That really blew my mind.”

“People only have glimpses of like, you know, who I might be and I don’t think people have a real sense of what I’m like necessarily,” he said. “I get the spoiled-rich-kid thing a lot and I get the serious-thing a lot, but I think people are misunderstanding me.”

“I like playing music live for people because it’s the way music was meant to be heard,” he said. “We’ve only been recording music for a couple hundred years.”

If you like these quotes from the fruit of the legendary loins of John Lennon, check out the original article at CNN.com.

Turns out several members of the original Blues Brothers band are still out touring thier asses off! Iggs and I met two of them recently: ‘Blue’ Lou Marini and Tom ‘Bones’ Malone.
Blue Lou (made famous for soloing on a counter top in the original Blues Brothers movie AND opening and closing every SNL episode with his crazy saxophone from ‘76 to ‘83) is out touring with singer/producer Steve Tyrell. Tyrell is out promoting his new album of standards and spends much of his time on stage telling stories about Frank Sinatra and the Sinatra family. There wasn’t a lot of room for Blue Lou to stretch out but he was still a huge asset to the band.

Bones Malone is moonlighting with the Fab Faux when he’s not on stage with the CBS orchestra at the Dave Letterman Show. The Fab Faux have a wild mix of musicians including CBS orchestra badass Will Lee is on bass and Conan O’Brien’s amazing guitar player Jimmy Vivino. Bones spent a lot of time switching between several horns throughout the show, sometimes playing 3 different instruments in the same song. It was an amazing show, can’t wait till I work with them again in October.