a four-day odyssey

Wednesday

Slept from 12:00am until 12:30am.

Got on the road at 3:30am headed for Champaign, Illinois, with my mother, to pick up my brother Matt. Foggy conditions, and some very bloody deer carcuses on the road, which we ran over.

Arrived at Matt's at around 6:50am. Left about 15 minutes later.

Get a little sleep in the car while Matt drives. We have to be in Nashville in time to meet with someone from the Nashville Symphony front office who listened to the CD and wanted to meet me b/c he couldn't come to the banquet. My uncle Michael gave the symphony my CD.

Oh yeah, didn't I tell you? We were driving to Nashville b/c I was going to perform in an NAACP banquet. Something my uncle Michael set up for me, as he is part of it.

We roll into town sometime around 1:15pm, which is when I woke up from a short nap. Matt and my mother are having difficulty finding the symphony offices, but we eventually get there with time to spare.

Meet with Alan Valentine, who, as we learn only when he gives us his card halfway through the meeting, is the president and CEO of the Nashville Symphony.



He really complimented me on the music and said that he makes an effort to hear new things. Most of the time it's OK, he said, but every once is a while you hear something really good. So, no balogna. He likes the music.

Nothing against balogna...even though the way it's spelled is silly.

I asked him about agents, and he said he would give my CD to an agent from the Agency for Performing Artists that the Nashville Symphony works with. We'll see if anything comes of that. There's never any telling if something like that will work out.



Cool logo. Again: never any telling with these things. We'll see. It may prove that they're not even the right agency for me.

Anyway...

We go to Ruby Tuesday's to eat. I'm already dead tired and feeling beleaguered about several things, in spite of the good experience that the meeting was.

Thursday

I sleep from around 1 am until around 8. Definitely good, but still a short night for someone who got almost no sleep the night before.

Need to get into the venue [the Grand Ballroom at the Renaissance Hotel] to see if I need sound reinforcement and to get used to the piano. We can't get in until 3pm, which is when the piano tuner is scheduled to come in.



We get there at three. No piano tuner. He shows up at 3:15.

The piano tuner proceeds to make what is usually a half-hour process into three times as long. Taking cell phone calls. Being overly thorough. Me somehow not losing my mind. Remember, I need to get ON the piano for the aforementioned reasons.



I finally get on, and, quite The cool picture at the top is one Matt took of me from when I finally got to try out the piano.

And so, the wait to perform. I get onstage and everything feels right. A good performance:



I left the building and walked around [as is my custom]. It was the first time I'd been in this part of downtown Nashville. All the big venues and everything. Quite nice. Someone asked me if he could shine my shoes and I told him no. But, I changed my mind and turned around. Got my first shoe shine.

Didn't expect to sell any CDs, but ended up selling them all. The CDs were home-burned and home-labeled: NOT what I want most people to have. So, please don't ask me for a CD yet if you're a friend or family member [unless you're Mom, Dad, Matt, or Nick.] The official CD will be just as good manufacturing-wise as anything you can buy in a store.

But that was my 'pre-release' [a term I think I may have invented], and it sold out.

Friday

Couldn't get to sleep until 4-something am. Woken up at 8-something am. Felt like CRAP. STILL not a full night of sleep. We got on the road for the next 11 hours or so while we wentback to Champaign, dropped off Matt, had a couple fruitless enterprises, spoke with Nick, my little brother, briefly, and finally started home for St. Louis.

Then, today, to my suprise, my mother has come back again from Champaign with my brother's old computer [which has been replaced with a NEW one], along with a new monitor, keyboard, and speakers! So, all of the sudden, I now own a GOOD COMPUTER for the first time in my life! Thanks Matt and Mom!

...and it's NICE! Real, real nice. It stacks up very well with the really nice computers they have at Webster. In fact, I think they're identical in quality. GREAT!

It's actually a big deal: the first time I won't have to rely on Webster's technology to do computer tasks that rise above the Atari Pong standard. Wow.

And NOW, I get to REST!!!!

Matt took all of these cool pictures, by the way.