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Drummers Centerfold
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Legend to Legend
Your favorite artists get the inside beat
on some of their favorite artists!
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Walfredo Reyes Sr - Beat goes on for percussionist
Walfredo Reyes Sr., a tall, thin man with olive skin and heavy-lidded eyes, moves with the elegance of a bygone era.
Standing in the kitchen of his Concord home next to his wife, Debbie Bellamy-Reyes, he cuts an impressive figure. It's a hot June day but the groundbreaking Cuban-born percussionist and drummer is thinking of an espresso, explaining that it's a Cuban tradition to have your coffee and then a cigar, "if you like such things."... GO to interview!
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Mike Botts's Tour 2003 Road Log
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - Rehearsals
Well, after a very, very long travel day I finally made it to my hotel. All the band members' flights arrived at approximately the same time and although we had all worked together on many previous tours with Dan, this was a relatively new line-up. Long time Fogelberg veteran, Robert McEntee was doing guitar and keyboard parts as well as adding his vocal talents to the ensemble once again. Jim Photoglo, an extremely accomplished singer / songwriter in his own right, was taking over on electric bass and background vocals with that beautiful high tenor voice of his. And of course, the inimitable Michael 'Zoot' Hanna was on keyboards, which meant he would be covering everything from Grand piano and Hammond organ to complete orchestral string parts ... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - On to D.C.
After our initial rehearsals, we had a few days off at home while our equipment was being trucked across country to D.C. for the big production rehearsal. That's when it all really starts to come together. No more playing in a small room wearing headphones trying to imagine what it will all sound like on stage. We'll finally be in a concert hall with a full set of lights and a kick-ass sound system. It will also be our first chance to meet the guys who make all this stuff work, the crew. These guys are the backbone of the tour and deserve a lot of credit for what they do but I'll talk more about that later... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - Now It Begins
After we touched down in D.C., I grabbed a cab at the airport and headed off to my hotel. The route to the hotel took us by most of the major monuments in Washington. And although I had seen them many times before, I had never seen them at night. The stark white lighting which illuminated the monuments made them stand out even more than usual against the night sky. It had rained earlier in the day and the city looked clean and beautiful but I was tired and hungry and anxious to get to the hotel. By the time I finally got into my room it was a little past 10:00 pm and, of course, the first thing I did was call room service. Remember, the only thing I had to eat on the flight coming in was that wonderful Sourdough / Turkey surprise and a Bag 'o' Chips which was all washed down with a couple of Gin & Tonics and that was quite a while ago. I needed real food!... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - Raising the Bar
This is the day when reality comes up behind you and kicks you in the butt. You've got one day of production rehearsal to make everything work. After that, you'll have one shot a night to do all of it right! That's definitely raising the bar. Keep in mind this is the first time for the lighting and sound crew to run the set list of the show on stage with Dan and the band. And although these guys have most probably studied the set list and made some pre-production notes, I'm always amazed at how fast and efficient they are at getting everything together when they're under the pressure of a one day rehearsal... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - Raising the Bar 2
It was time to take the stage, get behind our instruments and test our memory banks. The crew had done about everything they could without our presence and were ready to fine tune the lights and sound while we ran the set list. This was about as close as we would get to a real concert situation and we had to make it all work today because our first concert was the following night... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - The Tour Begins
The first show was in Virginia, at the Wolftrap Filene center to be exact. I had played there so many times with various artists that, to me, it was just plain Wolftrap. It's a beautiful old amphitheater that provides a wonderful natural environment for a summer concert. I knew all the Dan fans would be out in force and they'd be ready to listen. Plus, the venue was just a short drive down the highway from our hotel in D.C. What better place to start the tour than right here! Of course, that short drive stuff would change rather quickly, as you'll see in later episodes... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - The First Show
Yes, it was the first gig and it made me think of something a great L.A. session player told me when I was first getting started in the studios. He said, “Aspire to 100%, expect 90% and accept 80% and you'll be OK". Well it certainly applied to the situation at hand. Being that it was our first concert, I knew there might be a few glitches here and there but that's part of the charm of a live concert. There's a different energy level for live gigs. You can't go back and re-record or overdub -- it is what it is. There's just no way to replace that one take feeling of excitement that you get in front of a live audience... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - The First Drive
Our first show went well. We had finished our encore, finished our "meet and greet" backstage and we were now getting ready to board the land yacht for our first real drive, albeit a relatively short one. It was only a couple of hundred miles. The crew had already loaded up the trucks and were well on their way. Yes, the electric circus was leaving. We were leaving the sublime natural serenity of Wolftrap for the ridiculous casino chaos of Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. I swear, every time I walk through the main floor casino I feel like I'm in the middle of a Fellini film, but that's another story... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - Casino Chaos
All the food, drink and other distractions we enjoyed, while we cruised down the highway on our land yacht, did the trick and had the desired effect of dulling our senses enough to get to sleep shortly after our arrival at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. Adapting to these strange hours and new surroundings was to become second nature for all of us after awhile, but right now it was going to require some time and effort to get used to it... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - The Chair
Since it was only about a 60-mile drive to our next gig in Philadelphia, we wisely stayed in Atlantic City for the night and hit the road the next day. That's when I discovered The Chair... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - The Day Off
We'd done three concerts in a row and now, here we were in Philadelphia and it was our first day off, a beautiful day. Would we use this day in the city of brotherly love to sightsee or maybe to catch an afternoon movie followed by an early dinner? Of course not! We were going to do something really different. We were going to spend our first day off driving 539 miles to Dayton, Ohio. It was pretty clear that I was about to leave a firm and possibly permanent imprint of my butt in The Chair... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - Hilton Head
I woke up at mid-morning to an absolutely beautiful day on Hilton Head Island. We were actually staying at a private resort in Harbor Town, which has two of the finest golf courses in the country. I mean, these are championship courses! So, on a day like this I figured I'd have a nice leisurely breakfast, for a change, and then I'd go to the clubhouse, rent a set of clubs and play 9 holes before the sound check that afternoon. After all, who knew when I'd get an opportunity like this again, right? Well, I was in for a big surprise... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - Onward
It was around ten or eleven in the morning when we boarded the bus and bid, a not so fond, farewell to stormy Hilton Head and started rolling on to our next show down in Raleigh, NC. It was just a mere 328 miles down the highway, a virtual breeze compared to some of the drives coming up later. But after our show in Raleigh, we were going to have to travel another 404 miles to Atlanta, Georgia! It would be another night of trying to sleep in the bouncing bunk beds... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - Goin' round in circles
Our show that night was at a place called the Westbury Music Fair. This is one of those 'theatre in the round' concepts that were so popular in the fifties and sixties for summer stock musicals like 'Oklahoma' and 'The Music Man.' Now, that may work fine for summer stock but it's not very good for concerts... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - A Real Day Off!
We'd been on the road for a little over two weeks. Sixteen days to be exact, but who's counting. Of course, it sometimes felt more like we'd been out for two months! I guess that's why I sometimes refer to a tour as a "Whale Expedition". But by now, we were all pretty well adjusted to life on the road. We were also getting more comfortable with the new set list and the band was getting tighter with every performance... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - The 21 Day Theory
We were on our way to Madison, Wisconsin for our next concert and after I checked the date in my road bible, I realized that we had been on the road exactly three weeks. This was a significant event because it meant that we were approaching, if not at, the threshold of something I like to call the "21 day theory"... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - Chicago and Rule #51
After our concert in Madison, we once again boarded our land yacht for a short overnight drive to Chicago. Our driver, 'Jeff the Invincible', figured that we would probably arrive at our hotel sometime around two in the morning. As usual, Jeff was right, we arrived in downtown Chicago at just about 2:00 a.m. and we were only a few blocks from our hotel when the strangest thing happened... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - Memphis
After our rather soggy concert in Chicago we left for another long overnighter, this time to Memphis, Tennessee. I won't tell you how many miles it was from Chicago to Memphis but I will tell you we left Chicago just before midnight and got to our hotel in Memphis at approximately 8:00 a.m. the next morning... GO to interview!
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Fogelberg Tour 2003 - Beale Street to Biloxi
Our long drive from Chicago to Memphis was only the halfway point in a very long journey. We still had another long drive all the way down to Biloxi, Mississippi for our next show. We had a great day off in Memphis but now it was time to leave the ducks, the barbecue and Beale Street behind and start driving through the heart of blues country. We had a concert that night and even with an early departure we would probably arrive just a few hours before show time... GO to interview!
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