If you’re a rock band, you hope to hit the ground running
when you start each new leg of a tour.

You want to play tight and sound great, and you want the
crowd to be energetic and loud.

All of those things happened as the second leg of the 2016
tour kicked off in Boston last night.

I also hit the ground running, screwing up a few times and
giving the band fresh material to torment me about.

If I just kept my big fat mouth shut, the guys would
probably think that I was a reliable, competent, productive employee of
reasonable intelligence and minimal personality quirks.

But it’s much too late for that.

I tend to tell them everything, because #1-I own my
mistakes, and #2-I know they enjoy making fun of me.

So I started off this leg of the tour by locking Sean out of
the tuning room as he was preparing to warm up for the show.

Jerry was already in there wailing away, so I went to close
the door on Jerry since our office was two doors down the hall and we were
getting murdered by the volume.

I kicked the doorstop out and let the door swing shut, and I
immediately realized that I had just locked Sean out of the room.

So my 5-10 minute odyssey of futile knocking began, but
Jerry couldn’t hear it over the amplified carnage he was unleashing in the
tuning room.

Eventually he heard me and opened the door, and Sean was
able to properly warm up, and I was able to move on to my second screw-up of
the night.

Long story short, I neglected to put about half of Mike’s
guests on the guest list.

That’s a fairly big mistake, but fortunately we have a
system in place that accounts for things like that happening, and they all made
it into the venue after the box office phoned our office.

So there was no reason for me to tell Mike, but I
did it anyway.

A little later I moved from messing up to confessing up, and
I shared something personal with Mike & Jerry that I knew would give them
quality ammunition to heckle me about. (and they did)

Then on the bus ride after the show I doubled down and gave
them an unprecedented second round of personal ammunition, and just like that, I’d put
the quadruple bullseye on my own forehead on day one of the tour.

It’s been over a month since the band has played a show, and
it’s been way longer than that since they’ve played in Boston.

And they definitely hit the ground running.

They played and sounded as good as ever, and as always, the
fans in Boston were amazing.

Me? I hit the ground, sprained an ankle, and pulled a
hamstring (metaphorically speaking).

But judging by the laughter (at my expense) on the bus after
the show, I’d say it all worked out okay.