April 28, 2005 • New Orleans

It's 8 am and I have volunteered to get up out of my bunk for the second time this morning. The difference is this time I have decided to drink coffee and so, am truly committing to this unnecessary early rise.

Today is our first visit to Jazzfest in New Orleans. It's a huge festival and I am partly crediting my uncharacteristically early brain activity to the excitement of being not only in this city, but at this huge festival.

We're parked behind the stage we'll be playing on, and there's a whole mess of crew guys working on getting the stage set up, moving gear up the ramp to the stage, in prep for the certain bands that are coming up today.

We had barbeque ribs on the bus after the show last night. Lots of ribs. And most everyone who has stumbled out of the dark-as-night bunk area this morning, has had, in addition to the customary crinkled, wincing face in response to the unreasonably bright front lounge, a baffled expression on, and eventually they mutter something about the weirdest dream they had last night.

It looks like we're parked on a race track and the majority of the festival seems to be in the infield. I just put the back of my hand to the window and feels warm out, but not unbearable. We're going to have to get going to the hotel now if we're to make it back in time to do an interview at 1. So I'd better go now. bye bye