So here we are on the new tour, BSR opening for Kenny on the west coast. I am sitting backstage at the Cannery Casino in Nevada listening to Angry Eyes waft thru the dressing rooms. We have just completed our second show. I am letting my nice shirt dry on a hanger while I wait to go back out and sing on Conviction of the Heart. This is a bone Kenny throws us so we can see what it feels like to face an audience that DOESN’T have puzzled looks on their faces.

Casinos are strange places to play. They are probably the last places in the world that are holding out for the news the cigarettes are INDEED what makes your skin clear and your nails hard. There are three things that screw with my voice: Cigarette smoke, smoke machines and dry air. This place is obviously all three at once. I sound like Harvey Fierstein. A country Harvey Fierstein.

On the walls are beautiful pictures of all the previous people who have played here. It amazes me how many of them I have worked with or loaned money to. Yes, Lou Gramm, I’m talking to YOU.

We have a room here but we are still leaving right after the show. That feels very decadent. Like ordering dinner and only eating the garnish. Sure your breath will be fresh, but what about the chef’s feelings?

Tonight we drive ten hours to the next show. The bus ride will be nothing like I imagined as a young man. We drink water, we eat power bars and we go to bed and read in our bunks and tell ourselves that Katy Perry’s band probably does too. We don’t know what the next gig will be like. I hope it will be smokeless. I hope it will be balmy. I hope the smoke machine is on the fritz.

I hope they like us.