Notes From The Road
Oahu, HI 2008
Entries from JBB’s guitarist Mike Keenan
12/20 Saturday, Portland, OR
It’s usually a short and painless ride from Seattle to Portland but once again Mother Nature was challenging our commitment. As we slowly slid into Portland I received a call that my flight home Sunday at 6:00am was already canceled. We set up at the Aladdin Theater and I cringed thinking — huge venue + snow storm = demoralizing end of tour. Thankfully I was wrong. Our manager Seth moved here a few months ago and was convinced he could promote the hell out of this show. While we could have used a lot more people in there it was by no means empty. In addition, those who braved the weather were good and rowdy. That might just be Portland at night from what I hear.
Over the next few days the entire band experienced varying degrees of travel hell. I think Jocko fared the worst arriving home on the 24th. I was lucky enough to only get sodomized for cab fare to the airport, a 4-hour delay in Portland (after the initial day and a half of delays), a rescheduled transfer flight at the wrong airport in NYC, a cancelled rescheduled flight from NYC to Boston and arriving in Boston after the trains and buses were shut down. Thankfully my sister came to get me at 2:00am. 48 hours of travel, cancellations and layovers– home at last.
