The rocket sits, idle on the launchpad. To onlookers it appears as such, but for the three soon to be thrust into orbit it appears differently. For David, Jeff and myself we share a certain calmness inside our chaotic pre-launch week(s).
Our routine gets thick right about now while each of us 'gets in the zone' and attempts to juggle more flaming bowling pins than we're used to. We have our usual rehearsals which tend to be more labor-intensive along with everything from buying a new GPS to reconstructing our new touring merch display and launching our online store to fine-tuning our brand new touring PA system. David has been a busy bee finishing the production of new loops and climbing 'tax mountain' trying to get 7k's tax-related business affairs settled early (since we'll be mid-tour by tax day). Jeff discovered his 'band nutritionist' hat again and has begun meal planning for the entire tour while doing merch organization/inventory and memorizing complex vocal arrangements. I hunted for our new tour bus and finalized insurance and pick-up details last week, all while sketching the alterations I'm making to road cases this weekend before our big loading day.
We've added a few new, top secret cover songs to our ever-expanding pool of fun covers for this tour, and we've revisited some older 7k material in hopes of clearing some cobwebs. A revived version of 'Wrong Girl' surprised us and has made its way onto the setlist for a few shows on the tour- we're excited. The new cover songs are as challenging as they are a BLAST to play!!! We keep thinking outside the box, trying our very best to bring an extraordinarily fun, interactive rock show to everyone. Four cameras and a beautiful digital audio recorder will follow us around this time, so we hope to have some fun stuff to show you all when we get home.
The weather on the last tour, found us bundled-up, buying jackets, sporting beanies and cursing our wiper blades. This time around, in addition to the usual I'll also be packing shorts, flip-flops and keeping my fingers crossed. Our bus, is bigger, better and newer which should hopefully limit the number of mechanical challenges we faced last year. See any reference to St. Louis in previous blogs, LOL. Incidentally, new wiper blades were installed on our new beast last week. Aside from the chilly, wet weather and mechanical difficulties the only other element we're aiming to reduce on this tour is a faint sense of aimlessness. Last time around, we might as well have been orbiting the moon. It was a brand new experience. It was our first time in a rocket. We'd never been to most of the places we played. We determined where to sleep some nights totally on the fly. That sensation is both freeing and restrictive. In planning the logistics for this tour, we've plugged-in target cities and sleep cities for every night. Because of that, this tour is more concise and well-planned.
With everything I've said, I am now officially, completely freaked out. Until writing this, it hadn't really hit me that a week from tomorrow we'll be rolling for our target sleep city: Tucson, AZ. Now I have the frantic urge to start jotting lists of things to pack, things to be sure not to forget, things that I need to buy before leaving (my Mom's voice now: don't forget your vitamins...oh and buy some airborne). Yikes!! I re-realize every-other nanosecond, that packing for a month-long road trip is almost entirely different than the junk you fling into a duffel for a weekend in Vegas.
Oh, and one more thing. A conscious choice I make about two weeks before leaving is to really flip my memory bank in my brain to 'record mode'. I photograph stuff that I normally wouldn't. There's my bed--click. Here's the street I live on--click. Look, a beer on the counter in my kitchen--click. Mid-hug, no matter who it is, I close my eyes and tell myself 'remember this'. Special moments when sun shines, slight perfume, brief eye contact, a kiss and hair grabbing onto my somewhat unshaven face like velcro as we pull away to say 'goodbye' for the day, the little voice in my head screams 'are you recording this?'.
When I was a kid, I thought orbiting the moon was going for a ride in outer space and being in a touring band was simply playing a bunch of shows.
"7k rocket, you are cleared for launch. Initiate launch sequence on my mark in T-minus 192 hours and counting."
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