Boy Wonder Professional Musician: 26

Day 25 - April 6th 2009

The mattress was half deflated when I woke up this morning meaning that it has some sort of hole in it…great. I traveled down with my laptop to get some work done I met a woman from Chicago. We had an interesting convo about life stuff. She had a daughter who’s grades weren’t up to standards and she wants her to get into college. I wasn’t sure what to tell her, I have a college degree but part of me thinks if I’d have known I was gonna be a musician when I graduated high school I might not have gone to college. I let her check her email and proceeded back to the room.

Today is Palm Sunday, I’d be in church right now if I wasn’t here. I rarely discuss God or my faith but I wouldn’t be here right now without it. I have to admit it’s tough keeping your head on straight out here when the stuff you see (and sometimes the stuff you do) doesn’t really run in agreement with the way you think you’re supposed to live your life.

We began the drive towards Chicago. I slept while listening to my ipod most of the way there. Dan played us Dancin With The Devil by Immortal Technique and underground hip hop act. It was pretty crazy. We walked into a Starbucks, peed and got beverages. We hopped into the van and pulled off. I bought a notebook and started writing some stuff down. I ended up piecing together something I actually liked, I imagine it as an old school stax style R&B song. We’ll see if it turns into a song or not

A few hours later we pulled into a hotel in Lions just outside of Chicago. After settling in I got a call from Bryn on my cell they were doing acoustic arrangements from two songs they were going to play on the Mancow show tomorrow morning and wanted to see if I wanted to come up and check it out so I went to their room and they had a pretty cool medley of Blood Red Rock and Lady Lightning going so I threw in my two cents. First chance I’ve really gotten to be creative in the context of the band.

We practiced for a while and I tried to take it easy because of my chest cold. It looked like we had a smooth enough renditions of The Medley and The Hit to pull this radio appearance off.

I’m blown away at how fast this tour is going. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been out here forever but in less than three weeks it’ll all be over and I’ll be back home and ready to rock.

I got to talk to my good buddy Brianne before I shut down for the night. She mentioned that she read my blog and dug Make The Road By Walking. I’m always floored that people are reading this stuff.

So we have a full day tomorrow. A radio appearance on the Mancow show some of the guys are going to a School of Rock and then we play the Double Door. It’ll be cool to see the Leslie guys and Sean and Zach Given are flyin in tomorrow to get the choir numbers back up. Should be a good show.