Boy Wonder: Professional Musician 32

Day 31 - April 11th 2009

This is what my throat looks like…



It’s hard to see the white spots but the swellings pretty apparent.

I woke up this morning to a throbbing pain in my throat. The kid of pain that feels like someone kicked you in the throat for and hour. The kind of pain that makes one consider vicodin, perkisets, or heroin. I could barely get up off of my air mattress the first time. The phone rings. It’s mom. I talk because I don’t really want to worry her. But it hurts too bad to tell her everything is fine. I have to take care of myself now.

I managed to stumble to the free in the lobby. I can only manage to get one doughnut down before eating just becomes unbearable. No tea bags so I’m forced to sip hot water which actually worked wonders for getting everything lubricated. I take a shower and head back to the lobby to see if Dad’s sermon was up. I run into Pete who tells me he got his own room last night and it turned out to be the honeymoon suite. Mirrors on the ceiling and what not…funny

I listened to Dad’s sermon and boy was it powerful. It was on the 6th of the 7 last words of Jesus Christ “It is Finished.” From the sound of the church’s reaction it seems the blew the roof off of the church. His last words we’re “The savior died on Friday but the finisher comes on Sunday Morning.” Pretty powerful stuff.

I have a confession to make. A couple of days ago I started playing Hackey Sack with some of the members of the band. I’m not proud of it. I once made my days at Rittenhouse Square making fun of the hippies hacking in the middle of the park. Now I’ve become one of them. I refuse to stop showering though. We played for a bit. I’m not very good at it. But I find it’s a great way to work on non verbal communication. After everyone is out we pile in the van and begin the drive to Columbia Missouri. I sat next to Pete, drummer extraordinaire. He asked to borrow my ipod, so I said sure. I like sharing things with people, especially music. I went to sleep woke up and pet was shirtless. He turns to me and says “Your ipod is amazing I spent the past hour listening to Prince.” It’s funny how you take the music you have in your ipod for granted sometimes. We stopped at a rest stop and I took and Aleve for the first time which really helped with the inflammation in my throat. I was able to go back to sleep. I woke up again and Pete was in pigtails.

We pulled up to the venue and I got a chance to talk with my buddy Claire. She’s doing well and learning guitar now. I had to cut our convo shorter than I would like in order to save my voice. I started playing jewel Quest as the Monte Carlos (the local openers) played. They were actually pretty good. Some of their stuff was really swinging. It was time for us to play and as we approached the stage I noticed that I was burning up. I’ve been sick enough times to know what my body’s telling me and I was sweating like a pig and hadn’t moved all day. My body was achy and I wanted nothing more than my mom to wrap me in a blanket. For the first time in my music career I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it through the whole show. I cam close to passing out a few times. I felt bad because I couldn’t push the pedal to the floor like I normally would. To reach for it and to have it not be there sucks.

I immediately went to the van after the set was over and slept in the van. I missed Electric Six which sucked. I remember them coming into the van and being really angry because I couldn’t go back to sleep. I was shivering pretty bad and fortunately we went straight to the hotel. I hit the bed and prayed for relief. They were all out so I got a chance to rest. By the time they came back I was covered in sweat but I felt so much better. My guess is that the fever broke. Thank God. I was pretty messed up. I’m on my way back to sleep now.

Tommorrow is Easter. Resurrection Sunday, I may just stay in bed the whole night. I’m gonna miss my family but hopefully I’ll feel up to dinner with Bang Camaro and Electric Six.