DC Games

After another luxurious day relaxing at the Hyatt, we jumped in the van to make our wonderfully late 4pm call time. We showed up to an empty stadium.

After a quick reunion with our buddies the Jonas Brothers and band, we popped up on stage for the most disastrous sound check we've ever had.

The setup went well. How hard can it be to plug stuff in?


But once we started getting levels, it was your basic 72-car freeway pileup. Nobody could hear anything. I, for example, was missing the left side of one of my keboards, my vocal, the click, and Miley's vocal. Not good.

And Vish, our regular dependable sound guy, was at the mercy of the Master of Incompentence - otherwise known as "the guy Disney supplied." The Master had confused the mixing console with Whack-A-Mole, as he randomly slapped buttons and knobs hoping for some sort of accidental miracle.

Halfway through this total catastrophe, in poured the Miley fans. Tons of 'em.

Perfect.

Full of enthusiasm, they didn't seem to notice our perplexed faces, as we struggled through one roughly-mixed song after another. Eventually we got our mixes to a place that wasn't awful, which seemed about the best we could hope for.

So it was off to dinner in the food tent. While we were eating, the weather did an about-face.

The sky began pelting the crowd with the largest raindrops I've seen in ages. Grape-like droplets. I could feel them explode as they hit me. I was fully soaked in ten seconds.

But the crowd was loyal. They weren't about to go home just because of some soggy clothes. Not when they were waiting to see Miley Cyrus, and the Jonas Brothers, and the Cheetah Girls, and...whoever else was playing.

In typical fashion for these sorts of things, we were then shepherded to a room far away, where we then filled out our paperwork and sat around for several hours.

Then we got the word. We were going on early. After all that waiting, now we had to rush. We threw on our costumes and jumped on golf carts, which whisked us over to the stage. We grabbed our gear and hurried up to the wings. One of the show runners saw us and said, "What are you guys doing here? You're not on for a while. The Cheetah Girls are on before you."

But we didn't have enough time to go back. So we just hung out in everybody's way, in the wings.

Miley sauntered up about fifteen minutes later, and we had an impromptu singing jam session on the side of the stage.

We all took our places. The dancers came out in their big long tailcoats. We rocked the place out with "See You Again," and two new songs: "Fly on the Wall" and "Breakout." The crowd totally ate up the new stuff. And of course, everybody loved "See You Again," which has become quite a huge crossover hit with Disney fans and on mainstream rock radio.

That was it. Funny how these things are 98% waiting and 2%playing.

1:13 pm

I like Florida. It's warm here. And I'll overlook the fact that it's full of airborne flu germs (this is not a scientific assessment).

I went out to the bus and rooted through my bunk, the closets and the bays, and realized that I've accumulated a lot of stuff over the course of this tour. And I think I've accumulated less than everybody else. The question though, "how do I cram all this stuff in my suitcase?" remains unanswered. I had everything planned out, stuffwise. I left plenty of room for the jackets, hoodies and things that I bought. But I was thrown off by the giant plaque. Plus, yesterday Vashon gave me a bunch of DKNY clothes that didn't fit him. I was grateful, but now it's a little tricky.

I finally got everything up to my hotel room. Here's where it gets interesting.

Also, we all know how I don't like to splurge on room service, but today I'm going for it.

Good Times Square: Part One

New Years Eve was certainly the most bizarre birthday I've ever had. I woke up around noon (this part was pretty normal, unfortunately) and did the daily food scavenge. Didn't find much in the minibar. So I went back to Cafe Europa, where I had breakfast with Jae and Robin the previous day. "Stick with the safe choice!" That's what I always say. Who cares if you're in a city filled with a multitude of delicious options?

Then I celebrated my birthday by going to the Sprint store and activating my brand new (to me) Treo. Very exciting. While I was in a celebratory mood, I decided to swing by Best Buy on the way back to the hotel to pick up a Spoon record I really wanted. As a present to myself. I went in and found the CD immediately. And then I looked up and realized that Best Buy + NYC + New Year's Eve = NO. The line stretched all the way through the store and out the front door. So I put it down and left.

Later, we all hopped in the van (minus Candice and Kay who unfortunately were replaced by dancers for the day, as there wasn't going to be much room on our tiny rooftop stage). Luckily, Times Square was only three blocks from our hotel, so even with traffic we anticipated a short ride. Unluckily, the police re-routed us at every intersection in some cruel display of misplaced power. It took us almost 45 minutes to get there. Stacy and I thought we should just get out and walk, but for some reason, nobody seemed to want to. This was absurd.

We showed our top-secret Dick Clark passes and were ushered into the ABC building into a tiny room that (strangely enough) had a washer and dryer in it. This was our dressing room.

They brought in some Virgil's Barbecue, but I didn't really like it. Despite everyone saying it was some world-class restaurant, nobody really enjoyed the food in front of us.

Around 5pm, they escorted us all up to the roof for a sound check. It was freezing up there.


The dancers quickly cobbled together a routine, adapted for the tiny stage. We were all very impressed with them.

(R-L: Christina Glur and Ashlee Nino)

To our right, we could see that a massive crowd had already gathered in Times Square. However, we weren't performing to them. Though it looks, on TV, like we're facing the crowd, this is what was directly in front of us:

A lot of people, equipment, and (oddly enough) a UFC billboard owned by CBS. (Why was this on top of the ABC building?)

Stacy began arranging his kit, Jaco was playing with his amp, and I was setting up my keyboard, when BAM, they just started the ProTools tracks and we had to go go go. Nobody even told us we were playing yet and off we went.

Everybody felt frazzled but we got it together quickly. By the time the song ended, we weren't sure if we'd just done a rehearsal or a pre-tape. I think it was both. We did it one more time and then headed back downstairs to the warmth of the Barbecue Laundry Room.

Jack then notified us that we had five hours till the show. Great. Let's go explore! Except, ABC + NYC + New Year's Eve = NO. We weren't allowed to leave the building. The whole place was on lockdown. Nobody really brought anything to do. Except Jamie. He had a deck of cards.

So this is what the next five hours looked like:

Notice, behind Jack is Times Square. We had a great view of all the people wearing their red hats (sponsored by Pontiac!) and the acts performing. We had a TV in the room with a feed of what was going on outside. So we could watch Carrie Underwood on TV and hear the bass and the crowd screaming from outside, and poke our head out the window and looky -- there's Carrie Underwood!

Mostly though we just played cards.

At precisely 9:50pm, we were hurried back up to the roof. Tiffany gave us heating pads to stuff into our clothes. I had previously bought some cut-off gloves from H&M, and I quickly stuffed the pads into the palms. I thought I'd leave my coat behind since we were only playing two songs and I wasn't going to wear it during the broadcast (who wants to look like a puffy porpoise on national TV?).

Little did I know we'd be standing there for a full 20 minutes before we played.

As I froze my bony booty off, I enjoyed this view of the revelers:

The revelers happened to be reveling without any alcohol this year, as Times Square is dry for New Year's. They still seemed totally drunk.

We got a 10 minute warning. Then 5. Then 2 minutes. We were all waiting for the 5-4-3-2 countdown before we start playing.

It didn't come. BANG! The ProTools started again. WHAT!? We all just ran with it. Live television, ladies and germs! When you watch it, you might be able to notice that we're all a little surprised at the beginning.

Needless to say, Miley was great. She was energetic and a total pro in the arctic weather. She's a little 15-year-old powerhouse.

My fingers were frozen, and I had a painful hangnail on my thumb which I had to slam all over the keyboard. None of this felt good.

But what a thrill it was to look to the right and see us playing on all the Jumbotrons in Times Square.

And then as quickly as it began, it was over.

Here it is, as seen on TV (only grainier):


Then we all practically ran out of that building.

But the night wasn't over yet. Part Two coming soon.

Pinned Under The Weather

Chicago was lovely. And cold.

My first order of business was to get some heavy outerwear. Just the walk to H&M in my old thin coat was excruciating. The heavily-bundled walk back was cake, though.

I saw my dear friend Kurt, from high school. We talked politics and he enlightened me on even more horrible things our government is doing, and how I should vote for Ron Paul.

And we were off to Indianapolis. And I got sick...some more. Which made that show very challenging. As in, "I hope I can stay on my feet for this next song" challenging.

As King of the Land of Obvious, I'd like to remind you that I did not intend on spending this entire tour sick. I'd like to think I was getting better, other than the Cough That Never Dies.

But now I've adopted this brand new cold/flu "friend." Possibly happened during that H&M walk. I'm trying to drink lots of liquids and sleep and spend this day off in Columbus getting healthy. The whole Jonas Brothers backing band is sick too. Solidarity!

To add injury to insult, I sliced my finger in a big way, which has been fun to slam all over the keyboards. Luckily, Kay lent me some stylish Band-Aids:

Apparently My Sleep Number Is Zero

We had to say goodbye to the Royal Park Hotel in the snow, knowing full-well that our next hotel was a Radisson. Goodbye, my love.

Last night, at the Rochester show, I noticed that the stalls in the bathroom were made by:

Yes. It does say "Hiny Hiders."

While backstage, I had a terribly depressing phone conversation, and I really wasn't feeling very happy, with only three minutes to showtime. Jaco turned to me and said, "But now you get to go play in front of 15,000 people! So life is good."

And life was good again. It's hard to be too depressed when you have the best job in the world.

We all went out and played like little kids with a License to Rock. And so I experienced the healing power of Hannah Montana.

After driving about 120 miles in the snow, watching season one of Dexter all the way (Candice and I want to get the band into it, and it seems they're quite enjoying it), here we are at a semi-dumpy Radisson in Grand Rapids. Once again, as with the Radisson in Moline, my Sleep Number bed is broken. Do these things ever work?

And I realize I sound like a hotel snob, and I have become a hotel snob.

But would it really kill them to just get a nice TempurPedic? And leopard bathrobes? And marble sinks? I mean, come on.

Like Royalty Frozen Over

After the longest drive of the tour so far (approx 850 miles), we're here in blustery Rochester, Michigan. I walked off the bus this morning to the delightful/alarming sight of *gasp!* snow. We all knew it was coming but none of us were prepared for it. Some of us in the band have a pair of gloves or a scarf or a hat, but nobody seems to have brought all of the above. Facing winter seemed like a far-off notion to me...yet here it is. So I scuffled as quickly as I could into the hotel, while feeling like my skin was being ripped off by the cold air. Well, okay it wasn't quite that bad.

We're thankfully staying at the Royal Park Hotel, which is basically what you'd see if opulence threw up on luxury.
I was very psyched about my room:

So I went about my normal hotel christening ritual, the bed jump:

In the middle of this, I got a phone invitation to join Candice and Jaco on a wintry odyssey about town. Despite the fact that I couldn't seem to find my gloves or hat, I threw on a hoodie and headed out. Jaco was much more bundled up:

He only looked a tiny bit like a crazed psychopath. So out we went. The impossible had occurred. The weather had actually cooled down since I was last outside. We all linked arms like schoolchildren and braved the icy sidewalks of Rochester.

[there would be pictures of snow and holiday decor here, but it was far too cold to take my hands out of my pockets to photograph anything -- so use your imagination]

Candice was looking for a specific restaurant with some sort of legendary bread, but she had forgotten the name, so we wandered for a bit and stumbled upon an oddly-named, overly-facaded joint on the main drag:

Looked good enough. More importantly, looked warm enough.

It turned out we'd accidentally stumbled into exactly the place we were looking for. And the bread was very good. Even better though...was the absolute best cup of warm cider I've ever had:

Yes, that is cinnamon on the rim, and I died a little knowing that no cider will ever make me this happy again.
Then we called a shuttle back to the hotel and promised never to go outside again.