If I wasn't so lazy, or if I had a roadie, I'd have a line of guitars on stage. I'd have a lap steel and a nylon string up there, but who wants to keep up with all that?
If we get a few solid festival shows then I will have no problem booking the lads for as many quality club shows around them to make a nice tour come together.
I've definitely gotten to the point where we get to the venue, and people know that I'm in charge of the band.
When I can control my own show, I want the price to be affordable so fans can actually see me. It's a challenge because I have to do a lot of navigating to make the production stellar but do it on a realistic budget.
No matter where I go, I never write the setlist until I'm at the venue.
I did three television shows in Poughkeepsie in one day, with Adrian Adonis and The Iron Sheik. They gave us no food.
We do pretty much the same set list every night, and the show's down to certain cues because we have video and all this production and lights and everything going on.
It doesn't seem as if there's that much of a difference between a big production and a little production, other than you have a smaller space in which to get dressed and you have a shorter waiting time.
Our crew guys, it's amazing what they have to go through to make a show happen every night.
I'm not actually a very keen performer. I like putting shows together. I like putting events together. In fact, everything I do is about the conceptualizing and realization of a piece of work, whether it's the recording or the performance side.
It's one thing to sit back and say, 'Hey let's play a club, that will be great,' but then you get there and say, 'Hey wait, this is the dressing room? Where's my dressing room?'
I decided we should book ourselves, so I started booking the band.
When it comes to being under the ring, I'd either go under before the doors opened or would get snuck under in the dark while a video package played on the screen. There were times when I was underneath for six-plus hours because it wouldn't work out to sneak me under later in the show.
Ninety percent of touring is a logistical maneuver, moving your body and everyone else's from one city to the next. You're like a piece of gear. Then you jump out of the box, get onstage, and play. That sounds cynical, but it sucks to move around so much.
I try to be careful not to do single concerts where I fly out, do my show, turn around and go home.
I started salsa dancing with a few different companies and started touring the country. It was fantastic, but I realized that I really wanted to talk every time we were performing. That's a problem because when you're dancing, if you stop to talk, that's not really cool to the other dancers.
