Writing to you from the Continental flight 56 (Rome to New York) on August 4th, 2009. As I have done in the past, I would like to document some of the details of the 21-day tour I am about to complete, with the hopes of shedding some light on the inner workings of the touring musician’s existence. It was a wonderful tour, albeit trying at times. The 21-day period felt more like 21 months in some ways. Due to the non-stop action, the tour went by quickly although time slowed to a crawl during the “waiting for something to happen” periods. These included waiting to board the next flight, waiting to get into the hotel room that was not ready after a long travel day, waiting for the first band to finish so we could play our set, and waiting for information on certain aspects of the tour that would allow us to plan accordingly. In the words of one renowned guitar player, these were the moments when “nothing kept happening”.

The planning of this tour was almost 6 months in the making. It wound up being a hodgepodge of different playing situations that I was miraculously able to string together. The final details were not actually in place until a few days before I left Los Angeles for Paris on July 15th.This was not an easy endeavor for this composer-arranger-detail freak, who is normally accustomed to knowing well in advance what is going on and how it will all fit together. Many dates either changed or dropped out all together. A Yellowjackets date in Angola Africa suddenly appeared in the middle of this run that we were compelled to take, making things quite interesting. I was pretty much tearing my hair out trying to get all this organized. At a certain point I had to “surrender to the process”, and hope for the best. While certain aspects of the run of dates were solid, much of the tour had holes in terms of details and logistical information. The earthquake in Laquilla, Italy threw a serious wrench in the works of the dates in Italy. Budgets were cut for the arts, and several of the concerts were not confirmed until the very last minute.

So fasten your seat belt. Here we go!

Wednesday, July 15th D-day! Up at 3:30 AM. Take car service to LAX. Having just returned from a seminar in Valencia, Spain three days earlier, I am jet lagged out of my mind. Carla was supposed to come with me for the first part of the tour, but she has an accident in our new house and cracks two ribs. Really bummed about that. Anyway, get on a 7AM flight alone to Newark, then dash to make the connection to Paris.

Thursday, July 16th Arrive Paris At 7AM on the 16th, Met by Pierrick, Nikolas Folmer’s assistant, and drive to the hotel in Paris. The room is not ready so we go for some breakfast. 23 hours after leaving out home in LA I get into my hotel room. Sleep for 2 hours and then go to a rehearsal with Nikolas Folmer quintet. Nikolas is a beautiful trumpet player, composer, and co-leader of the Paris Jazz Big Band. Dinner after the rehearsal, then to bed about 11 PM. Toss and turn from the jet lag, but get roughly 7 hours horizontal time. Wish my wife were with me!

Friday, July 17th Free morning in Paris (kind-of) although still trying to organize the middle part of the tour for my quartet and complete the itinerary. Information is still coming slowly. Go for supplies (water, fruit, breakfast stuff) Hand wash some clothes (I travel VERY light to avoid checking luggage). Look over the music for the evening’s performance-live recording at Duke des Lombards, a nice jazz joint in Paris. Sound check-rehearsal in the afternoon. Play-record two sets at 9 and 11. Dinner is served before the first set, which consisted of roughly 40 brusel sprouts per person and a tiny sliver of chicken. Much gas will be passed first set! The night goes well and the band sounds great! Still getting comfortable with the music, but it is feeling pretty good. Great musicians in the band: Nikolas Folmer on trumpet, Antonio Ferrao on piano, Jerome Regard on bass, and Benjamin Henocq on drums.

Saturday, July 18th Spend most of the morning trying to assemble the itinerary for the next week when John Riley, Jay Anderson, and Phil Markowitz are arriving in Paris to start a week long run of concerts. Still missing hotel, travel, and concert details. Tearing more hair out! Practice music for the second night of recording at Duke des Lombard. Rest for the onslaught that is about to begin on Sunday. Go for dinner at Duke des Lombard at 8. Have some unidentifiable substance in a bowl with cheese on top. Not the French cuisine I know. More gas is passed this night on the bandstand. The band pretty much nails the music, and the general consensus is that we should have a good recording. It was great to hang in Paris in an old-time jazz room and mingle with the Paris jazz crowd. A good time was had by all!

Sunday, July 19th After two hours sleep, check out of the hotel and take a taxi to Paris Orly airport for a 7AM flight to Rome on an Easy Jet flight (not easy). Check-in is utter chaos and takes over an hour. Arrive in Rome at 9:30 and drive to Peschara on the east coast of Italy (3 hour drive). Sleep for an hour and go to a rehearsal with the Maurizio Rolli Big Band, which will perform at the Peschara Jazz Festival, one of the oldest in Europe. My dear friend Peter Erskine is playing drums. Great to hang with Pete! Play a bunch of music I’m seeing for the first time on top of jet lag and lack of sleep. Go back to the hotel and have a nice dinner with Pete. Return to the venue to hear the opening act (Ahmad Jamal). Kenny Washington is playing drums with Ahmad. Good to see the jazz maniac after many years. They go to play their set. Kenny says “time to make the doughnuts” before taking the stage. The set sounded a bit like doughnut making. Not sure why. And it went on for two hours. Waiting around for our set to begin. Fall asleep on a couch with my mouth wide open. Musicians wondering if Bob Mintzer is still alive. Finally play the set, which goes fairly well, and is audio and video taped for a subsequent DVD release. Immediately after the set I am informed that I have to leave for the airport immediately due to a shortage of drivers to make my 7 AM flight. This means I will have to sit in the airport for 4 hours! I squawk to the point where they agree to let me sleep 2 hours at the hotel before departing for the airport.

Monday, July 20th Seriously sleep deprived and jet lagged, I am driven to Rome Fumicino airport to board the 7AM flight to Geneva. There I will do a concert with the George Robert Big Band and special guest Ivan Lins. I’m really excited about this concert, as I have arranged a CD’s worth of Ivan’s music for Georges Big Band. I will get to hear the music performed for the first time. Ivan is a great songwriter and crooner! George Robert is a wonderful saxophonist, composer, and a dear friend. Anyway, things are organized! Met at the airport, driven to the hotel. The room is ready! Hooray! Sleep for 2 hours and go to the rehearsal-sound check. The band sounds great and the music is fine. Quick dinner and play the concert. All goes well, and some great music is documented.

Tuesday, July 21st Day off in Geneva (sort of). Sleep in and do laundry and spend HOURS trying to gather the remaining information for the quartet tour. The NY guys are leaving tomorrow for Paris, and I still don’t have all the information to finish the itinerary. I’m now terrorizing the agent to try and get this information. Most of these dates to follow are in Italy. Contrary to Switzerland, where things function very much like a fine Swiss watch, Italy moves at a very different pace, and frequently borders on the verge of utter chaos. I miss my wife. I wish she were with me. This was supposed to be our little vacation! I receive an email that the Yellowjackets have an offer to play the first jazz festival in Angola, Africa. I am trying to shuffle things around so I can join them in Angola on July 31st for this one concert. A mini nightmare! Have to see how it all pans out.

Wednesday, July 22nd Take a morning train back to Paris. Very pleasant! Do some writing and learning tunes for a date on the 29th with John Abercrombie, Jeff Berlin, and Adam Nussbaum in Italy. Arrive in Paris in the early afternoon and have lunch with Nikolas Folmer and his wife. Rush back to the hotel and squeeze out the final details of the itinerary for the NY guys (still not complete!!) who are flying to Paris this evening. Later we convene at Duke Des Lombard to hear Eric Alexander, Harold Mayburn, Joe Farnsworth, and Darryl Hall. The music is great, and Eric sounds ridiculous! It was wonderful to sit, relax, and hear some good music after all the tumultuous activity, and before the onslaught that was to follow.

Thursday, July 23rd John, Phil, and Jay arrive in the morning. I get them situated in their rooms and spend the rest of the morning organizing the tour, trying to find out what all I need to go to Angola (vaccinations, visa, etc). We rehearse at Duke des Lombard late afternoon for the evening concert. Nikolas Folmer is joining us on this night, and the music will be recorded to be included in Nikolas’ new CD (two tunes). Great to have my bro’s on board. John, Phil, Jay, and I have played together for almost 30 years. A seriously great rhythm section! Play the concert for a packed house and make some great music. Get to bed around 2 AM.

Friday, July 24th Up at 6:30 to make a train to Toulon, France, where we will play with Nikolas and our quartet at a very nice festival. The train takes 4 hours and we travel through some beautiful country side! Get to the hotel, sleep for an hour, do the sound check, have a quick dinner, and play the concert. A great night! Actually get a normal night’s sleep. Hooray!

Saturday, July 25th Pick-up at the hotel at 9:00 AM for the drive to Sori, Italy. We squeeze into a van that is barely large enough for 4 big cats and minimal luggage. Drive for 6 hours to Sori, Italy. The drive is very nice, traveling along the cote d’azure through Antibes, Nice, and Monaco. Arrive in Sori late afternoon (near Genoa). Check into the hotel, sleep for an hour and go to sound check. We are playing in what looks like a parking lot to a large Olympic sized pool. The promoter and crew are real cool and hard-core music fans. We have an outstanding dinner after sound check next to the stage, and play a concert after an opening act. Nice to play with the cats! We’re supposed to be paid in US Dollars. Instead we’re paid in Euros. Not good! It’s easy to get hosed on the exchange of Euros to Dollars unless you do it at a bank in Europe. That’s the way it goes. Back to the hotel. Short night and an early flight from Genoa to Naples.

Sunday, July 26th Up at 5:30 AM, drive to Genoa airport.1-hour flight to Naples. Board a van. Drive 1 1/2 hours to Vico. Vico is a beautiful town up in the mountains overlooking the sea above Naples. The rooms at the hotel are not ready.Why am I not surprised! Find out that we are being paid in Euros again. OH NO! I’m supposed to pay the cats in Dollars. We go out for lunch. Back to the hotel. Some cats swim. I sleep for a few hours. Sound check , dinner, and the concert at 10 PM. We play in a lovely square with a receptive audience. The playing is great. It’s the travel that we get paid for!

Monday, July 27th Van back to Naples airport. Noon flight to Geneva on Easy Jet (still not easy!). Back to predictability and clockwork-like organization. Do the sound check, have a great dinner with George Robert, and play a really nice concert in a small theatre in the old part of town. George plays with us and tears it up! Big fun!

Tuesday, July 28th Back to the land of chaos! Two-flight day through Rome back to Naples. Something tells me not to check bags. Jay and I do not. Riley and Phil check their bags. Show up in Naples and the checked bags don’t make it. Not good! Drive 3 hours to Ispani, a small town out in the middle of nowhere. Sleep for an hour. Go to dinner, which is fantastic! Go to do a quick line check and the concert. When we arrive at the stage the audience is sitting in the dark. The crew has short-circuited the whole village! No power and no lights. Nice! More “nothing keeps happening”. Eventually we regain partial power and play what actually was a really nice set. The music wins out no matter what all else is going on. Back to the hotel. Sleep for 2 hours.

Wednesday, July 29th Leave hotel at 3AM. Up to this point we’ve been calling Alitalia every hour or so. They keep saying they have not located John and Phil’s bags. We stop at Naples airport and the bags are sitting there. Why didn’t anyone know this? Land of chaos! We drop John, Jay and Phil off at the Naples train station. They take a train to Rome, then another train to Fumicino Airport, and fly back to NY. I drive 3 hours to Civitella, a small town not far from Laquilla. On the way we stop for a sandwich at an Aotogrill. Next to this food stand are hundreds of canvas tents set up in rows where folks who lost their homes in the earthquake are living. It is around 100 degrees out there, and must be very uncomfortable for those living in the tents. Makes me very grateful! We arrive in Civitella, check into a very nice hotel, although not air conditioned, and chill (bake) for a few hours. That night I play with Jeff Berlin, John Abercrombie, and Adam Nussbaum. We have a blast.

Thursday, July 30th Leave for Rome airport (3 hour drive in an un-air conditioned car going about 500 miles per hour). Hop on a 6PM flight to Frankfurt. Change planes and fly to Angola. Meet up with Russ Ferrante, and Jim Haslip from the Yellowjackets. We are about to go from the land of chaos to the land of extreme chaos! We fly overnight to Angola and arrive at 7 AM.

Friday, July 31st Upon entering the terminal in Luanda, Angola we are confronted by passengers hurrying to get in the customs line. First you have to see the doctor and document that you have had a yellow fever inoculation. A representative from the festival was supposed to meet us and walk us through this business. He is nowhere to be found. The doctor takes our passports and tells us to stand in the corner. We stand there for an hour, surrounded by mosquitoes and other unidentified flying bugs. One could get yellow fever waiting to get the inoculation for yellow fever! We all decide that we’d rather not have some strange person sticking us with needles in this god-forsaken airport in Africa. The festival rep eventually shows up, pays off the doctor to not inoculate us, and walks us through customs. This all takes over 2 hours. We walk by the other passengers from our flight that are still waiting for their luggage (almost 3 hours later!). We go to a hotel that is quite comfortable and sleep most of the day into the night. Our set does not start until 2 AM (which means 3 or 4 AM). We start around 3:15 and play for 80 minutes. The crowd enjoys the music and after all the dues we pay to get there, we are determined to play a good set of music.

Saturday, August 1st Finish around 4:30; go to the hotel for 30 minutes to change and shower, and head for the airport for a 7AM flight. We are left at the airport to go through customs and pass a daunting room with a line going into it that says “Declaracion” and some Portugese writing on it. Police are swarming around this room, and it looks very ominous! I’m carrying some cash from some of the earlier gigs I did in Europe, and I get the creeps thinking about going in this room. Some military-looking guy comes up to me and asks if I have money. I say no (not sure what to say, but I know I did not want to go in that room!). We are hoarded upstairs to wait for the flight. Lots of mosquitoes, hot, and no indication of when, where, or how to get to the plane. We eventually wander back downstairs where a crowd of people forms. Still no mention of the flight or where to board. We are all standing squeezed together in a hot, bug-infested room wondering what is going on. The flight leaves 2 hours late without no so much as an announcement or any other indication of what is happening. Nothing is still happening in a big way! We finally get on the plane and get the hell out of there. Arrive in Lisbon late, and go through customs and security (takes 2 hours). Come to find my plane to Rome is 2 hours late in leaving. Fly to Rome and arrive at the Hilton Rome Airport hotel at midnight. Totally fried, but glad to be back in the land of chaos (better than extreme chaos). I go to my room and the room key does not work. Have to go back downstairs to get a new key. This key does not work either. I kick the door in desperation, and the door opens. Thank you lord! Sleep for 3 hours and head back to the airport to fly to Sicily on an 8 AM flight.

Sunday, August 2nd Fly to Catania, rent a car and drive to Messina (2 hours) with Maurizio Rolli and his trio. We do a rehearsal in the afternoon for a few hours in a very hot room with mosquitoes biting the shit out of us. Nice! The music is good, but the tunes have complicated road maps. I’m furiously writing instructions on the music so I can remember how the tunes go for the concert that night. I’m seeing in triplicate by this time from lack of sleep. Check into hotel I dubbed Hotel Dracula, which was something out of another century. We are informed that the air conditioning goes on only from 6PM to 9PM. It is 100 degrees and we need air conditioning now! Ain't gonna happen. Take a shower and crash for a while. Wake up sweating my butt off. We go to do a sound check, and the sound mixer is a rock and roll cat. Everything is very loud and unattractive sounding. We chill this out best we can, and the promoter takes us to dinner. He drops us at a pizza restaurant. Everyone decides we need something more substantial, and we move to another restaurant. The food here is suspect and gives me a stomach ache (which I still have at the writing of this column). We go and play the concert for about 20 people and call it a night. Back to Hotel Dracula to a hot, humid room. When I open the window a squadron of mosquitoes enters and proceeds to dive bomb me in formation for the duration of the evening. Nice!

Monday, August 3rd Drive 7 hours from Sicily to Bari. Check into hotel and do some swimming in the ocean. Fantastic! This is the last gig, and the first time I’ve done any sort of leisurely activity. Do a sound check in this beautiful square in a small town outside of Bari, and then have a wonderful dinner. We play a strong set and end the tour on a nice note.

Tuesday, August 4th Back to the hotel o sleep for 2 hours. Drive to Bari airport. When I check in the agent tries to make me check my suitcase. I vibe him so heavy that he lets me slide. Too early in the morning for him to deal with the likes of me. I’m heading home with all my luggage! And no one is going to stop me! Board the plane and fly to Rome. Mad dash to the next flight and then fly from Rome to Newark. Stop in the President's Club in Newark and shower, and then board the flight to L.A. Almost home! Looking forward to hugging my wife, petting our dogs, and sleeping in my own bed.

I have to leave the next morning for Santa Cruz, Lake Tahoe, and New York, but it’s great to be back in the U.S. So there you have it! Not a dull existence!! This is what we endure in order to play good music. It is the only way to do so. I’m very grateful to have the opportunity to do this. There is a price to pay on many levels, but this is what it is.

Thanks for coming along!