Wow! The tour has begun! It was a crazy intense feeling to get things back together for the start of this leg.
Not only was it the first show of the tour but it happened to be in front of 10,000 people in Mexico City. I flew out to Mexico City from NY accompanied by Mr Petrucci. I met him in the lounge and we were discussing our break and all the things that happened during it. In the middle of the discussion John said, “Oh it will be great to have a full day to review the tunes before we play this big show”…I stopped and thought about that for a moment and realized that there was actually no full day – and that TOMORROW is the show.
JP gets some in air practice done!
John looked a little pale when he realized that maybe I was right! Here is a picture of JP catching up and practicing on the airplane!!!
As far as my own work is concerned, there was a lot of prep before I left. I have no choice because it involves programming and as we are adding a couple of new/old songs to our repertoire I had to get it together. The usual list of which data to bring, saving, loading, backups etc! Welcome to a keyboardists life.
Anyway, we got to Mexico pretty late in the evening (flight was delayed) but made it to the hotel pretty smoothly, although the roads leading to it were awful! It was fun to take all my electronics out of my bags and do the hotel room setup again! Ipod, Airbook, portable speakers, iPhones etc…I decided it was time for me to also do an email change so I set up a .mac account. What a relief, it seems really reliable, and after all, I am a Mac type guy!
The next day I left for the venue a little early to do some shedding. I forgot the whole “scene” and thought I would smoothly go out the door and travel to the venue, but no. In the lobby of the hotel there were about 20 people ready to have autographs and pictures! Should I complain about that??? I was unprepared and really felt like I needed to go work…
Imagine if when you go to the office in the morning (if that is your life) and you could not get directly in the car or on the bus or train but you had to stop and take pictures with people and sign stuff? Weird, but fun life…
After a bit of thinking and logistics and minor struggling over my gear with the invaluable Robert Dorion, I settled into some good practicing. From that point with sound check and everything I did not stop thinking and shedding for many hours until I realized I was getting extremely fried and nervous! I stopped and forced myself to relax. Actually it was after JL told me that my being nervous was ridiculous considering “who I am”!…I just realized that it was ridicuous and I had to calm down and get into a more wizardly cool type of space!!!
The show went well. There were a couple of small things that happened due to it being the first night back. One funny thing is that when we started the song Constant Motion I was so excited to play this big explosion sound on the downbeat of the band entrance that I smashed it proudly but FORGOT all about playing the “song” part! I entered on the next phrase. But hey, the explosion was awesome!!!
Fast forward – fly to LA…Really good to be back in the good ol’ US of A. There are a lot of plusses for us american guys to be tromping on our home turf.
Tonight I will hook up with the original key wiz Mr Emerson for a premier event in LA (more on that later) and then tomorrow the show!!!
Stay tuned!
