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September 17th-Day off in Boston, Yay! Recovery time for Japanese jetlag hangover…
September 18th-Today we did a radio show in Boston for WBMX. It was a great bill: Maroon 5, John Mayer, Lenny Kravitz, Alanis Morissette, 5 for Fighting, Los Lonely Boys, and us! It was in an arena, which is pretty damn big for an Adult Top 40 radio show...you usually see Top 40 stations have those big shows, but this one definitely had the big bill to support the venue. While we were waiting in our dressing room to go on stage, John Mayer came in to say hi. I haven't seen him for a long time, since when we played together in Atlanta's Olympic Park 2 years ago I think. He's a really nice guy, but right before he left our dressing room, he said, “It smells like poop in here!” Wah? So the rest of the night whenever he’d come by our room, he’d stick his nose out and sniff. What the hell? We were first up for the night’s show and only got to play 4 songs…Kind of a bummer. I thought we’d be playing to a half empty arena too, but it was surprisingly full and a great crowd. We stuck around afterwards to see Alanis and Maroon 5 play. By the end of the night I was totally shot and still on Japan time, so I passed out…the rest of the band went to some after party and hung with the Maroon 5 guys.
September 19th- We woke up ass early for a day of double acoustic radio show winner performances. First we went to Worcester, Massachusetts and we played at the station for winners, then we went to Providence, Rhode Island and played for winners in a little bar. They were all adult fans, which was a nice change for a moment (although I do like those screaming young girl fans we find elsewhere in the world!). Justin and Corey sat around and watched me; Chops and Arms play all day. Fun fun for them. We found out at the end of this day that “Anything” was number one most added at Adult Top 40 radio in its first week out, which was great news!
September 20th-We woke up early once again and drove to New York. Tonight we were scheduled to play a show with Los Lonely Boys at The China club for WPLJ radio. I went to sound check and saw a young girl fan waiting there with her parents from Scotland. I put her and her folks on the guest list for tonight’s show…very sweet girl. We couldn’t be anywhere near New York without running into The Calling Mom and a bunch of other devoted Lofters! They had all won tickets for the small show. Los Lonely Boys played for a long time first, a great jam band. We went on stage finally and saw that the crowd was mostly older adult winners and a lot of record executive peeps. For what it was, this show actually went really well and the band and I had a blast. We played the song I did with Carlos Santana, “Why Don’t You And I”, for the first time live, and Chops totally rocked all Santana’s parts. During WYWG, our last song, I went down on my knees in front of the crowd, as I usually do, and asked them to sing the final verse with me…A 50 year old totally wasted woman who was making “sexy” faces at me all night came pushing her way up to me, shoving The Calling Mom, and grabbed the mic out of my hand to sing: “In your love…:burp:...in your grove…:slurp:…huh?” She didn’t even know the words, but let me tell you one thing; she did know how to ATTACK! AAAAAH! I tried to get my mic back at that point and this girl grabs my head with both hands tight and starts trying to stuff her tongue down my throat! I could see my new bride, Jennifer, out of the corner of my eye in the back of the club go from laughing to somewhere in between laughing and complete anger. It took me about 10 seconds to keep turning my head and pulling away to finally get let lose of this woman’s gorilla grip and jump back up to a standing position on stage and finish the song up. Everyone was laughing at what happened by that point. As the final chord of WYWG came down I screamed, “Thank you New York! And thank you random drunk molester girl!” I had to run after the show, so a big sorry to The Lofters and The Calling Mom that I didn’t get the chance to say hi afterwards outside. Thank you for coming and supporting us!
September 21st-A day off! (I think so…)
September 22nd- It wasn’t supposed to be another day off, but things changed and it was good. We walked through beautiful Central Park and shopped in the city, and it was good. I ate the best New York Pizza of my life, and it was good. I sound like I’m writing a verse for The Bible right now…and it is not good. Anyway, surprise, surprise, the day off became not a day off with a sudden onslaught of 4 hours of Brazilian phoners. Man, some of these people interviewing me didn’t know anything about the band, didn’t know who I was, didn’t know what to ask, some of them even hung up on me mid conversation. I love Brazil and all, but after those 4 hours of interviews I was about to freak. Anyway, later that night my girl and I went by 17 magazine’s 60th anniversary party…I don’t get much time to ever go to those kinds of things, so it was fun to get out for a change. We saw Hillary Duff there, and Natalie Portman, among others. When we got back to our hotel, I jumped on line to do work as usual, when I got a pleasant surprise from my manager…a scan of the most recent Billboard Magazine…and in it a review of “Anything”! Firstly, I’ve never seen a song of ours even get reviewed in Billboard, nor have I seen a song get a review quite as good as “Anything”! It was awesome. I went to sleep happy, although not much sleep happened cause…
September 23drd- Alright, today I woke up at a sobering 5AM to head out to play at the new “Tony Danza” show. I was looking forward to playing on his show cause we were going to be their first band…and believe it or not, Tony Danza was like the first big celebrity I ever met when I was 8 years old. He came into our dressing room for a little bit and we talked. He’s a really awesome guy and I hope his show lasts longer than most. So far it’s doing really well. I was surprised that we weren’t playing “Anything”, since it’s our new single, instead they wanted “Our Lives”, and a trimmed down 2:30 version of it! Just like Regis and Kelly! Come on people…how long is the average song? The answer is 3:30…can’t we spare ONE extra minute so that every band that comes on your show doesn’t have to massacre the arrangement of their songs? Well the answer to that is:...Dun, Dun, Dun! “The average viewer of these morning shows LOSES interest in the musical acts at 2:30”…wow, makes you kind of, well, sad. Anyway, the performance went fine, the highlight being that Tony Danza stood there next to us while we played and sang along to all the words! Hey! I don’t even know all the words sometimes (you fans know that;). After we were done there, I had to go back to my hotel to do more Brazilian phoners, trying to promote our upcoming tour through the country. That night, my lady and I had another chance to go to an event, this one very important. We headed off to the Youth Aids Benefit event to support the cause, and support my friends. Carlos Santana was to get honored this night for his huge contributions (as was the head of my record label)…he donated all the profits of his tour through America he did last year to the charity. I’m glad I got to play a few of those shows, so I felt like I had helped the cause in some way too. Man, it’s hard to sit there, eating a fancy dinner in a grand ball room, with Clive Davis on my right, Dido on my left, Carlos Santana across from me, and God knows who else that’s dripping with wealth and good fortune, while watching all about these millions of children and adults in Africa infected with Aids and dying a horrible death. It’s like you just want to stand up on the table and scream, “OK! Let’s go people! Right now! Off to Africa! Off to Asia! Off to South America! Let’s fix this problem!” I guess that was the whole point of this event, but it doesn’t quiet happen like that. Ashley Judd is the ambassador, or leader of Youth Aids, and she travels all over the world living with these people and learning about their life and how this terrible disease is being spread every second. She showed everyone some shocking video she shot of her experiences and really had every person in that room wanting to help…including me. With her heart felt speeches and both her inner and outer beauty and strength she has, I was really impressed by her. A few of the artists there got up and performed after dinner. Wow, all I got to say is Patti La Belle can sing her ass off. I’d never heard her live and this intimate…I mean she sang a song she didn’t even know, she was holding the lyrics, singing along to a loan acoustic guitar player behind her. It was truly the most incredible singing I have ever heard in my life, unworldly, it literally brought tears to my eyes. After her, Dido got up and did an awesome performance as well, and then Ashley Judd’s sister, Wynona, did an incredible impromptu cover song. The final performance was by Linda Perry, the former lead singer of 4-Non Blondes. An amazingly gifted singer and songwriter. You might have heard some of her songs she’s written for people recently, like “Beautiful” for Christina Aguilera and “Just Like A Pill” for Pink…but I know her best for that huge radio hit song 4-Non Blondes had that is still played everyday, “What’s Going On?” She came on stage and played a song she had written especially for this event. She was sporting a long suit jacket and a huge Mohawk while she rocked out on the grand piano. She even brought out a huge choir of schoolboys at the last chorus to end the evening. We had to rush out of there by that point and meet up with the rest of the band and the crew at the hotel…it was time to leave New York, this time in a tour bus! Yay, more tour bussing (this bus wasn’t anywhere as nice as the one we had in Canada). We took off for Westchester, Virginia, for a lovely day off tomorrow at Corey’s parent’s farm. All I had heard is that his parent’s place is amazing and he has multiple ATV’s that we can drive around through the farm and woods, so I was excited! Cause I'm a geek! Little did I know that that would be only one of the many fun festivities on tomorrow’s agenda!
September 24th- OK, so you have to remember, I went to bed on the bus as we left one of the biggest and most busiest cities in the world, New York. And where did I wake up? Just about as opposite of a location as possible. I fumbled to put my clothes on in the pitch black “coffin” like bus…mind you, the same outfit 3 days in a row now…I can’t explain why, just lazy I guess, or maybe cause I can’t see what the F*ck I’m putting on!? I shielded my eyes as I opened the bus door to let in the blinding country sunlight. We were parked in the middle of nowhere, at the front of some massive driveway that looked like it went on forever. A huge sign in front of the driveway read, “Civil War Battle Ground”, “No Trespassing!” I knew Corey’s family was involved with the government in some way, but living ON civil war land? How old was this farm? How old was this house? How old are these cow pies we’re standing in!? Nooooo! Cows everywhere, hundreds of them, all white ones, and one bull….A happy camper I’m sure…gets a lot of tail. Anyway, there were 3 ATV’s, parked and poised to follow the driveway ahead of us. All REAL adult size ATV’s too…let’s not get these massive machines mixed up with my little lame red kids ATV I got at a fair in Oregon during the last record’s tour. So, what to do, what to do? Where is everyone? They must be at the house already. Arms just woke up too and hey, Flarb happened to wake up with him, so they jumped on an ATV together and so did I. We started to cruise. The driveway was long and winding, at least a mile long. There was farmland everywhere you looked, and a beautiful river running along side. We crossed over the river via a little stone bridge that was attached to a beautiful very old looking water house. It was a natural spring that was shooting out of the water house, 2 million gallons a day, following its way down the river endlessly. There were some canoes and paddles poised for floating, but I was having way too much fun on these frikkin ATV’S! Man, they’re fast! 40, 50, 60 MPH! Holly Sh*t! Almost drove off the bridge! “Watch out Flarb!” “He can’t swim!” “Neither can you Arms!” No, I’m just kidding, Arms can swim…Flarb taught him;) Anyway, we passed by another Civil War Battle Field sign and then finally the huge stone house appeared in the distance. Corey’s parents were doing major restoration to the house; you could see it being fixed. It was originally built in 1770, just a little bit old!…well, actually older than our country if you get down to the details! A lot of history here. As we drove up and around to the back of the house, the biggest barn I had ever seen appeared. Sacha came busting out of the barn on one of those “Segway” upright people moving lawn mower looking things. I was like, “Get off beeyatch! I’ve been wanted to try one of those things forever!” So I ditched the ATV and drove my way up the hill and into the old beat up looking barn on the Segway. I couldn’t have been more surprised at what I found inside. Firstly, the barn was beautiful inside, with its 25 foot high wood beam ceilings, light pouring in through little holes in the walls where the wood groves didn’t match perfectly. It looked totally new inside, with a full stage and drum riser, lighting rig, a DJ setup, the entire creepy band of animatronics singing animals you use to watch at Chucky Cheeses (weird?), bicycles, electric scooters, pingy friggin pongy for crying out loud, a full bar with drunk people included, a dance floor, heating lamps, the old arcade game “Frogger”…it was like heaven…and what’s in heaven….BACON of course! And biscuits and eggs and pancakes and syrup and sausage and coffee and orange juice and just about the best breakfast I’d ever had, made for us by Corey’s sweet country cookin’ Mom. I won’t go too much further into what we did all day, cause it’s just too much to talk about, but I will list a few of the things that are fresh in my memory. There were guns, shot guns and hand guns…I’m not a gun fan, never shot one, never wanted to, but everyone was shooting those little clay skeet things that go flying in the air. No one was having too much luck hitting them, except Corey and Chops, who grew up on this different planet and are more familiar with it than us Hollywood boys. I said I’d give it a try and held up the shotgun. They let the skeet go flying hundreds of feet up over the Civil War Battleground and I shot it and watched it explode into thousands of pieces. A shotgun is scary. It’s heavy, and it kicks back in your arms so much so that your balance gets thrown off…I don’t know how I hit that thing first try, but I was done shooting the second I did. I was like, “OK, no more guns for me! Heh heh heh…back to driving the ATV’s…mmmmkay”. We all had the time of our lives the rest of the day, doing anything and everything. “Anything” actually came on the radio in the barn while we were having lunch, and then came on again during dinner! It was wild. We had to make one trip away from the fun house for 20 minutes into the city to go find high-speed Internet…the “Anything” video was finished and ready to be watched. We were all extremely happy at the way it turned out, especially since the concept for it came only three days before the actual shoot day…it was the fastest video shoot that I had ever done, and it was the fastest production that RCA had ever had to put together. But, we pulled it off and I think the video turned out really sweet. I’m glad to hear you guys like it too. Let’s make this song happen people! Please sweet Jesus! Call your local radio stations, drive them crazy, request the video on all the music channels possible over and over again, turn your friends into fans, turn your parents into fans, turn yourself into an “Anything-Zombie-Junky” fan….”La, la, la, whatever you want…uh huh, uh huh, whatever you need…yes, yes, I’ll do it, I’LL DO IT!” Anyway, so far so good, you know you guys are the greatest:) Well, the fun farm day was over and we had to get back on the bus and start driving all night to lovely Louisville, Kentucky for a radio show tomorrow night.
September 25th-We woke up to the sound of roller coasters and screams, ah yes, another radio show at a theme park, nice. The taste of corn dogs, the smell of vomit, the whining children…Tonight’s show had an odd lineup. There was The Calling, whoever the hell they are, Brooke Hogan, Ryan Cabrera, Jojo and some others. We went on second to last, Ryan closed the show…most of the little girls who were there were there for him. Our set went just fine, short and sweet. That night after the show, we started our drive to the Cleveland airport where we will all be going our separate ways tomorrow...does this ever end?
September 26th-We all got woken up by Sacha at like 6am, “GET OFF THE BUS NOW, get your sh*t together, we’re at the airport now and they don’t like 45 foot long tour busses crowding the drop off point! NOW MOVE MEN!” So, Sacha, me, Arms, and Chops grabbed our acoustic guitars and headed over to get on our flight to Portland, Oregon…we had a few more days of radio winner performance thingies to do in multiple cities before we get to go home. Justin took off to Nashville, his old stomping grounds for a few days, and Corey flew back to his little house on the prairie in Virginia. The next time we all meet up again will be a week from now in crazy Brazil! I keep telling these guys, just wait, just wait, just wait till we get to Brazil, you ain’t seen nothing yet. So the four of us flew all day, through Minneapolis, and finally arrived in Portland later that night. We got the chance to watch the premier of “Club House” once we got to our hotel. It was so cool to hear “Our Lives” as the theme song! And they played it at the end of the show too! I thought it was a really cute show…hopefully the ratings will pick up, cause they haven’t been so amazing yet. Maybe if we all turn every TV on in our houses at the same time Tuesday nights…
September 27h- We got up and did some radio visits during the day and then played an acoustic show for 1,000+ people at a nice club. A full rock band opened for us. I wonder why we’re playing this club, acoustic, while some local full rock band opens for us?…it makes us look and sound small…we should have had the whole bad with us, but hey, what do I know? The show was still a lot of fun and the audience seemed to like us…I was just on the lookout for the crazy molester woman!
September 28h-We got up super early and flew to Spokane, Washington, to do the same run down as yesterday: Visit the station, talk about the acoustic show tonight, go to sound check, then play the acoustic show for 1,200+ people. A full band opened for us yet again this night, but this time it was a female singer, and a more chill band, kind of reminded me of Natalie Merchant. Show went really well, better than last night’s. It was all adults, everyone drunk, good fun. We went back to the hotel to sleep since we had to wake up early yet again for another morning flight.
September 29h-One of my most dreaded things on tour,…The double fly day! Noooo! Fly in the morning, and fly at night. Remember, all of these flights we’re taking everyday are ONE WAYS, not “ROUND TRIPS”, so we ALWAYS are the randomly selected overly security screened passengers! They dig through all your luggage, they put them through X rays, they make you take off your coat, your hat, your shoes, your belt, empty your pockets, take your laptop out of it’s case, leave the shotgun behind, internally search Flarb with a rubber glove, OH NO! FLARB! show your passport, show your ticket, show your passport again, show your ticket and passport, and hey, let see them one more time shall we? Is it still me? Did I change? Then why has the same person looked at my passport and ticket 5 times?…Are they waiting for my head to start disappearing from the picture like in Back To The Future? Anyway, so this day began with the whole airport experience, nothing new, and we landed safely in cold grey Seattle. We went right to yet another acoustic adult winner show thingy, only this one in the middle of the afternoon, and for like only 70 people in this small movie theater. Everyone was exceptionally nice at this new station that we did the acoustic gig for. We did the meet and greet thing afterwards and then it was back to the airport, yay. I hate the airport. OK, so we get on our plane and make our way to crazy Las Vegas. The final stop before home! It’s time to lose some money! We got to Vegas late that night and checked into the Palms Hotel, supposedly one of the new hot spots in Vegas, cause it’s off the main strip and it’s “hip”. Tomorrow’s a very busy day, so sleep was essential, after trying my luck at the poker machines first that is, hey…it’s my first time to Vegas now that I’m actually of legal age to gamble. I’ll tell you a quick little story; hopefully I won’t get arrested for it…
When I was 15, my family and I all went once to Vegas for two days together…the reason? A family member was getting married….my reason? To gamble. Yes, yes, yes. A friend of mine had recently acquired a REAL California driver’s License of some guy named “Kenny” for me. “Kenny” looked sort of like me, but he was born in 1967, just a measly 14-year age difference…no problem. I had this ID and it was my ticket to gambling. Ok, so we’re staying in a sweet at Caesar’s Palace, my whole family and I, the six of us. My sister and I were out in the living room on a fold out couch. I waited until everyone was asleep late at night, snuck my clothes on and slipped out the door. My sister woke up, sh*t! “Where are you going?” “I, uh, to buy a toothbrush, I forgot mine…” I love my sis, but man she was gullible! I rode the elevator down to the casino floor, my heart pumping, my ID clenched in one hand and two bucks in the other. Ding. I ran to the first machine I saw directly in front of the elevators. I looked around a little, tried to seem casual and then, BAM! I threw one of my dollars into the poker machine. My cards popped up on the screen, a ten, a jack, a queen, a king, and an eight. Damn! One card away from a flush, which I’m sure pays out well. I looked around at the casino employees everywhere, and into the camera’s pointing at me from the ceiling…come on, come on! I traded that eight for a new card, and what did I get? An ace. A friggin ace. What are the odds? Unbelievable. I won $2,850 dollars cash money, right there and then…from my one dirty underage dollar. I jumped out of my seat like a giddy child…well, that’s what I was at the time… and cheered. But then, darkness fell upon me, the police siren light on top of the machine came on screaming, shooting red and blue light in all directions. It was saying, “Come look at me! I’m Kenny! A 29 year old trapped in a little 15 year olds body! SH*T! Not good, not good”. The casino security came over to me within second. First they congratulated me on my win and then promptly asked for my ID. They asked me my name, where I was from, my age, all the things I had memorized about Kenny, even his signature. And then, they left and took the ID with them; they said they had to “verify it”. What the f*ck does that mean? Were they on to me? They had to be! I looked like a little boy…or even a little girl to some people:( So I sat there and waited, and waited, and waited….a half hour goes by and by this point I’m sh*ting in my pants….Do I get up and run away, back up to my room, leaving my newly acquired fake ID behind and $2,850 in prize money? Or do I keep waiting here with the possibility of getting either arrested or awarded? Right then the guys came back and said, “Sorry Mr. Kenny, we had to verify that this was a REAL ID, and it is, so here’s your cash.” Ha! The hundreds started stacking up in my sweaty hands. As soon as he was done counting I got up and ran to my hotel room, faster than I have ever ran before in my life. I snuck back in and put the money under my pillow and closed my eyes. My sister woke up, “Did you get your toothbrush? It took you a while…” “Yah, I got it baby, heh, heh, heh, don’t choo worry…” :) So, what do I do the next day? I tell my Dad about my winnings (I don’t think he even got mad at me for gambling), and somehow I talked him into putting ALL my winnings on one hand of black jack for me. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Yah, I lost it all in less than a minute. Moral of the story? Don’t be stupid like me…keep what you illegally win fools!
September 30th- Today was a Vegas radio show extravaganza day! First we drove from our hotel, The Palms, to the Stratosphere hotel’s club and sound checked for our 1st show tonight for Star radio in LA. We were scheduled to play with Gavin Degraw for that one, and I would have loved to stay and watch his set cause I’m a fan, but we had to go play another show right after at The Palms with Uncle Cracker. So after sound checking at The Stratosphere, we rushed over to The Palms and sound checked really quick right after Uncle Cracker. I could tell already that this would be the more fun show to play of the night since it was set outside by the pool and there was going to be a ton of people there. So, hey, right after sound checking at The Palms, we rushed back to The Stratosphere and played our gig for the Star winners in the club. There were only about 60 people in this huge theater, so it was very intimate and quiet…a little too quiet. We finished our set and dashed back into the pink Palm’s Cadillac Escalade and drove back to our hotel for the next gig. We arrived there just in time to start playing our next acoustic show for all the people out by the pool at The Palms. This show was a lot of fun, and it was all for charity…the radio station raised $50,000 for The Rape Crisis Center. We ended our set and raced to the airport to grab the last flight home to LA! I finally got home at 2AM. It was the nicest feeling ever to go to sleep in my own bed. I needed to enjoy every second of it, since I’m only going to be home for two days before I leave again for a Brazilian and European tour that last until November.
October 1st- Even though I was home with this day “off”, I still spent half of it working. We went to Napster’s headquarters to record some live acoustic versions of a few songs for their website. The rest of the day and the following day I ran around the city like a madman trying to squeeze every little thing possible into like a few hours….go to my favorite restaurants, stock up on snacks, get my hair cut, go to dry cleaner, see my friends, see my family, see my cats, see Aaron, etc.
October 2nd- A true (but very busy) day off! I went to bed early cause tomorrow we’re flying out at 7am to Brazil…A 5 day tour through the crazy country that is sure to create a multi-million-page tour diary! ;) We’ll see what’s in store for us next. Until then...
