Atlanta - The Great Escape

You can call me Houdini.

Last night I was getting ready for the show in Atlanta at the Roxy Theatre. About fifteen minutes before my set I walked out to go to the bus to get changed for the show.

As I’m changing, I hear Donnie Mortimer, who’s playing with Griffin House on the middle slot on these shows (and who, I’d like to add, showed up with an industrial-strengthed rubber band powered pogo stick that he’s carrying with him on the bus - love that Donnie), leave and lock the door to the bus behind him. It takes me another couple of minutes to get myself ready, and then I’m out the door to make the 50 foot walk back to the backstage area to grab my guitar and hit the stage.

Except I get stopped at that whole “out the door” part.

When I had heard Donnie hit the lock, I guess I thought that the door would unlock and open from the inside when I turned the handle. My, in retrospect, rather fuzzy logic on this one was:

* That’s how my front door works at home, and

* While I’m doing this tour, the bus is my home.

I used to be a panicy guy. Before shows, if I broke a string or couldn’t get a pedal to work, I’d be a wreck. But now I’m cool, baby - - hell, I’ve still got 7 minutes or so. No problem.

From this calm, Zen-like state, I was able to keep my wits about me and realize that I had Phil Sullivan’s (our intrepid tour manager) phone number. Sure, I’m going to be the butt of some jokes on the bus, but I’ll give him a call and he’ll come get me out.

Flipping open my phone I’m provided with another interesting turn of events: my phone is dead.

See, I’m one of those people who got burned in the past by re-charging my phone too frequently, which wound up shortening the battery life (there’s physics involved in why this is and this isn’t math class, so just go with me on this one). So I decided with my new phone, I wasn’t gonna be played for a chump. Now I let my phone battery go all the way down before re-charging. It’s smart. Really.

Or maybe not. Did I mention I used to be panicy? This is the point in the story where you’d expect me to revert back to my ways of old and lose it. But you’d be wrong.

Clear-headedly, I immediately thought “no problem, there’s power on the bus, I’ll get my charger and plug in the phone and then call Phil.”

There’s still about 4 minutes to showtime. It’s tight, but everything is going to be fine.

Then I remembered something.

I had brought my charger into the Roxy when we first got there. It’s in there and I’m in here. Locked in here.

So now I’m panicy.

I’m wondering now how long it will take people to first figure out that I’m late (probably not that long), then look around a bit in the dressing room to try to find me (maybe another couple of minutes), then start looking around for someone on the tour with my phone number before finding Phil, who is the only one who has it (this is starting to take some time), then to have Phil try calling me and get put directly to voice mail because my phone is dead (this is getting bad) and finally to start looking in other places and finding me locked in the tour bus (and I’m off the tour).

And as I’m thinking this, something clicks inside my head: “locked in the tour bus”. It just doesn’t sound right, I mean, c’mon, you can’t really get locked in a tour bus, can you?

I go to the door again and at this point of the story I just want to add that it was dark on the bus, okay? So cut me a bit of a break. But, that having been said . . . remember how I said I thought the door would unlock from the inside when I turned the handle? Well, after it didn’t I guess I jumped right to that whole step about the phone call and sort of overllooked something obvious.

There’s a switch underneath the handle which lets you lock or - and this is important - UN-lock the door from the inside.

Luckily, my cunning escape occured at about 2 minutes to 8, so I was able to hit just in time and play to a really amazing Atlanta crowd. They were so into the show and supportive from the first note that I can’t wait to come back and play in Atlanta again.

But next time, I’ll change in the club.