West Coast

 

Overwhelmed with work.

 

The Deep South was largely forgettable.  We played Houston, Dallas, Oklahoma City & Phoenix. All I’ll say is that I never want to go back to Oklahoma, it’s just an awful place full of awful people.  The West Coast was great.  We got to San Diego for a day off and I walked over to PetCo park to catch the Padres/Twins game.  It was my first time in San Diego and it lived up to the hype.  Great, great town.

LA was wild as usual.  Like NY, all the sponsors show up, all the managers, agents, label reps, lawyers, business managers, family members, etc.  and they all expect you to treat them like the most important person at the show.  My pals Whitney and Katie both came and brought the new men in their lives which was cool.  I went out with Whitney and her man Howard after the show and was having a such a good time that I was almost an hour late for my bus.  They almost left without me, but decided to wait…thank God. Here’s Whit and I, and I think the exhaustion is pretty clear on my face.  Fell asleep in the cab on the way back to the bus.

Berkeley was next.  The Greek Theatre, the 100+ year old venue on the campus at Cal-Berkeley.  My favorite venue in the world.  It’s all made of stone and has an incredible vibe.  I had a long talk with the promoter who told me he thought the whole thing was going to crumble during the Daft Punk show there last year.  I can only imagine.  I went up to the top of the hill for the encore to take a couple of photos.

And one with the University’s bell tower in the distance behind the stage.  The lights of San Francisco are further beyond.

Seattle was next and we had another day off so me and a couple of crew guys went to SafeCo Field to see Mariners/Blue Jays.  It’s a beautiful park and they serve NW Microbrews, what’s not to love.  Even better was the following day when we played the show at the WaMu Theater which just happens to be attached to Qwest Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks.  My first question to the promoter when I arrived was when can we get on the field and where can we get a football.  This was my favorite random activity of the whole tour.  I decided to impress the scouts who came in by slinging 60-yarders with my eyes closed.

Ok, last west coast show was Vancouver.  Tegan Quin showed up with her crew to watch the show so it was good to see her.  Sarah McLachlan came down to play the show as well.  She’s been off the radar for the past few years raising her child.  Vancouver is her hometown so the place was electric when she came out. She’s one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met.  We were instant pals.

There was one more stop in Red Rocks to close the tour.  More on that in the next & final post. Thx for reading.

East Coast

After the midwest run, we played a few more East Coast Shows including one in Bethel, NY right next to the site of the original Woodstock Festival.  It was pretty cool to walk down the grassy hill where the festival took place completely alone to the spot where the stage stood (dirt patch).  

I took a long bike ride with my pal Nina from The Cliks up and down all the rolling hills past farms and cows and barns and horses.  Bethel is a beautiful place and I thought all day about how someday it would be great to move up there with Meredith away from the craziness of New York City (or maybe we’ll just get a house for weekends in the summer, tough to turn my back on NYC).

Atlanta was next.  I got to hang with my long last pal Bill Speas.  We grilled out with some of his pals and watched Tiger Woods come back to tie on 18.  Atlanta was Tegan & Sara’s last show.  Very sad.  I’m officially obsessed with this band and I’m convinced that they are going to be HUGE.  They’ve got the smarts and the songs to be incredibly successful. I gave Tegan a copy of The Secret History and Sara a copy of Sailing Alone Around the Room.  They’re both bookworms so they appreciated it.

The Cliks ended their run after the next two shows in Clearwater & Ft. Lauderdale.  The youth had officially left the tour.

 Tegan and Sara: Speak Slow

 

 

The Midwest

Since I last posted, we went thru the midwest, down to Jersey, up to Woodstock, down the East Coast all the way to Ft. Lauderdale, across Texas, into Oklahoma, thru New Mexico and we just played Phoenix last night.  It was 117 degrees there yesterday.  117.  Luckily the show was indoors.  I felt bad for the kids at Warped Tour which was across town, outdoors.  Pulled into San Diego this morning and I’m going over to see the Padres play in a couple of hours.

The midwest was great.  I ran into Rashad McCants backstage at the Target Center in Minneapolis.  He helped the Tarheels win a national championship in 2005 and now plays for the Minnesota Timberwolves.  I told him I was a fellow Heel and he flashed me the million dollar smile.  I flashed him back the ‘total domination’ hand gesture that he coined in Chapel Hill and said thanks for ’05.  After the show, I went out with The Cliks and Tegan and her band across the street from the arena.  A Tegan & Sara superfan recognized Tegan and trays and trays of shots kept coming to our table.  Jager-bombs, followed by Jameson, followed by Cuervo.  Whoa.  I asked the guy if he liked the band or hated them.  He didn’t get it.

Next night was the legendary Chicago Theatre – definitely one of the coolest theatres I’ve ever been inside and maybe the most beautiful.  I wish I had taken some pictures of the lobby, it was surreal.  I did take this one of the marquee.I invited Ro and his girlfriend Ki Mae to the show and they came.  We got to hang and watch Cyndi’s set from the opera boxes and then I took them onto the side of the stage so they could watch the finale and shmooze with the artists a bit.

 We went out with The Cliks and Tegan & Sara for post-show drinks and got to catch up.  Ro is officially moving back to NYC by the end of the July.  Cool.  

The end of the midwest run was in Detroit the next night.  Tegan & Sara and their band and crew invited me to hang on their bus after the show.  Turned into an all-out dance party, with the twins playing DJ and dropping one indie electro remix after another.  They play their music loud, they dance til they sweat.  I was in my element.  Their anthem was Talib Kweli’s “Get By” which they all sang at the top of their lungs.  Not sure how I’d never heard this tune before.  I’ve posted it below in case you haven’t.  It was a great way to end a great midwest run.  More pictures after the jump.

 Talib Kweli – “Get By”

Lesbian Twin Sisters & Ballads from Russia

The youth!  On a tour headlined by Cyndi Lauper, The B-52s and Rosie O’Donnell, it was a breath of fresh air to have Tegan and Sara join the run for a while.  They’re lesbian twin sisters from Canada, they’re really talented and their haircuts are the definition of indie hipster.  That said, this band is all about the songs.  They’re all so good and they’ve won over crowds the past 2 shows they’ve played with us.  They’ve also totally bought into the family vibe that we try to capture on this tour.    

 The Con: Tegan and Sara

Last night in DC we had the added bonus of having Regina Spektor on the bill. She’s a singer-songwriter originally from Russia who relocated to the Bronx at age 9.  She’s an amazing singer, pianist and lyricist.  It was just her at a grand piano for most of the set.  She played guitar on a couple of songs and brought her friend up to beatbox while she sang her final tune.  Cool set. Sad to see her go.

After the show, the HRC (Human Rights Campaign, one of our non-profit partners) threw an after-party at Halo and all of the artists came.  Top shelf open bar with bottles of Moet on ice on the tables, couldn’t pass that up.  Rode to the party in a huge black SUV with Cyndi.  She told the driver to “find a hip-hop station, would ya?  And turn up the bass.”  She had one hand out the window bangin’ to the beat of Kanye and I asked her if she’d ever thought about doing a hip-hop record.  ”Can’t.  Not with this accent I got.”  I asked her who she’d work with if she was going to collaborate on something.  She deadpanned, “Snoop Dawg.”

A couple more pics and a vid of Reg below…

Rolling along…

Things have been rolling along pretty nicely.  After playing Jones Beach on Sunday, I went back to my apartment to sleep and caught a cold along the way.  Monday was “a day off” that I spent trying to catch up on all the work I couldn’t keep up with during rehearsals and the first two shows.  I took Meredith to dinner at The Little Owl in the West Village (incredible) and then we went around the corner to see the opening night performance of Piper’s play “Reasons to Be Pretty.”  She was AWESOME!  I couldn’t have been more proud.  Very cool to see her on-stage again after her venture into the film world.  The play was written by Neil Labute and it’s a contemporary glimpse into the lives of 4 peeps in their late twenties dealing with the things that come along with that stage of your life.  If you’d like to see it, you can buy tickets here: http://www.ticketcentral.com/showdetails2.asp?showid=1672

Great NY Times review here: http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/theater/reviews/03brantley.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

We played Radio City Music Hall two nights ago and my parents, my sister, Meredith, Grady and Megs all came out to see the show. Really great to see them all.

Margaret Cho, who hosted last year’s tour, showed up backstage and we talked her into coming out for a surprise set.  Cyndi does a short messaging segment during the show where she talks about the importance of voting to make sure the people we’re putting in office will be supportive of gay-rights legislation.  She tends to riff sometimes and said something to the effect of, “Now that we can vote on-line, there’s no excuse not to let your voice be heard.”  She came backstage to Rosie O’Donnell and I were watching with perplexed looks on our faces.  

Rosie says, “Uh, Cyn…you can’t vote on-line.”

Cyndi: “Ya can’t?”

She looks at me.  I shake my head.

Cyndi: “Oh. Whoops.”

Cyndi goes back onstage following the PSA video that was airing and says to the crowd laughing, “So they just told me backstage that ya can’t vote on-line…but ya know what, I think you should be able to, ya know, I’m a visionary.”  Crowd loved it.

We rolled out after the show and made the trek to Toronto.  It’s a long drive and with the added time clearing customs at the border we didn’t arrive at the venue until 1:30 pm.  The trucks carrying the sound and lights and a lot of my tour supplies didn’t arrive until 3:30.  Doors to the venue opened at 6 and somehow we all hustled enough to get the show up on time  to begin at 6:30 pm. The show was actually the best one of the tour with every act performing their best set of the tour thus far.  One of our Canadian non-profit partners EGALE, threw a big fundraising party after the show at a monster club called Circa.  I decided to go (duh) and Carson, Cyndi, The B-52s and The Cliks all came too.  Lauper pulled me onto the dance floor late in the party and all my years of intensive training in the clubs came to good use.  The crowd loved seeing her throw down on the packed floor and she loved it too.  Day off at Foxwoods Casino today.  Review from the Toronto Star after the jump…

It’s my berfday

Strange birthday.  I rolled into the production office with a hangover at about 8:30 am this morning and there were banners and streamers and confetti and signs wishing me Happy Birthday.  That was nice, but it only lasted a couple of hours before the day’s stress had me rip everything down.  It was a little embarrasing to have all that stuff above my desk.  People I’d never seen before were wishing me happy birthday.  It was even written on the day sheet that went to every band and crew member that it was my birthday.  

Let me backup for a moment to explain the origin of the hangover.  Last night I had to arrange “The Artist Dinner.”  This is the ice breaker dinner where all of the artists have dinner together to meet and talk and break the ice and become pals.  Everyone dreads it because they’d rather have dinner with their friends than a bunch of people they don’t know.  I was put in charge of organizing it.  I chose the most awesome restaurant in Boston called Tresca, co-owned by Ray Bourque, future hall of famer from the Boston Bruins.  We had the whole second floor.  It was a perfect spring night in the North End of Boston. Cobble stone street with balconies overlooking, a huge horseshoe shaped table for 30.  Cocktail hour to start, then a sit down dinner with Cyndi and her band, Rosie and a couple of her peeps, Carson Kressley, The B-52s and their band, The Cliks (a young rock band from Toronto), me and the producers.  It was a rollicking success.  A love fest.  Everyone had a blast, the food was unbelievable, the gifts (a tiny camcorder for all the artists) were a big hit and everyone got wasted.  Check out www.rosie.com (Rosie’s blog) for her review.  I had about 100 glasses of this white wine from Siciliy.  It was fun.  

The Cliks talked me into going out to bars with them afterward.  The Cliks are an indie rock band from Toronto.  There are 4 Cliks.  One is transgendered (F to M), two are lesbian, one is bisexual.  Their manager is a gay guy.  They rock.  We hit some district called Fennel Hall (sp?).  We made friends.  We drank Jameson.  It was an early birthday celebration.  Thus, the hangover.

Back to tonight.  Josh’s sister and her husband live in Boston.  She emailed me cause she heard Cyndi was in town.  I told her to come to dress rehearsal.  They came.  We hung out a bit between the madness going on backstage.  They were troopers.  It was about 45 degrees and they stayed for the entire 5 hour dress rehearsal.  During the encore of the show when all the artists are on-stage together they do two numbers, the first is “Everyday People” by Sly & The Family Stone.  The second is “True Colors.”   Tonight they added a song in between.  Cyndi announced that it was someone’s birthday that was very important for the tour.  She wished me happy birthday from stage and everyone on stage, Cyn, her band, The B-52s and their band, Carson Kressley, Rosie O’Donnell and Lucas from the Cliks (F to M) sang me Happy Birthday in front of the whole crowd of about 50 people watching the dress rehearsal.  It was pretty cool.  Afterward they brought out the brownies and cookies that Meredith had sent over to the venue as a surprise. Thanks Mer, that was really, really cool. It was a memorable birthday, but I wish I could have shared it with all of you. Lots of love to you all from Boston. NP

Solid 21-hour Day 1

Long day at the office.  Productive but incredibly busy day in Boston at the Bank of America Pavilion.  Saw some faces from last year’s tour and tried to dig out from the incredible amount of work I’m buried under to no avail.  Took a break to watch Cyndi rehearse. See pictures below.  She is amazing and hearing her wail on dance hits from the new record and old classics in between put me in a great mood.  

The stage is looking good too.  I’m looking forward to seeing the full lighting rig light it up.

Cyndi arrived on site rocking a lobster headdress from the seafood shack down the street and gave me a bear hug.  Caught a picture of her wearing of it while she walked away.  Style icon since ’84.