The Ride To Clarion

Marni and Traci and I follow the van in Marni's car. Our first gas stop is in Suffern New York, where nestled back in the woods stands the studio once owned by the sax player in Spyro Gyra. This is where we mixed the first version of the Red album with Bill Klatt in 2000. At the gas station, the Middle Eastern guys are insane with late night delirium, screeching the tires of their cars and yelling to one another. When Travis tells the cashier it's his birthday, the guy fakes like he draws a gun on Travis. Then two Tibetan Monks in yellow robes enter the store, and walk down the aisle where the chips are, buy nothing, get in their mini van, and drive off.

Two hours later at a truck stop on Pennsylvania, Marni holds up a green license plate with a picture of Jesus on it. Below his joyous face it says, "Still Saving Lives".

"Why don't you put this on your trailer," Marni asks. Brilliant!

I buy the plate and a kick ass pair of sunglasses, stoned for the drive. Traci endures Marni and I talking the whole time about coke snorting friends, the band, and Travis. In the final hours of the drive, Travis takes over driving the van and in a patch of dense fog hits the side of a concrete highway divider going 75. The caravan continues and after a while I am not sure if it happened. 20 minutes later my cell rings.

"Did you see that?"

"Yeah. That was nuts."

As I stare at the trailer I wonder if its my eyes playing tricks or if the axle is bent. Then I fixate on the plate. Still Saving Lives. Yes, I guess so.

Fairfield, CT.

We are up and out early for the rainy drive to Sacred Heart University and our first of two shows with Hinder and Operator. I am psyched because my lovely Traci will be meeting us in Fairfield. When Travis wakes there is a message from Rick the ghost manager waiting on his phone:

"Happy Birthday, T. Want you to know that The Showdown are headed back to Tennessee and will not be on any more shows for the run."

The news is bittersweet. With all the bad routing of the first shows and the sense of neglect the band has felt where the management is concerned, it's kind of nice that Rick took an interest in trying to better our touring conditions. At the same time, no one was so upset about The Showdown that we needed them thrown off tour. But the bottom line is there's too much shit to think about to spend much time pondering the decision. The upside may be that a message has been sent to the booking agent that we'd rather not play shows with RAWK bands opening. (Unless it's Not Of This World).

In any case, The Showdown, and especially Rowdy, wherever you are, I bid thee well. Tell Ozzy I say hi.

The Hinder shows are part of a College tour show called Mudpackers.com. Mudpackers produce concert tours that play smaller colleges around the country. They set up a big tent and lights that turn Sacred Heart University's gymnasium into Chuck E. Cheese.

YAY! Traci arrives with Marni! Seeing my wife standing across the parking lot with her chocolate mint hat looking for me in the crowd makes my heart skip beats. I'm not the only one having a reunion. Malcolm's wife Aimee, his Mom and friend (Ed?) also drive up from New York City. Malcolm's Mom has brought him raw fish for dinner. It's like Malcolm is her baby penguin.

Tonight is the first show of the tour where we are playing a large concert-size stage and I enjoy getting to stretch my arms when I play. Travis wears a tie for his birthday show and we play a great set. He does not stress the Hinder fans that think nothing of us and make sure we know it. All through the set, he speaks his mind to the crowd, connecting lyrics he wrote 5 and 10 years ago to what he is feeling right now. Midway through I take my leave and stand stage side as Travis plays Dancing With The Wind to a gymnasium of three thousand people. Watching him stand alone in front of three thousand people, unflinchingly true to himself is balls-out inspiring. I become aware that I am witnessing Travis evolve into a focused, realized performing artist who has his energies in command. Such a moment in an artist's lifetime is something few people ever witness and tonight myself and three thousand kids have a ringside seat for the transformation.

After the set, I can't relax until I see Traci."Was it okay," I ask her. She has seen so much music being with me that I have to know. She says it was great. "I like seeing you back on a big stage." Sweet.

Marni has brought cake and sweets and presents for Travis. We sing Happy Birthday to Travis in a converted girls locker room on Sacred Heart University's campus. Traci asks Travis,"How does it feel to be 28?"

"I sat for a while with 27 to say goodbye to it," Travis says. "I didn't go out like Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix. So now what?"

On this day our dear Jason Fresta seems to have reached a precipice. He is none-too pleased by how little he is being regarded (Phil would not let him stand onstage during our set), and with good reason. We haven't figured out how to disperse roles and delegate authority and Jason, who took unpaid weeks off from Mtv to join us on the road, has had the biggest challenge for integrating himself into the fold. With no merchandise for him to sell, there is some discussion as to his usefulness for the rest of the tour. It's a frustrating predicament and because he is very close to his home, he thinks about packing and leaving. Lord knows many people would.

But he does not. He decides to stick it out. (And this, dear Fresta, will make all the difference.)

Music Listened to in the van

Slayer – CHrist Illusion/ God Hates Us All

The Roots – Game Theory
CCR – Willie and The poor Boys
Nick Drake – Pink Moon/Way To Blue
Tool – 10,000 Days
Rage Against The Machine – Evil Empire
William S. Burroughs – Dead City Radio
Glenn Kotche – Mobile
Dead Can Dance – All
Black Label Society – some shit
Tribe Called Quest – Midnight Marauders
Days Of The New – Demos
Michael Jackson - Thriller
White Zombie - Super Sexy Swingin Sounds

Allentown (Show Day)

Days Of The New played Alligator Lounge in October of 2001. At the time, we watched terrorist alerts all day on the bus and when we pulled into town, the F.B.I. searched our Penske Truck for explosives. The night ended with someone on the bus trying to hurl themselves through the bus windshield. The memory gives me a shot of anxiety and also a sense of relief. Things are so much calmer now. Tonight we play with Goatwhore. GOATWHORE! While we soundcheck, Travis goes to the hospital because a zit in his nose has become infected and is starting to eat into his sinus cavity. Earlier he tried to pop it with one of the dream catchers from the van. We are prepared not to do the show, but Travis shows up to Alligator Lounge ready to rock. Bill Klatt has driven in from New York. ("I drove here thinking, 'What am I gonna tell Ray – I don't come to see his bands play in Manhatttan but I drive 2 hours to Allentown to see Travis' band.) It's cool, Bill. I know whassap. Before the show Malcolm is livid, pissed, and furious because Rowdy from The Showdown has moved his bass amp. Rowdy is a stand up guy who should have respected Malcolm's request to keep things where they were. It's a bummer to see him on the smelly end of the poop stick. The scene has an unfortunate escalation in the moments before our set. After having had a promising sound check- SURPRISE! The sound for the show is the worst all tour. It puts Travis in a firey zone for "Flight Response" ("RUNNING INSANE! I AM INSANE!") and we are unable to pull things together until Perpetuate rigorous Ghost. Towards the end of the set, Travis says, "Tomorrow is my birthday and I'm playing with Hinder so I just wanna play some songs by myself right now." The crowd is down for a solo set and I perch myself at the bar with Bill Klatt and we listen to Travis finish the night with four new songs. On the van ride back to the hotel, it is finally revealed why Malcolm went for a walk after the show in Springfield. The man has been growing increasingly frustrated with the state of the sound of the shows and our performances. "I told myself I would only go on tour if things were artistically pleasing," he says as he drives us to the hotel. "This is not." His frustration is understandable for many reasons. Here are some I readily think of. 1) Unlike most rhythm sections who set up next to each other, we are working with a set up that has us on opposite ends of the stage with Travis in the middle. 2) I am less shows in with some of the arrangements, and I have a different way of playing than Paul, who Malcolm and Travis first played the songs with. 3) Malcolm and I haven't yet hit on a telepathic vibe and any telepathy I have with Travis cannot reach all the way across stage to where Malcolm is. 4) Travis and I are not locking in as quickly as in the past because the language we are exploring to play the songs is so different from four years ago. As a band, we are as new to the songs as an expert college rock cover band would be to playing them. So while I don't think we've really played a terrible show yet, the three of us are only sometimes in synch. If those synchronious moments are compromised by terrible sound on stage, it might not seem likely at all that we are ever getting anywhere. 5) The soundmen of many rock clubs are used to only mixing loud, Who-Gives-A-Fuck-If-The-Bass-Rig-Craps-Out-In-The-Middle-Of-The-Set-We're-Running-Direct-The-Bass-Drum-Is All-Click-And-There's-Gates-On-The-Drums-And-Compression-On-Every-Instrument-Because-No-One-Here-Plays-Anything-But- RAWWWK Music. 6) (5 b.) Don't get me wrong – this describes many of my favorite bands. It just sucks trying to play with a soundman making us sound like that. I mean, check this out - every night Travis sings songs about Satan and "the other person" and then tells the audience at some point, "I'm here for your soul." Now tell me: how can we deliver the fire and the place and commandeer the souls of the heartland with live shows mixed like Green Day? 7) We have had terrible sound onstage for other reasons. Here they are: a. the three of us have been figuring out what we need our sound to be as we go. b. Crazily amplified acoustic guitars like to feedback. c. we often have sound checks where Travis isn't present because he was up all night driving and needs to sleep before he has to sing his ass off. d. The point of focus for some parts of the songs is still being discovered by all three of us. e. As Malcolm said, "Ray, you are taking a far greater dynamic approach with the songs than these rock clubs allow for. I could go on - Malcolm sure did, finally ending with "If the sound systems are going to continue to be this bad, I'm not sure I can play with you." Yikes! By time we sleep, all the necessary frustrations have been aired out. Travis ends the band discussion saying, "Ray, I feel like I need less from you, and Malcolm, I feel like I need more." The train whistle blows loud outside the window. I dream of leaving Allentown for better shows ahead.

Virginia to Allentown (Day Off)

At some point during the drive to Allentown, Malcolm wakes and takes off his ear buds. "Dude, have you watched The Showdown?"

"Just heard them though the wall in the band room," I say. I've meant to watch them every night and haven't made it yet.

"It's really weird, Malcolm says. "They play intense guitar rock but they really remind me of Warrant." Malcolm pauses. "And I don't know if that's a good thing."

From the looks of how well Showdown are getting on, I'd say whatever they are doing works. I mean, what the fuck do any of us know? I didn't listen to radio rock bands back when I first joined Days OF The New – I certainly don't know what's happening now. (I'll save navel-gazing about the state of rock for later.)

All I do know about The Showdown is that we haven't really hung with the guys yet. We are kind of keeping to ourselves (read: anti-social dweebs) and The Showdown seem to be pretty mellow dudes. My only exchange with one of the guitarists went like this:

Guitarist: "You want a Monster ™?"

Me: "No thanks, man."

Guitarist: "Let me know. This guy from the company came by the other night and gave us an endorsement. We have a case of them."

Me: "Awesome."

Guitarist: "You should talk to them. They might hook you up, too."

Me: "Thanks."

I vow to watch Showdown in Allentown tomorrow.

Its raining when we arrive in Allentown and everyone except Malcolm goes to the Mall. In the van Travis gets a call from a friend who wants to join us for a few days on the road. He asks if he can call her back so he can discuss with us. So soon in the tour we are still very cautious about messing with our van vibe. Being the wise master of group dynamics that I am, I suggest to Travis that if the young lady joins us, she must put it in the Dewey. This is a deft double-team of a comment that references a very inside band joke (too deep for My Space readers) while also easing the seriousness of the matter, which allows our decision making to end quickly, simply, and along a train of thought that we can all relate to. Travis nods and calls her back.

"You have to sleep with the band," he says.

"Okay," she says.

"I mean the whole band," Travis says.

There is a pause on the other end of the phone.

"Well how many are there?" she replies.

"There's me, Phil, Ray, Malcolm, and Jason Fresta," Travis answers.

"Okay,' she says.

"Really," says Travis.

"Is that so strange," she asks.

Guess not.

Later that night, Phil, Fresta and I head back out looking for food. A few bat hits and "Dark Side Of The Moon" on the stereo and we are lost in Allentown. But the night is golden and GPS is a great traveling companion. We find Jellybean's Southside Jam where we get dinner and film some of our "On The Road" documentary. Then Fresta and I do some balls-out Karaoke.

Set List
Wish You Were Here (me)
Blaze Of Glory (Fresta)

Springfield, VA

Meatball is the name of the guy at Jaxx rock club helping us to load our gear. He wears an Alice Cooper shirt from the greatest concert he ever saw. Later in the evening when the roadcases are back in the trailer and Phil and I are stoned, Meatball will demonstrate how he can jump from the stage to the railing of the balcony, executing a perfect sprite-like toe tap in mid air. It is breathtaking. The three Ukranian women working the bar at Jaxx moved to Virginia three months ago. "It's too conservative here," the bartender with the see-thru shirt says, smoking her cigarette. "We're going to Hollywood."

After our sound check Rowdy the tour manager/roadie for The Showdown asks if we'll move our gear back to make room for their amps. Rowdy gets shit done and seems to be the backbone of the hard working The Showdown who have played almost ever night for year and are on Ozzfest this summer. In St. Pete, Rowdy arrived before we did and left a carpet for me to put my drums on so I could slide them out of the way for his boys. They have no problem asking the headliner to move their shit, which deserves respect even if it's a little chafing.

Tonight I've added to my drum kit the Pioneer subwoofer from the van which I am playing like a cajon. My kit is getting harder to move, so I meet Rowdy's request halfway and strike a few pieces. (Strike is stage lingo for "remove") Rowdy asks Malcolm if his bass amp could be moved. Malcolm says, "No. Sorry bro."

Major Dan Eagan of the U.S. Coast Guard comes to the show and brings his step daughter and two friends. Dan used to handle the financial books for Days Of the New and is offering assistance as Travis gets business started up again. His 16 year old step daughter is hot and excited to braid my beard, which makes me uncomfortable, but I let her do it anyway. Anything for Dan's family.

Before the show, Travis suggests we try "Orch(estration) of the Medium" in the set. This is kind of a big deal. Firstly, the piece is a heavily thought-out, intricate instrumental opus straight out of Travis' genius brain. And second: we've never rehearsed it. Malcolm's never even heard it. The gauntlet has been thrown.

After such a great show in St. Petes, I don't expect to achieve such splendor, but the sound onstage is especially difficult for us. In the end, Orch of The Medium not part of the set.

After the set Malcolm walks out the door of the club and disappears. Travis and I talk in the parking lot for 45 minutes about the new sound the band must achieve. It's a breakthrough conversation during which Travis' arms flail with every point he makes, his Einstein hair wild in the wind. He looks like a mad composer. Or Dr. Frankenstein. Malcolm calls and tells us where to pick him up.

We pick Malcolm up on the side of the highway and head back to the hotel. Phil and I sit up talking about what the future might hold. Before we pass out, Phil says, "We ain't got shit to do tomorrow and we can do it at anytime."

Drama Desk

In Allentown last week I got a call from Carolyn Cantor, director of Essential Self Defense. "I'm just calling," she said, dragging out the syllables of "calling" in a way that made me see her smiling as she spoke, "to congratulate you."

"Awesome," i said. "For what?"

Turns out that I along with Lucas and Adam have been given the nod by Drama Desk, the New York Theater Award Committee that concerns itself with Broadway and Off Broadway productions. We have been nominated for an Award for Best Music in a Play. It is much deserved if I do say so myself.

Brother Paul Sparks has also been nominated for best actor for his work in Essential Self Defense, and it is more than well deserved. It is fucking justice. Paul took a beating in some reviews for the artistic choices he made playing Yul, and it is nice to know that his genius was not lost on everyone. Paul is like the Susan Lucci of Drama Desk, astounding the committee year after year with his work and consistently getting nominated, but coming in second to other known stars like Liam Neeson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and the like. He takes it all in his stride, but because this year Traci and I will be sitting at the table next to him, I'm inclined to think something special may occur. At the very least he will have fun with his lady Annie, who was also nominated for Best Actress and is up against Meryl Streep. Crazy, right?

Dad says "Well, at the very least you can put it in your resume." True, Dad. I love getting awards, and I hope Essential Self Defense sweeps the categories we've been nominated for. (The brilliant David Korins also got a nod for his set design, as well as a nomination for another show he designed. Jeez.) But even though it's the cool thing to say "It's nice just to be nominated," that is the truth. Two weeks ago I was clearing my drums out of Playwrights Horizons. It was the morning after our last show and already the stage and room felt cold, empty, awaiting new life, but holding no reverberations of the energy we had worked to create night after night. The Drama Desk nomination lets me know that other people were watching and feeling what we were doing, and for one night, some of us will have the chance to celebrate together the great achievement that the play truly was.

Day Seven

Moments before taking off we are sitting in the van in the Econo Lodge parking lot. A guy in rattly black clothes, a black ball cap and long grey blond hair and no teeth rides up on a ten speed dirt bike. He knocks on Travis' window. Travis rolls it down.

"You need any rock seed," he asks.

"No thanks," Travis says.

"Don't hurt to ask," the man in black replies.

"Yes it does,' says Malcolm.

We have what should be a 14 hour drive from St. Pete to Springfield Virginia. But we stop so many times I am sure it will be closer to 20 hours.

Malcolm's transformation of the band is on. An hour south of the Florida boarder he is feeding us raw coconut with honey. He cuts it with a ridiculously dramatic looking knife his father gave him. Malcolm is Sylvester Stallone in First Blood. The other night he offered me raw honey to use as hair gel. The shit worked.

Travis has been on the phone most of the day. The producers of the A and E show Intervention are going to come out to a show and do a follow up.

Last night's show opened a door that has needed to be opened for a while. A little more confident in our abilities, we have our first philosophical musings of the tour.

"It's wild that I did 'The End' with The Doors before 9-11, isn't it?"

"I could see it that way," I say.

"Yeah. I guess I see it differently," Travis says, afraid that I may not agree with him. "I see musicians as prophets. I see Rick Rubin as a prophet. All the energy flows out of him, making things happen. But it's a silent story its not supposed to be told. It's supposed to be acted." Travis seems to process eighteen impulses in a matter of seconds. "I got a big mouth," he says finally.

This is one of those Travis exchanges that brims with hard wisdom, mixed and scrambled by many thoughts going on at once. In a nutshell, I agree with him. In my best moments I even aspire to the Rick Rubinesque nature he described.

"I don't think we are doing our job as artists if we are not writing the books for the next era," I say. Lofty as it sounds, we all agree, and that's good, because there is much more than paychecks and wish-fantasies of record deals happening here. Maybe we see the same, maybe we don't, but if anything is going to come together for us, it is going to require many people and many parts. As Travis said the other night onstage, "These instruments are alive."

Yes we are.

Day Six

The ride from Port St. Lucie to St. Petersburg should only take 2 1/2 hours. We take the advice of a security guard at The Mojo Room and avoid the Interstate, instead driving directly across the state of Florida on Highway 70. It is beautiful and open. Travis naps in the back. The highway stretches through small towns that look a lot like Jeffersonville, Indiana.

25 miles into the ride, I hear a worried Jason Fresta in the seat behind me. "We've lost cell phone reception." Jason has never traveled outside of the New York/New England area. He is truly worried for our safety.

Somewhere west of Acadia we are pulled over. The officer asks us how long we have been traveling without a license plate on our trailer. We tell him we didn't know we needed one (a lie for all of us but only some of us have admitted it to ourselves.). In front of the kind policeman I act like this is really gonna suck, because we have many more states to travel through on our tour. "We're in a band," I say. I think I hear Fresta gasp.

Phil is driving but he's lost his wallet. The officer accepts my license and runs a check on the van. We all start looking for Phil's wallet, but to no avail. When the officer returns, he serves me a warning for faulty equipment and lets us go. "What's the name of your band again," he asks.

"Days Of the New", I say.

"What kind of music is it?"

I know Travis is in the back and listening. If he were answering, he'd say "Acoustic World Music", but being the vanilla diplomat I am, I say, "Rock, basically. Acoustic." Consider the audience.

"I'm into country music mostly ," the officer says, "but my girl likes the modern stuff."

"Check us out on line if you get a chance."

We pull away and Malcolm suggests again that things might have been smoother if we'd taken the Interstate. In my best granny voice, i politely disagree. "This was a blessing from an angel", I say. Not only did we get off with a warning, the officer clued us in to avoid more tickets by presenting the warning to anyone else who might pull us over and to tell them that our plate was missing. Thank you, Florida.

That evening our concert at State Theater is the show we have been waiting for. "All the shows have been great," Travis says afterwards," But this one was amazing." For the first time since getting back together last year, Days Of The New is casting spells. The room at State Theater becomes a chamber with no walls, and we take off. I walk into the crowd during Travis' solo Dancing With The Wind and watch him transform himself into all the characters of each of the movements of the song. Provider ends the night on a high. Kelly Mettling's presence before the show seems to have had a great affect. He brought Travis a birthday present. A book called "The Power Of Now."

Set list

Flight Response
Touch Peel and Stand
Shelf in The Room
Dancing With The Wind
Touch Of Anger
Downtown
Perpeuate R. G.
Dirty Road
Die Born
Provider

Day Five

I take a nice morning walk to the Donut Castle, get a coffee and plain cake donut and talk to Traci, which makes me feel better after a long rough night. Donut Castle sells Crème Rammed donuts, which reminds me of a few tour stories to tell my wife.

Phil, Malcolm, and Fresta pick me up to go to The Mojo Room for soundcheck.

"Florida is like Long Island but with better weather," says Malcolm.

Soundcheck seems really promising. The stage is big and everyone is nice. I learn that my second bass drum resonates at 80 hertz. Our runner Chris gets us Chicken Caeser salads. Malcolm's wife calls him from a wildlife preserve and lets him hear the sound of a legion of frogs over his cell phone.

The show is in some ways another step forward for us musically, but the stage sound ends up being so bad that we are robbed of feeling good by the end. Afterwards, I stay in the band room and play Tetris. Fresta walks in and hands me a photo that a fan has asked me to sign. it is a panoramic photo of the drum kit I used to tour with. From the way the drums are set up I can tell it was taken during an early Green album tour.

I follow Fresta out the back to meet the owner of the photo and am reunited with Steve, one of the most memorable people I ever met while touring. He has brought his son Connor to the show. Before I get around to asking Steve about another of the most memorable people I ever met, he tells me that his beloved Ginger succumbed to cancer three months ago. I don't know what to say. I feel so sad for Steve – even in my eight year old memory, I know he and Ginger were full of love for each other. They deeply enjoyed being together. Meeting their son Connor for the first time was powerful. I wished I could get in their red van that was parked nearby and go to the beach and talk, but time was tight. Another time.

Parts of me had been road buggered enough to forget that most of what we'd been worrying about was insignificant shit. Everything comes down to the moment and what we do with it. I don't know that I will ever stop needing to be reminded of this, but the memory of Ginger brought me back to reality. I am very happy to be back in touch with Steve and to meet Connor. Such things are, for me, the blessings of the road.

"Travis' songs help me," Steve says in a way so real I am humbled. He quotes Dirty Road. "Get up and open your eyes. Don't let yourself ever fall down."

I go back to the hotel and sleep for 11 hours. Malcolm drives around Port St. Lucie looking for a lost jacket which he finds in the passenger seat of the van. Travis stays up for most of the night in a meditative state that he later says puts him back in his pure and best state of mind.

Set List

Flight Response
Touch Peel and Stand
Shelf in The Room
Dirty Road
Dancing With The Wind
Touch Of Anger
Downtown
Perpeuate R. G.
Die Born
Provider

Day Four

It's 4-20! Phil's birthday! Some pot smoker I am...I didn't know what 4-20 meant until Travis and Phil explain it to me. Phil is 24 today.

The routing of this tour is so bad Travis and Malcolm are convinced our booking agent is out to punish us. Seven hours back north to Tallahassee! Lord have mercy! We are loading in gear 30 minutes before doors are supposed to open, but no one is stressed until the soundman tries to impress us by playing the radio spot for the show. Hearing all of the hits mashed behind the monster truck-announcer voice, Travis screams "I hate the fucking radio!". Amen, brother. We sound check and get out of the way of the openers who will barely have time to line check. (Sorry guys.)

Jason Fresta is in town to join us for the rest of the tour and help out. He and I walk to Moes where I have a really nasty burrito. Moe's sucks. When we return to the hotel room, there is much intense talking before we head to the club. Rick the manager from far away is called. Life on the road needs to stay healthier than this. Everyone resolves to get through this run of shows but there is no denying we are already stressed with the routing, lack of sleep, and close quarters.

Before the show at Floyd's Music Store, Malcolm, Travis and I each poop backstage and use towels because there is no toilet paper. Then we play. Whimsical is played for the first time on the tour. A friendly face from that horrible Florida tour from four years ago pops out of the crowd in mid set and literally stares Travis into messing up "Dirty Road". "Provider" gets some new juice. Travis is feeling the need to conduct Malcolm and I as we play which is a little distressing for everyone. We are still in search of the divine cohesion.

Phil says that the stage-side soundman reminds him of Nathan. "Sometimes I catch Nate's vibe in people," he says. After the show I meet a couple who brought their son(s?) to the show. The man is bearded with cherubic cheeks and warm eyes. "You look so much like our friend," he says. "I am your friend," I reply. His name is Nathan. The guys from Psychedelic Blues Train are at the show.

Afterwards, Fresta, Phil and I watch drunk college fools exiting the Daquari bar next door and causing fights in the parking lot. We don't leave town until 2:30. Our friend from way back tells Travis and I that the evil tour manager from our last tour returned to Florida to see her and was arrested for stealing an oxygen tank from an ambulance. Shortly before dawn the plan to stop at Fresta's parents house is aborted. It is the low point of the trip. I am relieved to check into the hotel at Port St. Lucie and sleep.

Set List

Flight Response
Whimsical
Touch Peel and Stand
Shelf In The Room
Dancing With The Wind
Touch Of Anger
Dirty Road
Downtown
Pertetuate Rigorous Ghost
Die Born
Provide

Day Three

I am tripped out when we pull up to The Culture Room. Travis and I played here four years ago on the very last tour we did together opening shows for Robbie Krieger. That tour was such a nightmare that I never thought I would ever return to the club. It was the place where the evil tour manager showed up with a bags of Harley Davidson clothes and asked us to wear the t-shirts onstage so we could keep the jackets. "Fuck no," Travis said, and the guy ignored the store's request to return the merchandise after the show. When I remind Travis of this he says," Oh, yeah. Get ready. We're goin back to ALL the old places."

At sound check, it gets tense between Travis and I. After years of getting the vibe so easy, Travis and I have been having a hard time communicating things and getting on the same page. It is equally hard for Malcolm who is getting to know us both for the first time and who has his own way of playing music. Travis and Malcolm have also done a handful of shows with Paul Culligan on drums and they are both anxious for us to fall into the vibe that they had built on the last tour. Ultimately, time and playing a few shows will bring us to the right place. But will it happen by tonight? I'm a little worried.

I turn on my mystical antennae for any signs to guide me. The soundman is from Louisville. Bingo! He tells me that Buster Brown (famous 80's Louisville band) used to have an inside joke about a kind of cow tipping they invented that involved sticking the fuzzy end of a mop up the ass of the cow. The soundman waits for me to laugh but I am stunned to silence. Is this the omen? Is this…mystical?

"Fuzzy end up," the soundman says again and laughs.

Before the show I decide to walk from the hotel down Route One to get my mind ready. As I walk out of my hotel room, Travis is walking out of his.

"I'm going to get coffee," I say.

"I'm going to get cigarettes," he says.

"Let's go."

At this point, I know you could accuse me of enabling. I wouldn't argue, but with so much intensity around our first tour in four years, it had crossed my mind that this might not be the most optimal time for Travis to quit smoking. I am fine bumming Nocorette, but I'm not going to draw a hard line about smoking with a guy who is clearly going through a lot to get back out with the band. As it turns out, when it appears that there is no place nearby to get cigarettes, Travis heads back to finish getting ready. When the van picks me up on Route one 30 minutes later, Travis is chewing Nicorette.

"I need to say this to you guys which means I need to say this to myself," says Travis. "We need to find a way to better rehearse on the road." We discuss. I am excited for the show. My beard is tingling.

Before the set, Rowdy the tour manager/roadie for Showdown comes in the dressing room. He tells us that when he was in high school one of his best friends was so into Days Of the New that he put a band together to play Days Of The New songs for the talent show. "He even dressed like Days Of The New," Rowdy says. It runs through my mind that after so many years of not playing together, I am dressing up like I'm in Days Of The New, too. Oh, well. Gotta start somewhere.

Shortly after 10:30 we take the stage. Flight Response gets us off the ground and Touch of Anger, a new song, feels epic even with some mistakes. After it, Travis holds up his guitar and says to the crowd, "These instruments are alive."

When a fan yells "What are you drinking," Travis says, "Diet Coke. I've done enough drugs to kill an army."

The show is intense, thoughtful, and probably a little too careful. Still, Travis walks offstage and says "That's the greatest show I've ever played in my life." I think he's probably exaggerating to be kind and avoid saying some other things that he could say to us, but there is no lie in the fact that we all feel really good. Our first show is done. Afterwards, we reunite with some old friends, one of whom does not believe I am the same Ray that used to play with the band. "But Ray was such a good drummer," she says. Ah, well.

Phil and Malcolm find the ocean and go swimming before the night is over.

Set List

Flight Response
Dirty Road
Touch, Peel, and Stand
Shelf In The Room
Touch of Anger
Dancing With The Wind
Downtown
Perpetuate Rigorous Ghost
Die Born
Provider

Day Two

Malcolm doesn't smoke. He is overjoyed that Travis and Phil quit smoking about a month ago. As a result, I have gone from bumming cigarettes to bumming pieces of Nicorette, which feels pretty good. Malcolm eats raw food only. I wonder if his influence will have us eating raw steak and avocado and drinking raw milk with egg before the tour is over.

Malcolm is driving when we pass South Of the Border in South Carolina. An hour later he reports that the engine is overheating. There is a freak out as we pull off at the next exit. (Travis: "I knew something was gonna happen on this trip.") We had all been smelling the sick burned maple syrup smell for miles and had been collectively ignoring it hoping it would go away. There is a pin hole crack in our radiator hose.

What seems like a disaster ends up being a beautiful stop. We have happened upon the the I-95 Tire Repair Shop which is located in an abandoned Truck Stop that sits exactly on the Mid-Continental marker. Lou is the owner of the repair shop. He is originally from the Bronx. He also runs The "Big Tyme Riders" Motorcycle Club. His repair shop is attached to "Club Big Tyme Sports Bar" which is housed in the carcass of an old Texaco Food Mart and has signs on the door that say "Private Party".

Malcolm sits in the van and watches "Office Space" while Travis and I walk the expanse of the parking lot talking on our cell phones. Phil deals with Lou's mechanic who fixes the hose in no time and charges us a very reasonable price for his labor. After Phil pays him, the old man looks at Travis and I pacing with our cell phones and laughs.

"Look at these motherfuckers walkin a hole in the ground out there while I'm fixin the fuckin van. Motherfuckers coulda walked to Florida – what you got me fixin the mutherfuckin van for?"

Hose fixed, we pull out and drive to the other side of I-95 to the Wilco Auto Center to gas up. I search with no luck for a piece of fruit in the food mart. "Remeniscing" by Little River Band comes on the in-house stereo and I, Phil, and Malcolm break into a series of very focused and strategic B-Boy dance moves. Song over, we exit the Wilco Mart, buying nothing, hearing the laughter of the cashier ladies in our wake.

The sun has just set when we are back on the highway, making the rest of the trip to Fort Lauderdale. Travis and I sing to Coldplay as we ride South into the future. Tour is on.

Day One

Our first drive of tour is ridiculous. 24 hours from New York City to Fort Lauderdale. We don't leave Dumbo until 7. Before we depart, Travis and I get take out from Rice on Washington Street. The blonde woman who runs the place recognizes Travis and said she loved the first Days Of The New album. "Me and my boyfriend would be all [makes universal sign for smoking weed] and listen to that album over and over." The bathrooms at Rice have mirrors placed so humans of both sexes can see their genitalia and urine streams when they use the toilet. The food is awesome, too.

As the van gets on the BQE, Travis admits that he was paranoid that we were talking about him when he didn't help us load the drum cases. (We weren't). He emphasizes that to get through this tour we will have to be very "open minded" and talk a lot so we can understand each other - him especially - and get along on this trip. "Open minded" is a favorite phrase of his. It's a good one.

We watch "Limony Snicket's Series Of Unfortunate Events" on Travis' laptop. "The colors are amazing," Travis says. Children without parents have bad things happen to them and Jim Carey mugs. Afterwards I watch "The Departed." I love the line when Nicholson's character quotes John Lennon: "I'm not a musician an artist. Give me a (vacuum?) and I'll make something out of it." (Did I even get that partially right?) Around 3 a.m. we stop at an Econo Lodge south of Richmond Virginia.

DOTN TOUR Problogue – The Club Wagon and Dream Catchers

The Blue Club wagon that rolls south through Virginia right now perhaps the longest and most reliable member of Days Of The New. Sometime around 1996, Travis' father bought the van (pulling favors from his used car dealer friends, I suspect) and piled Travis and the other three original members of Days Of The New into the van to tour with Kenny Wayne Shepard. Two years later the van was parked while the group left on busses to open for Metallica.

It has been ten years since that Metallica tour, ten years since the first Days Of The New album was released and went platinum. I started playing with Travis weeks after the original band split up. On my first tour with Days Of The New, we had two buses, a band of seven and crew of nine. Three years later on my last tour with Travis, the band was just two of us. We traveled south to Florida in the Club Wagon, using a borrowed license plate for the trailer and praying no one searched the van for drugs. The tour manager used Travis' fame to walk into a Harley Davidson store and rip off hundreds of dollars of clothing in exchange for the "promoting" that he promised the band would do at our shows. The infrared video made in the back of the van was smashed and thrown out the window in a state of paranoia. At our last gig on that tour, there was not enough cash to pay for gas to get home so I used my credit card to drive us home so I could be in Louisville in time to propose to my girlfriend.

Travis and I spoke little after that tour. He was sick and I was not a part of that world. Traci and I moved to New York where I've been working magic with friends, freaks and geniuses. As he moved from Louisville to Los Angeles to Utah, Travis never stopped composing and writing songs all while going to the depths of meth addiction and back out again. After a few struggles to get clean, (with one very public attempt on the A and E Intervention show) Travis overcame the drugs. In doing so, he managed a level of self-awareness that I feel foolish to even try to describe. He is still aggravatingly, beautifully insane, far beyond driven, and approaching his second year of sobriety. We will celebrate his twenty-eighth birthday on this run of shows.

Malcolm rides in the van with in-ear headphones pumping his iPod. He is the raw-food eating bassist who placed an ad in the Village Voice last Fall that said "will take quality over money". Malcolm has been finding his groove and getting to know everyone, being very respectful of the relationship quirks that are present even when we're not speaking them. And there's Phil, the everything man, who drives, tour manages, tunes guitars, and snores as loud as I do. Malcolm and Phil have both made more Days Of The New shows than I have this year, so any allusions of seniority I might entertain are futile and pointless. (The great Paul Culligan filled in for me for shows in March.)

We are men of differing backgrounds who gather to bake a birthday cake for God. Communication is paramount and defining our terms cannot be rushed. We travel in tight quarters with all the old buffers gone. No tour manager, no roadies. Travis hands us the money, we help Phil with the driving. I want to believe that what is forming now may be a kind of solid constellation of minds who each contribute to the gestalt of an emerging music machine, a vessel upon which a group might sail. But that's pretty fucking rosey talk. In reality, who knows. What I know is, Travis says this is the trip where we work stuff out, and I know any success is going to be a concerted effort, with no shortage of emotion as we revisit old venues where some unthinkable shit went down. We are relearning the songs that we played for 3 1/2 years straight, seeking a balance between what of the old is still resonant, and a new terrain upon which we can expand the universe.

The Club Wagon rolls with Indian dream catchers hanging from the felt ceiling. I look at them as fly paper and air purifiers. The chimes catch the lower tones of my tinnitus in ways harmonious and excruciating. But I cannot imagine asking that they be taken down. At the start of our first tour in 4 years, the dreams of the passengers are bloated and immense, and have precious few shared visions among them. The dream catchers are pulling double shifts.

I advance with quiet faith that the act of making music is the best way to find a compass. Like the dream catchers, I work overtime to get the job done. Until i get tired. I love to sleep on tour.

Essential, Kong, and on

One week ago Sunday Essential Self Defense was staged for the last time at Playwrights Horizons. Jumping in a van and leaving on tour after closing has been a great way to avoid post-show depression. Under the very supportive roof of Tim and Billy's Theater, the team of Lucas, Heather, Paul, Chernus, Joel, Guy, Cheryl, Courtney, Annette, Carolyn, Adam, Ry, Carrie, Kate, Brandon, and myself gave all we had to tell Adam's story and move people. Every night when Lucas and I would start the Overture, my breath would be short. When Joel, HEaher, and Paul took the mic for their first Karaoke songs, it was never hard as an actor or a songwriter to play my response.

So many moments, some which only happened once or twice in the run - Cheryl climbing on the table to thrash...Lucas's guitar cord getting tangled with his Rat pedal so when he jumped off the band platform to rock his solo, his guitar had cranked itself up to face-melting volume.......Sadies banshee scream at the end of Run to Your Mountain...Issak shaking his ass to the Russian two step....Guy's voice booming out to MC the Roller Boogie... when Yul actually thinks about hitting Sadie before turning her request down...when Sadie spilled her drink on herself as Issak and Sorrel kiss... when Chuck would say "It was hilarious", or on special nights, drop the comb...when Klieg would storm the stage after a Karaoke song with his "YEEEEAAHHHH!!!"

I had moments of my own. Doing Klieg's Death Metal MAntra, staring Issak down after he tells Bob Beard how to play his drums, and my once scene in front of the drums with the great Guy Boyd.

I wrote earlier that the real critique that matters is the one we give ourselves. It did not come clear to me until the final two weeks how important the word Essential is to describe the realm in which I think we were doing our best work with Adam's play. Much like the driving aesthetic of Less the band, the play worked its strongest magic when the audience felt the story as much as they witnessed it. I have not heard Adam or anyone who worked on the play discuss what I think was the unique theatrical language that we brought to the play with the music, so maybe this is my own perspective that I leave with. For me, writing songs that more deeply showed us the characters and so strongly centered the music of the play was a an immensely satisfying artistic experience. Things I resolved in myself about my own direction as a writer, musician, and performing artist during Essential Self Defense were the greatest reward.

It was powerful to perform the play on the day Vonnegut died. (Sorrel describes book banning going on in town and mentions Slaughterhouse Five.) Another intense experience that I could have done without was the Virginia Tech MAssacre that happened the day after the play closed, and then the hostage story in Texas the next day. It is hard to admit that I think Yul's words about Corporate Warlocks is already passe: The culture of fear is running itself. It was the shootist who had the brains to send a picture of himself pointing a gun at us to the media. The kind of space Adam tried to open in the play to consider someone such as Yul is being closed tighter and tighter .

On a lighter note, while Traci and I would have loved my last night in town to be spent at home with Sophia, we were both stoked to be at Union Hall on Monday when Less The band opened for Ethan and Willie and King Kong. We ate beer cheese, danced to Kong with Emily, and stayed way late drinking with Scott Morfee and Chernus.

It was amazing to have all five Less guys on stage and hitting it in concert, but in the week leading up to the show, I wasn't sure it would happen. I had asked Ethan and Union Hall if we could play without being sure what the band was up to, but certain that if we could do it, the night would be sublime. Paul was filming a movie. Chernus really wanted to go to a gala that we were invited to, and Adam was going to be honored at it, so i could understand him not being too keen on missing it, although he never made any bones to me about the fact that playing with the band was way more important to him. Chern and Adam arrived for soundcheck. Kevin showed up ready to play for Paul, but at the last minute, Paul was able to leave the movie set where he was working a few blocks away. (Apologies to Kevin). In the past months Less the band has been seperated by the great work everyone has been up to. During our set the universe truly felt to have be a little more restored - just in time for me to leave on tour with Days Of The New.

For the next few weeks I will be blogging from the Days Of the New tour. I don't know if anyone reads this but if you do I hope you enjoy

Essential, 2.

That was the week that was, was it?

Wednesday night the cast is burning extra electricity for the opening of Essential Self Defense, the excited energy goosing certain moments of the performance. The audience applauds us the minute we take the stage, and cheers the karaoke singers before they sing a note. Dad and Millie are there. Traci. Rob and Jessica. Kev and Ali. Anthony Rapp, Lili Taylor, Sam Rockwell. Through Traci's eyes the moment of walking into West Bank Cafe and taking pictures for the (press?) was pretty sweet. My favorite part of the evening was Dad meeting everyone, including Paul's girlfriend Annie, whom Dad is particularly fond of from her year on Law and Order. At the bar, the bartender gives me two Makers on the house and says "Great show". I turn, two fisted and Carolyn and Tim are posing the question : what about a cast recording? Well...lets see if we can't talk about that sometime next week, K? Things are looking good.

The next day Mike and Amy are in town. They, me, Dad and Millie are at Mud coffee talking about what other shows they might see while in town. I spot a Times on an empty table and excuse myself to the bathroom to dig through the pages. Sitting on the pooper could not have been a more appropriate position from which to discover the Times' review of Essential Self Defense. A man by the name of Isherwood spent no amount of economy to TRASH the play, and in particular, Adam and Paul's performance. Artifice! Artifice! Artifice! he yelled from the tower, making sure that any plausible response he had to the play would be easily dismissed by his thorough and complete refusal to consider the mind of the piece. He hated it, pure and simple. It was not his idea of what a good play is, and it was easier for him to speak from the conventions of theater that the production is very purposely driving against than to consider what new ground the work is striving for.

For a few good moments of reading, you could look the review up online and then go to Lucas' My Space site (myspace/lpfunk) where his e-mail to Isherwood (and Isherwood's rebuttal) are posted in his blog section.

As for my response, later that night I would mourn for the greater group of us the fact that Isherwood's review killed any real chance of the play extending. But in those moments on the pooper I found my artistic sanity restored - what I had been so nervous about was someone saying we failed at what we were attempting. THAT would have stung, but ultimately, such criticism belongs to me and my collaborators. It has been our joy to take a risk on what for us has been new territory in staged art. We will, in time, have great wisdom from this experience that will carry us to the next endeavor. In the meantime, reading the words of a critic who invested no time in actually starting a dialogue about our work but simply wanted to shut it down is not gonna make me lose any sleep. It even made me a little proud that we'd affected him so. It made me consider the play as one of Yul's Easter Eggs (for those of you who have yet to see the show, sorry for the inside reference.) I did feel a little more protective of Adam and Paul - if either of them didn't already have a career, this review could have killed them, too. But they both showed up to Less practice the next day with no signs of bruising. Adam was a little upset at how Isherwood attacked his character, but he shrugged it off.

And then the kicker: the next night we had a transcendent performance of the play to a sold out house of under 30 year olds. Afterwards, Less, LP Funk, and Run Run Riot played in the lobby of the theater. There was beer, hot dogs, corn, and mac and cheese. The night ended shortly before 2 a.m. It was the way the whole live experience should feel. "You guys are saving theater," one person said to me, and I felt that he might be right. At least I knew that for me, while still so new to NYC theater, a struggle had been identified and I knew where I stood.

Essential

Yesterday I finally emptied my voice mailbox. It was a record - full for over a week. It had 26 messages. And it was the 26th. Crazy.

One of the calls that couldn't get through - Lincoln Center. They were trying to reach me to ask my permission to include "Essential Self Defense" in their archives. They eventually reached me through one of the other writers. (Ray blows on knuckles and rubs them on his chest.) It seemed I was too busy or stupid to be bothered with their request.

So many great moments have occurred in the past weeks, muted ever so slightly by the consistent onslaught of work to be done. On the eve of opening night for the play, I feel like a little blogation is called for...

The greatest gift - sharing an amazing process with a cast and crew of immeasurable character and resonance. While I could focus on many folk, Guy Boyd seems to be at the epicenter of many things great, so I'll start with him. On Sunday Guy claimed to have had a love bomb go off in him in the last scene of the first act of the matinee and everyone has been feeling the fallout very since. Anyone that works with Guy becomes his friend, as evidenced by Mattew Modine and his daughter, who came to the matinee to see Guy and then took Guy and Chernus and Joel and I out for Thai food. Guy worked with Matthew on the first film he ever did, (Robert Altman's Streamers in 1982) and they have stayed in touch ever since. It would cheapen things to call Guy a legend. He's not. He's a treasure of a human being. This is why he has so many friends and so consistently and effortlessly throws little asides of his amazing life into the conversation - he was friends with Warren Zevon, he has a character in the Star Wars family (The father in the Ewok movies), he's worked with Sam Shepard, Tommy Lee Jones - tons of stuff I've forgotten and tons more he hasn't laid on me yet.

All this sets up my favorite story of the show so far - Saturday's matinee was attended by John Guare, the playwright who wrote, among other things, Six Degrees Of Seperation. Paul Sparks did Guare's Landscape of the Body last year with Lili Taylor, so after our show it was Paul that Guare approached first to see if someone could explain to him what he had just seen. While Guare did not seem to be dissing our show, he outwardly claimed to not get it and did so with enough vigor that Paul and Heather Goldenhersh (our leads) were fucked up for hours afterwards. Presumably after Paul and Heather had run off, Guare turned his feelings towards Guy Boyd. "I didn't get on the train," Guare told Guy, using one of those creative dismissals all the greats seem to have at the ready. To which Guy replied. "That's too bad, John. Because its a punk rock party train and you should have been on it."

(For whatever reason, a few hours of reflection seemed to help matters for the Pulitzer prize winning writer. The next day Guare e-mailed a self-described love letter to Adam and Carolyn about the play, praising the production and calling Paul and Heather's performances "chilling". Pretty cool.)

There's so much more to say, but I'll end by taking my temperature. I am proud to say that I have not been so anxious about how a project is recieved in a long long time. In a world that is driven so strongly by reviews (a good review can make or break a show's longevity) I usually manage a healthy distance from being shaken by such things. But because I love so much the play and people in it and the great work that has been put into it, (and because I want to do more of it in the future,) I'd be lying to say that I didn't hope the reviews were good. But with Dad and Millie, and soon Mike and Amy in town for the weekend and tommorw's opening, none of the worrying will keep me from celebrating the fantastic story that we've put up on the stage.

Drafting on Exile

Writing my play Clinic Concert has been a 2 1/2 year ordeal. Each time I go back to it, I simultaneously feel that it is "right there" and so far from finished. The worm turned for me last week when I finished making notes on my most recent draft and then went back to my very first draft of the play to discover what i was writing about in the first place. (Mucho thanks to Bill who referenced Shopenhauer's The Will in his notes.)

In the Fall of 2004, what started as a kind of love letter to my actor/musician friends in New York became a play by the end of the writing. It is about a member of an extremely recognized psychedelic rock band returning to a town where his band played their last show and then everything going crazy. In the Spring following my first draft I had a mind blowing reading that included the members of Less, Guy Boyd, Di Di O'Connell, Lucas, Lethia Nall, and Patch Darragh. I walked around for weeks in a daze at having heard amazing actors read my words, but even in my bliss I knew the piece was not formed nearly enough for anyone to take it very seriously. (As one director said who read it, "I'd love to talk to you about your play - or should I say Plays.") Put kindly, there was a lot going on in my mind and on the page.

Since then I have busted my fucking ass to understand the practical and magical points of playwrighting, the structure and poetry and cause/effect that drive all the great stage works. I still don't know what I am doing, but it feels more like the right kind of not-knowing: a lot of wandering through rooms with no clear purpose.

For example, on Monday, Traci and I cased Virgin Mega store so I could try and find some music to buy myself for my birthday. It had been so long since I had allowed myself into a record store, and I had developed a habit of talking myself out of any music purchase. Finally and with much dread, I made my choices. One was a record I had a copy of that I had lost: Smile by Brian Wilson. The other was a record I'd always known I would one day get intimate with but had thus far never listened to: Exile On MAin Street by the Stones. Needless to say, I'm glad I didn't talk myself out of the purchases.

I went straight to Exile, and by Wednesday night, the album finally unravelled itself to me, inspiring some powerful connections to my play that had remained elusive and suddenly I found myself plunged back into the heart of Clinic Concert.

Then, on Thursday I left my backpack in the back of a car on 42nd street. The notes are gone. But I am not deterred. It's all in me and its time to harvest. I know that before the phase of my first exposure to Exile On Main Street finishes, the draft will be done. I don't know how, I just know. So to prove it to myself, I responded to a birthday e-mail from my friend and mind blowing writer Ron Fitzgerald and told him I needed some advice. He asked me to send him the draft. Now I have to do it. And I have decided I am staying up all night until it is done or I pass out which ever comes first.

Pretty sure I'm passing out.

The first week of the thirty-sixth year

My week started with the best birthday I have had in years. The gumbo came out great, and great people came out to Bushwick to eat it. Leah, Rob, Lucas, Ali, Kevin, Amelia, Malcolm, Andres, Don, Laura, Jay and Sonia joined Traci and I at the apartment and were present for the unwrapping and christening of one of the greatest birthday gifts ever (from TRaci of course) ...my very own hookah. The Aveda soap bar in a pound of coffee was wikkid, too, and I am devouring the Geoff Emerick book. I was really stoked that Amelia was comfortable enough to take a nap before dinner, and that Don and Laura came. Also, turns out Lucas and Malcolm grew up in the same town. Fucking nuts.

Afterwards, we piled in cars to go to KAraoke on St. MArks. The only sad part of the evening was that Traci was too sick to go. I wish she could have been there to see the crew that joined us: Guy, Jason, Patch, Chern, Eric, Christine, Annie, Dana, Simon, LEthia, and two friends of Sonia and LEahs whose names I forget. At the end of the night the bill was staggering, and perhaps one of the nicest gifts of the day was allowing myself to be cool with the fact that everyone was willing to pay it, especially after Ali negotiated like a pro with the owners to knock 100 bucks off the bill.

Monday I got up to do my cleaning duties at Shala Yoga Studio and then Traci and I met at the Barnes and Noble in Union Square and did damn near next to nothing (I recall a great talk at a coffee place on university, but I can't remember what we said. Gettin old.) I hated for her that she was still sick but it was so nice to have a day where we could just wander and sit. We broke our day up so I could meet with Kevin, Lou and Co. for the first meeting for a project that Kevin and I will be recording and co-conceiving with the group. (Because of certain circumstances and because it is not a fully formed project yet, I will leave details out for now.)

Tuesday morning, I was at Playwrights Horizons for the first day rehearsal of Essential Self Defense. Meet and greet. We heard the designer's plans and did the first read-through with most of the staff present. Every day since has been continuing the process and I am very excited for what already is coming out of the work.

At night on Wed, tonight, and for the next two nights is Los Angeles by Julian Sheppard down at the Flea. It has been a cool challenge and a joy to work up the music with Eric, Amelia, Julian and ultimately Adam. It's also cool witnessing what was the inevitable event of Amelia and Adam finally being in a room together long enough to riff and realize that they are kindred spirits. But love for my friends aside, the real thrill is the actors. Granted I can still count on two hands and two feet my in-depth hands-on theater experiences, but I have never been so inspired by a cast as I am when watching the "Bats" tell Julian's story. Also, it is a new experience for me to be working on two plays at the same time. Thank God both plays are so awesome or I'd be suicidal.

God damn it's late. I must get to work or bed.