An interesting little park near our hotel in Akron
Home of the Akron Aeros
EJ Thomas Hall
Mystic Lake Showroom, Prior Lake, MN
My dear friends James, Aimee and Jonathan
Hey, everyone! I hope this week treated you well! Things have started to get busy on our tour. We have hit the portion of our schedule that begins what we call split weeks; that means, that within a week we will often play more than one venue. Sometimes only for a night, sometimes for a couple. It becomes a very busy schedule for us, but even busier for our crew, who often will have to drive through the night on a sleeper bus and load in as soon as they get to a venue. It's going to be one hell of a ride, and though there will be times where I won't be able to see a whole lot, I will take as many pictures and tell you about the week as best I can.
We left Boston on Monday morning and headed to Akron. It was a bit of a long day with a couple of connecting flights. It was quite a bit colder in Ohio as well, but thankfully I was prepared. After taking some time to myself in my room, I headed out to walk around the main drag a bit. The hotel was a bit on the desolate side, but thankfully there were quite a few places nearby. I ended up having a much needed grilled cheese sandwich at a place called Lockview, and hung with a few of the boys at another place called Brubakers; they had a great jukebox, so we just hung around listening to tunes and playing pool.
Tuesday was pretty low key, though I did walk around a bit and took a few pictures. Because we were only there for a short time, there wasn't much of an opportunity to see much. We opened that night, and the audience was pretty amazing; not only that, there didn't look to be any open seats. The majority of the cast and crew headed to Lockview that night, and had a pretty awesome time having some local microbrews and watching the random film noir/Kung fu/Hitchcock movies that were playing at the bar. I didn't really do much on Wednesday, though I did go to a great Thai place for lunch. It was very weird to head to the theatre that night with the knowledge that we were closing after only 2 shows. James, Patrick, Corey and I headed to another place, Baxter's, so that we could watch the game on the big screen. And we won!
Thursday was a pretty quick travel day thankfully, and once we got into Minnesota, it was a bit of a drive to the Mystic Lake casino. We were staying at the casino's hotel, so it proved to be a very interesting week. The hotel gave us meal vouchers for every meal over our 3 day stay, which certainly helped out everyone's wallets; considering quite a few people lost some money.....
Now, when we played Vegas overa year ago, I discovered my casino kryptonite: the Ghostbusters slot machine. I don't know what it is about that dern thing, but I can't get enough of it. After a couple of days of trying to come out on top, I did not. Not to worry dear readers, it wasn't a whole lot of money.
I spent most of my day on Friday just hanging around the hotel. I went to the gym for the first time in awhile, and even stepped into te sauna for a bit. After a couple of surpringly good meals, I headed...down the hall...to our theatre within the casino. It was a very different venue than we were used to playing, so the crew had an interesting time trying to adapt to their theatrical surroundings. But, new challenges aside, the theatre was packed, and they were a hell of a crowd. I did a meet and greet with some VIP's after the show, and then retired to my room, as me and the boys had a 6:15 call the next morning for press in Minneapolis. And let me tell you, 4 AM came pretty early. Though we were up and performing before the sun even came up, it was a lot of fun, and seemed to be a success. Once home, I slept most of the day since I had really only gotten a couple of hours the night before. I headed to the show, which was great again, and afterward I got to meet up with my friends James, his wife Aimee and our mutual friend Jonathan. It had been quite a while since I had seen any of them, so I was overjoyed that they came to the show and that got to spend the night catching up. Unfortunately, my Sox lost that night.
Our last show at the casino was a Sunday matinee, and the crowd did not disappoint. It is pretty amazing to see how different audiences in an array of cities react to the show, but we have also been overwhelmed thus far by thir positive response. I laid low for a bit after the show, and in the evening a few of us headed up to a suite that Tyler had rented to throw a little party/Red Sox viewing party. I'm happy to say that we pulled out another win, and me and the boys had a blast hanging out.
And that brings us up to date. I'm writing you from the airport in Wichita, as we embark on a journey to two Texas cities for the weekend. Oof. But, it's been a great week thus far, and I have no doubt it will end well. That's all for now, but stay tuned for more news from the road next week!
No comments:
Post a Comment