JTC Florida Update

So far, so good.

Friday night's gig ended up not happening. It's a very long story...but the short of it is that the club owner didn't want to pay them because they would have been unavoidably late. An accident closed the interstate, stalling BMT for more than two hours. The guy was a jerk about the situation, so, BMT ended up not playing at all Friday night. Instead, they stayed at Ricky's uncle's in Atlanta.

While BMT's tour got off to a rocky start in GA on Friday, it sounds like the Florida leg of the tour is going great. Saturday was a new day. The Homegrown Pow Wow was a hit and had a very cool vibe. Its organizers (Big Chief and Swamprose) are artists. Big Chief painted BMT a few years ago and they gave them a CD in return. Now BMT's playing at their pow wow.

Another interesting discovery at the pow wow gig plays into the "six degrees of separation rule." Big Chief is Stan Strickland's brother. Stan Strickland is a man I sat next to on a plane to Tampa last fall. He works with artists here in Nashville (big ones) and we had a nice talk. At the time, I mentioned BMT to him and he had heard of them. For the past couple months, Ricky and Micol have actually been trying to connect with Stan. Last week they got a call from some guy saying he was Big Chief's brother. What Ricky didn't realize it was actually Stan returning his call and Stan didn't explain who he was. Ricky thought it was just someone checking in on them about the gig last week and that was pretty much the conversation. Needless to say, BMT will probably be calling Stan back to explain. What a hoot! Pretty cool. There's so much more to this story... but let's just say it is a small world.

Yesterday and today, BMT's been traveling across and down the entire state of Florida to reach the Keys. Just got an e-mail from JTC to let me know they are now in Key West and getting ready to head out for the gig tonight. Hopefully they'll be able to get some sun during the next three days since they are staying in one place for a while.

Blah blah blah.
More tomorrow.
I miss JTC.

BB