March 01-02, 2005
I must've slept wrong. My back was killing me when I woke up and it made the next two days' workout very unpleasant. Luckily Chad (whom I also cover) keeps a back muscle massage thingy in 6A all the time, and he's generous with it. The youngest of the cast (I think), Chad has a high tenor voice that can be heard on an airport tarmac in heavy traffic. He's one of several men who play John in the show. In fact only three players have no lines as John, but play other characters around him.
Tuesday we started late and finished early, which gave me more time to get my stuff together for the move into Manhattan. That was just a quick car ride, twenty-five minutes or so from 6th Avenue in Brooklyn to my West Side digs. It's a great neighborhood, although a busy one, and recently improved over the decrepent state it was once in years ago. Gale lives in this one-bedroom apartment and rents out the living room to people who need it for a few weeks at a time. It's a perfect arrangement for me since I'm only in town until the end of the month. She was excited to know there was a guitar player moving in. Ah, so nice to be able to walk to work! Only one block east and three short blocks south and I'm there!
I'm discovering I'm not the only musician in the cast. There's at least one other accomplished guitarist (Chuck), a good drummer and percussionist (Will), and a fine piano player (Terrence). What's a little weird is that no one seems to know any Beatle songs, or Lennon ones. But there's a lot of Doobie Brothers being tossed around. As a member of K-TEL Hit Machine, I have no problem with this, and play along happily.
Earlier, in the first week, Don and the cast had discussed hiring a dialect coach to help them lock down this deceptively hard Lennon accent. So this week Steven the coach was brought in. We were all gathered around and each of us read some lines aloud while Steven took notes and made evaluations, then he gave pointers to each player. I was expecting the same grilling as everone else, but oddly enough, he had no notes for me at all.
Ever get the feeling your body is inhabited by someone else?