The New Orleans House of Blues show went great. Kelly and Don's (Dokken) set was great. Don's plane had been severely delayed and the airline lost his guitar, so he rushed to the gig, borrowed a guitar, did a quick run through with Kelly in the green room, and then on to the stage.
There was a mad dash prior to Don getting there, as we had to find him a guitar and retune it a whole step lower. Kelly was playing a 12-string, so he had to tune that bad boy down, and then retune it up for his set.
As I walked into the green room to let Kelly know I was there, and tell Don hello, Kelly asked me to bring the guitars to the stage and give them one final tuning, and of course I did.
Sean (Huguenin), who was also playing guitar in the band, asked me to tune his guitar also, as it has been tuned down for Don at one point, but they chose to use a different guitar for that purpose, and left his halfway tuned down. So it was a mad scramble of hyper-tuning right before the show. Thanks to my friend Robbie Wilson for loaning me his tuner. I don't think my pitch pipe would have cut it.
The show went off great. Kelly had a great lineup of top notch players that were mostly old friends that spanned many a year. Mike Bearb played percussion and backing vocals. Mike and Kelly played in a band back when Kelly was only 14 or 15 years old. Flint Zerangue played drums, who was in a band with Kelly (along with me) backing in 1985 when we were all still teenagers. Andrew Ross played guitar and sang. Andrew came to the show straight from the TSO show, with who is currently on tour with, as Kelly has toured with TSO the past two years. Sarah Hund played violin and sang. Sarah has also performed with Kelly in recent years, and I have to say, is about the nicest, humblest musician I have ever met. Kelly's friend David Presley played some keys on a few tunes also. I did not get a chance to talk to David much, but he seemed to be a really nice guy, and was a keyboard wiz, to say the least.
