March 5, 2005
Band job came off without a hitch last night. I had a roadie and he did the distasteful aspects of the gig, mainly the load in and the load out. Melrose did a good job and like most roadies you pay him in beer. Like I said before, it was Hawaiian theme and it was at Rawhide. Someone named us the Don Ho Trio, which was sort of cute except there were four of us.

I had forgotten how much everyone ignores the band. Nobody clapped or even acknowledged us, except Melrose, standing way in the back by the beer wagon, "That drummer ROCKS!!" he kept yelling after every song, especially the slow ones.

We played for about an hour and a half while people were looking at the stuff for the silent auction. We knocked off around seven, and ate dinner (cowboy steak chuckwagon style). While we were eating Tommy's old basketball coach came up and said, "Don't go anywhere, have I ever got something for you,” and he went outside and came back with a big three foot blow-up photo of Thomas Charles driving the lane four years ago. They have had the basketball picture up in their office and were about to get rid of it and Terry, the coach remembered that I was playing this gig and rather than throw it away he gave it to Kathy and I. What a cool deal. That made the whole gig worth it right there.

It was fun to play again but I really started to get tired and had to drink a cup of coffee. "Man, what time is it?" I asked our roadie who said, “It's pushing eight o'clock dad."

Worked on two Wyatt Earp blasting Frank Stilwell in the Tucson train station paintings all day today. Nice effects of nighttime shotgun blast. May be to graphic for the Arizona Republic (mucho blood, smoke, death stare, the usual BBB staples).

"I never said all the things I said."
—Yogi Berra
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