Philadelphia!

There we are in black and white at World Cafe Live and thank you Katie Jacoby for sending me this photo!

I've played the World Cafe Live as a Rock School All-Star, a member of Project Object, and Monday night with Adrian Belew. I knew from my past experiences with Rock School and Project Object that the audience would be enthusiastic, but nothing prepared me for that crowd!

This has been a hard week for me, but I knew that the Philadelphia show was going to be special. Soundcheck was at 4:00 and I was frustrated. My floor tom drumhead was completely dead and the sound guys must've thought I was crazy. It sounded like I was playing a set of gigantic timpanis! My parents ran out for me to 8th street music and picked up a new drumhead, they always save the day. We got through the soundcheck with my out-of-tune drums and I was stressed out.

As I get up from the kit all of a sudden a familiar face starts walking towards me. It's Taylor Hawkins, the drummer for the Foo Fighters....what?!! The first thought
that went through my mind was, "Oh my god, Taylor thinks I suck at drums." Not true! He was a sweet guy and we talked about drum nerd stuff, you know, how John Bonham tuned his bass drum and which snare drum Stewart Copeland used. I introduced Taylor to my friend Carolyn and then he came up to Adrian and started telling him how much enjoyed the recent Crimson records (he even pronounced Mastelotto correctly! That's right!).

I went outside to the area where most musicians would be smoking cigarettes and sure enough, Dave Grohl was sitting there. My teenage idol was there right in front of me and I tried to keep it cool. I told Dave about my Tama kit (Dave and Taylor are longtime Tama endorsers) and they were nice enough to come and check out my kit, take a picture with Carolyn and I, and talk about even more nerdy drum stuff. Thanks guys!

The show was about to begin and my normal adrenaline rush kicked into gear. There was a magic in the air and we could all feel it. Adrian and I did our normal pre-show giggling while Julie pranced about the dressing room like a maniac. We did our 80's hand warm-ups and ran out on stage to a screaming crowd. The show that night was almost perfect -- about as energetic as you could imagine. I could feel the crowd get sucked in from the second we started playing and they continued to dance the entire night. Adrian almost made my head explode when he announced we'd be doing a live record from the stage. Side Four here we come!

I would like to thank all of my friends who showed up -- Maira Clancy, Ben Grimm, Branden King, Carolyn, Katie Jacoby, Courtney Drew, Louis Graff, Amanda, Zach Bukowski, and Zach Gliva. I would like to especially thank the two Rachels in my life: Rachel Forman-Rubinsky and Rachel Kahn, both amazing support systems and the latter has never even seen me play before after two years of friendship.

Thanks to everyone for a memorable night.

And now this evening, on the 37th anniversary of Woodstock, we are playing an outdoor festival in Atlanta with Bela Fleck and Umphrey's McGee, and then it's off to finish the tour this weekend in Florida. We take some time off (not me -- I'll be gigging all over the place with various projects I have with the bass player from Ween) and then we hit the west coast with Adrian in November.

Okay, I'm going to go chill for a bit. Glad everyone in Philly liked the show -- I got some emails and so did my mom which really made us feel great.