Rehearsals: Day One

Charlie Adams and I were pickup up promptly at 10 am yesterday by the same driver who carted us around last year. His name is James and he's a New York transplant whom I recall describing LA as flaky. He told us he's gotten used to it now and may be getting a bit flaky himself. He said he now sees southern California as disaster central with earthquakes, fires, floods and mud slides as commonplace occurrences. He still drives like he's from New York as we made the normal 20 minute drive to Culver Studio in 15 white knuckled minutes.

Culver is famous for many television and big screen productions, but the two most talked about are Gone With The Wind - the burning of Atlanta was filmed in the back lot, and The Lucy Show - which was reportedly taped in the building in which we're rehearsing. I'll see if I can get some pictures today from around the studio and post them asap.

As we pulled up to our production offices I saw a red-haired child actor that I recognize from TV commercials. He and a buddy were leaning their bicycles around corners like race car drivers.

We entered the studio to find crews putting finishing touches on the stage. I jumped right into setting up the Dusty Strings D600 hammer dulcimer I will use on the tour which has been sitting in a warehouse in La since the Houston show. It needed a thorough tuning and a string replaced that snapped during our last song, Santorini. I also had to put my K&K microphone and pickup system back in place.

Charlie was occupied for a couple of hours tuning a new drum kit. Meanwhile representatives from the Roland corporation made sure the electronic gizmos in his set were working properly and that the backup systems - three of them - were ready to spring into action if necessary. I learned early-on that Yanni has no tolerance for any kind of technical glitches disrupting his show. If it can break or crash it has a backup, and sometimes two or three backups.

Over the next few hours the rest of the core band members arrived - Walter was first, followed by Pedro, Ming, Samvel, Armen, Ramone, Alfreda, Michelle, Karen and the new bass player Houssein. It is going to be a pleasure getting to know Houssein who seems to be a very gentle and humble person.

Walter and I used our breaks to shop online for a new Powerbook that he'll bring along on the tour. Alfreda says she's ready to get a more powerful laptop computer too. She's had the iBook we bought for her on the last tour for about a year now. She's become a power user and wants to get into digital recording. I have a feeling there's going to be a few computer lessons conducted while rolling down the highways on this trip.

Yanni arrived at Culver around 1pm and we began sound checks. He's very involved in this process and has to approve every microphone and how it blends into the overall product. He's fun to watch in this process as he tries to communicate to the engineers what he likes or dislikes about a particular sound. He's been working with the same guys for years so they sometimes are able to anticipate where he's going and make adjustments quite quickly.

We made it through the first half of the show with Yanni making minor adjustments to just about every song. By the time we played each song twice they sounded ready for the stage.

We'll work the second half of the show today. I may be able to do a mid-day update today in which I'll post a few pictures so check back later. Dan ¶ 12:00 PM