I'm a Pepper....

Well I'm starting to get the show internalized. The show last night went rather well. No starting wrong loops or being on the wrong patch. These freakin' wiener dogs are starting to get on my nerves though. The way that act works is like this:

Diana gives a command for them to jump over these little bridges, right? I take my cue off watching her arm or wrist or whatever. This way I can line up the sound effect with their jump.....in theory. A lot of the time just one dog will jump or they'll jump late or early or whatever. It's more or less impossible to line things up exactly. Oh well, it's probably a good thing if the dogs are the only part of the show I haven't gotten under control yet...

..well that and the Russian acrobats. I'm not big on drum fills. I like to play within the groove and throw in little things here and there. But with that act I need to be filling while they're flipping and jumping all over the place. So far, I've more or less sounded like a dude who comes into the music store and sits down at the kit and wanks around at full volume to make sure everyone knows he's a drummer....ugh. Hopefully that will get better with time.

The whole double kick pedal is throwing me a bit as well. I've found that for the really fast stuff I can burn out some Dave Lombardo lite 16th's. The only place double kick is written into the part is for the Cloud Swing. The tempo is waaay chill and I never realized how much harder it is to play double bass 16th's at a slower tempo. Right now when I try to catch that part it sounds like a 6th grader playing Alex Van Halen's 'Hot for Teacher' bass drum part. Yeehaw.

I'm still not quite sure what I think about Texas. If I would've went to Austin I'm sure my opinion would be much higher. Right now it's just bad drivers and screwy roads.

80% of the dudes in Texas have the exact same Bobby Hill haircut too. It's scary. I was never a fan of that show but after seeing Texas in person it's a fairly accurate representation of what it's like down here.

We ship out to Odessa Sunday (or as the people in Austin call it: "Slow-Deth-a". Can't wait haha. I think the highlight of the city is the whole 'Friday Night Lights' thing. I've never seen the show and can't really call myself a big football dude so I'm sure I'll fit right in.

I've gotten to sign autographs though during the pre-show meet and greet stuff. I suddenly realized that I don't have an 'autograph' that I use. I've never had to give one before. Another thing to work on.

Yesterday I checked out the Dr. Pepper museum which was kind of fun. Tons of old bottles/cans/machines. I snapped a couple shots: I finally made a Flickr account

After that was Heritage Homestead. It's this 500 acre spread of land where these people live work and make everything...like everything. They're kind of like the Amish only they have cars and electricity. But there's a Pottery School, Woodworking School, Metal Forging School and all sorts of other stuff. They can cook their asses off too. Sweet Potato Jalapeno soup was killer and the bread was stellar as well.

Not too much else to report. Brian and I had a rather amusing night on the town in Waco. Not much diversity here. It was kind of like the South Side. Lots of douchebag dudes with too much hair gel, orange tans, and popped collars. I anticipate more of the same in Odessa. It seems it may be a good town to find some bingo hall and mingle with some locals. We'll see. I want to avoid a "Where we come from we got Steers and Queers and you ain't got no horns, boy" situation.

2 shows today. Unless something fun falls into my lap I'll probably just get the trailer ready and cleaned up so I can be hitched up before the 2:00 show tomorrow. Odessa's only a six hour drive so Steve and I will knock it out on Sunday. That will I'll have M-R to experience the wonders of Odessa.

And just to drop another not so subtle hint....here's the tour schedule: Road Trip!

Come visit me.