Festival season is approaching! I must say it’s very exciting because there’s a lot going on these next few months. Not only with my boys from NOLA, Bonerama, but also with a brand new festival that is getting a lot hype named Delfest.  If you don’t know the basis of how some great festivals were started I have a prime example for you… When I was a younger lad our group of friends heard of a festival that was started in the small town named Limestone in the state of Maine by the band Phish. Here unsuspecting residents were welcoming a crowd of over 80,000 fans for a weekend. It so happens that this same sort of ideal is being placed in the town I grew up in with a multitude of bands based from the bluegrass genre. This year it’s come to my hometown of Cumberland, Maryland where the festival will take place at the end of May with talented acts performing in this small, yet beautiful town in Western Maryland. On another note, they acquired me as the festivals lighting operator for the weekend. It will be an honor to illuminate such acts as Del McCroury, Keller Williams and the Keels, Vince Gill, David Grisman, Sam Bush, Railroad Earth, Dierks Bentley, and many more…

Hey all, just dropping in to post some pics from the tour. It all went really good and the band was throwing down hardcore. A lot of new tunes were played and some really neat arrangements to a few classic covers were thrown into the mix. We ran through Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania I believe. Sometimes we all forget where the heck we are on most of these tours so I imagine I may be forgetting a state or two, hah!

Part One

The past month not a whole lot has been going on with me. I’m sure I could have sat down and told you all about my personal life but who really wants to hear about that? I don’t even want to think about it from time to time. I learned from other colleagues that this is typically a slow part of the year for touring so it didn’t bum me out too much, but I am definitely a guy who likes to keep busy. So in brief I was bored off my tail but that didn’t stop me from getting things ready for this next tour with Bonerama. The tour kicked off at the Boulder Theater in Boulder, Colorado starting a two week run through 11 states. To get ready for it I had to do some organization and a little bit of shopping. Recently I got a new Hog 500 from t2k lighting. I spent my time doing mostly data entry and some programming offline with a capture visualizer. When you have a large catalogue of music to work with every night you have to perform a lot of data entry to organize the show in the way you see fit. So I guess we’ll see how it all goes down.

OK we’re back with another fine edition of “The Notebook.” The Bonerama group just got done a two week run down south and are fresh off a great performance on the Late Show with David Lettermen with OK Go’s Damien Kulash promoting their new EP “You’re Not Alone.” These past two weeks were full of good things. One would definitely be the new sections and solos added to the music. Each time I’ve gone out to work something new has emerged in their performances.

Hey everyone I got some time to get this new blog out to you now. Well the past month of December has been pretty crazy. Between working and doing the whole holiday season too, the days tended to run into one another which are the cause of this delayed blog. We last left off with the Bonerama shows from earlier this month. Afterwards I snagged a couple extra shows with my local clients in Baltimore (Basshound, Damn Right, and Earthtone). It was definitely a lot of fun running around with these guys spanning from Newark, Delaware to Annapolis, MD. Let’s just say I got to rekindle some old memories with my friend Jim Beam after the gigs.

So here's an older blog I found recently that I wanted to post while I'm working on a new one for you all. I should have it up soon. Thanks!

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OK this next blog starts here sitting in a hotel here in Richmond, Va. Currently I’m on tour with Porter Batiste Stoltz some of the damn funkiest musicians to come out of New Orleans, LA. Beginning where I left off on the last blog I had a lot of downtime once I got off the last tour so I did some local shows with good friends Damn Right, Basshound, and Earthtone, worked on my Porter Batiste Stoltz cues I needed to have ready for this current tour, start looking for some new pieces of gear to incorporate into the show, go over some repairs and obtain accessories I needed for this trip. 

Hey, hey the time has come for another blog. I just got done the last part of Bonerama’s east coast tour since the last time I posted. Some interesting developments have happened after the Baltimore show at the 8 x 10. Since I live here in the Baltimore area and we had a few days of down time. I invited a few of the guys from the band to have a couple of beers and talk about some ideas I have for the lighting design in the future. So I pulled my notes and made a master list in chronological order based on what we should move toward first.

        Alrighty the first week is in the bag and I’m feeling damn good about it. When I left off the last blog I said Denver was the first stop on the tour. Since the van was heading from Columbus, Ohio we got to make a stop at the Harrah’s Casino in St. Louis, Missouri which was a blast. Well we got into Denver early in the evening so I decided to grab a beer across the street from the hotel to unwind, enjoy downtown, and tell people about the show tomorrow night. It turned out Common was playing right down the street at the Fillmore and I got to meet a lot of cool people and of course a drunken girl that stole a telephone book in the middle of the street. So after a few laughs I went right to bed and I woke the next day to meet the crew and band.