So, we are a few shows in to this tour, let me catch you all up.
After a day of rehearsal in LA the band, Ethan, and Gene flew out to Houston for the first show at the Hobby Center.
We had to rent gear for this show from Guitar Center who was the only place in town who had the gear we needed available. After picking it up, we arrived at the venue around 1pm and started setting up and getting to sound check. We didn’t know this at the time, but that sound check would be the worst. The ‘sound guy’ that the venue recommended had never run sound there before! Needless to say, the 5 hours of sound check and rehearsal were miserable.
Pro tip: If you have to remind the sound guy which monitor mix you are on, find a new sound guy.
Apparently, during the show there was some drama between Gene (Ethan’s father/manager) and the guy sitting at the sound board, but the show went fine.
The next morning, we drove the Bortnick family to the airport for an early flight then returned the Guitar Center gear. With an afternoon in Houston we had a little time to relax before returning the van and flying to Detroit.
We drove to Houston Hobby airport early to grab a bite before our flight at Whataburger, a Texas-based burger chain. Whilst we consumed our delicious and greasy burgers, we somehow realized that our flight was not departing from Houston Hobby airport, but was flying out from George Bush International airport.
In a panicked rush, we hopped in the van and sped the 45 minutes to the correct airport, at the same time calling the rental car company to see if we could return the car to a different location (fortunately, they obliged). With sighs of relief we checked in at the airport, only to be told that our flight was delayed 3 hours. #spiritistheworstairline
Okay, at least we made it to the airport in time, now we’ll just waste time at the gate on the free airport wifi. But after passing through security, we discovered that the airport wifi wasn’t working; this was going to be a long 3 hours. And it was, it also turned into 5 hours, and there were no other flight options to get us to Detroit (where we had a show the next day).
After hours off iPad games and wandering the airport and angry tweets, finally we took off at 1am, landed in Detroit and got to our airport around 6am, just in time for breakfast at the lovely Hampton Inn. Too angry to sleep, I ran on the treadmill and showered, then caught an hour and a half nap.
The Detroit show was at the Royal Oak Theater, where we had played three years earlier with Ethan. With many hands to help, we setup our newly acquired gear that we will be carrying with us the rest of the tour and sound checked. The sound crew was wonderful, many thanks to Bill and Toby for making it easy! We also had a guest choir of 80 kids that could barely fit on the stage, but we made it work.
The show was awesome and our executive producer, Anmar, was there, it’s always a pleasure to see him.
Dinner that night was from Little Brother’s, a block away from the Royal Oak Theater and was as spectacular as we remembered from three years earlier!
Then we started our 3-hour drive to Cleveland for our Mother’s Day matinee show the next day. Gene drove the whole way and most of us slept, we got in to the hotel around 4am and immediately conked out. After a few hours of sleep we headed to the Ohio Theater in Playhouse Square.
All of us were dead tired, but still managed to pull off a good show, thanks to our newest team member, Aly, who started with us in Detroit. She’s our catch-all, do-anything-and-everything intern. She makes our lives much easier.
The Cleveland show is a bit hazy due to the seriously tiring schedule of the last few days, I’m pretty sure everything went well and there were no catastrophes that I can remember, so that’s good. For dinner after the show, we went to a local Lebanese restaurant and my rolled pita chicken sandwich (I forget the name of it) was delicious.
We proceeded to the hotel and slept, finally, for many hours
And now we are on our way to Milwaukee for a couple days before our show in Green Bay.
