Austin, TX

I write from the airport terminal in Austin en route back home to Florida for a couple weeks!  

Austin was great!  

This is my second time performing in this city - my first being on the musical 

SOUTH PACIFIC a couple years ago.

We received rental cars in this city because we had to stay so far away from the venue due to big conventions downtown.  This was nice because we could sorta be on our own schedules and have a little more freedom and personal space.  

Fun fact: I met a waitress named Freedom at an IHOP here in Austin...

There is a famous jazz club in Austin called the Elephant Room that I got to go to a couple of times.  Some of the band members even got to sit in with the big band one night; I did not because the drummer played left-handed, which is a mirror image set-up to the average drummer's set-up.  

I play the average drummer's set-up.

The trombonist sitting in

The trumpeter sitting in (middle)

 Going home to my beautiful girlfriend and family!!!!!!

Lafayette, Macon, Columbus, Knoxville, Greensboro

Lafayette, LA:

These were a rough couple of days.  I didn't even have the luxury of spending the night in Lafayette.

We drove right into a matinée performance here, then traveled out of that show to Biloxi, MS to make our travel to Macon, GA then next day a little better.

Found a Rush song title along the way!

Macon, GA:

We performed at the Grand Opera House here; it was so beautiful and historic! 

Instagram

My view

Columbus, GA:

I didn't realize it from where our hotel was, but I had player here before!  Great theatre with an artsy downtown area.  I frequented Fountain City Coffee while I was there.  

The band (Coffee Club) signed the wall in the coffee joint

I made the cover of the program here

 Knoxville, TN:

Another city I'd been to before!  The theatre is so ornate and unique.  It was cold and rainy so walking around the downtown area kinda sucked, but there were a lot of great places to eat.  

I couldn't get enough of The French Market Crêperie.  Easily some of the best crêpes I've ever had!

A look inside the theatre

The King painted on a wall

A look outside

Greensboro, NC: 

A nice little one-nighter before our week sit in Austin, TX.

Great crowds here, but the backstage area was a little cramped for our group; glad we were only there for the night.

There was a Carrabba's right next door to our hotel so the band had a nice dinner after the 5:00 show!

Thanksgiving

The entire month of November was kinda crazy for me because, on top of my performance duties, I helped form a committee to put together a Thanksgiving meal for everyone in our company - about fifty people.  This wasn't any Thanksgiving meal; we didn't want it to be catered, we wanted to cook the food ourselves.  This posed all sorts of unforeseeable issues.

The idea was to contact churches to see if we could use their facilities to prepare the food and then we'd bring the food back to the hotel where our company was staying and eat in a banquet hall there.

Easy, right?  Nope.  NONE of the ten churches we reached out to came through.  They either didn't have a kitchen or they didn't even get back to us.  We started looking into our catering options...  

So, it was back to the drawling board (we are a week away from Thanksgiving at this point).  We eventually come up with the idea to rent a house for the night on homeaway.com. Finally, success!

We drove through the night from Shreveport into Galveston to the house where we made our feast.  I navigated while another guy drove.  We got into Galveston around 4AM, dropped out bags off at the house, went to the grocery store and bought about $500 worth of groceries, and started cooking!  The plan was to serve dinner at 6PM and we did it!  I was shocked.  It was like that show dinner impossible.  We worked with your standard kitchen: four burners, one oven, a microwave, and a grill.  We had a pretty eclectic menu too:

SAUSAGE CHEESE BALLS 

CREAM CHEESE ROLL-UPS 

DEVILED EGGS

STUFFING 

SWEET POTATO CASSEROLE 

GREEN BEAN CASSEROLE 

CORN CASSEROLE 

MASHED POTATOES

MAC 'N' CHEESE

COLLARDS

ASPARAGUS 

HAM

TURKEY

RASPBERRY JELLO

COOKIES 

ASSORTED PIES

All in all we had good laughs, amazing food, and tired bodies.  Well worth the time and effort to have a home-cooked meal on the road!

Sunrise after shopping Thanksgiving Morning

Some of the groceries

  

  

Baton Rouge & Shreveport

Baton Rouge:

We stayed at the Radisson...again.  This is my second time in this hotel.  I remember it because of the showers.  They are amazing!  There are about eights jets plus a rain shower head.  Count me in!

The trombonist and I decided to take an alternate way back from the grocery store....through a very rough part of town.  It was quite the adventure.  We got many odd looks, but we made it out safe!

I had some mediocre BBQ across the street and some subpar Mexican food next door to the hotel.  

Got some Delirium too.

Shreveport:

Cool little city. The theatre was really small and old, like an old vaudeville house.

Apparently, it was a thing for actresses to kiss the walls all around the backstage area because there were lip prints everywhere!

The band had their own dressing room here so we made our own wall tag.

Me and a few other guys didn't stay in the hotel here because we drove right after the show to our next city to begin Thanksgiving preparation (this will have to be another post entirely).

The venue

Wall tag in the dressing room

Mural on building

Hello, Internet!

Well, here's what my life has been like since Bartlesville:

College Station, TX:

This was the first time I ever did the airbnb thing and I gotta say, it won't be the last.  Our host was amazing!  We were walking distance to the venue, but she didn't mind giving us a ride!  

Loved this city!

Tyler, TX:

Honestly, I can't really remember anything too special about this city, but it was a one-nighter...

Orange, TX:

Oh, Orange!  I missed this city since I'd been there last.  The theatre caters this amazing potluck meal made by the local volunteers!  So delicious! 

Wynton played this theatre!

Two other shows Iv'e done hanging next to each other on the wall

Cleveland, MS:

It happened (another one-nighter)