Roman Edirisinghe

Waiting here at George’s Tavern in Racine, Wisconsin. We were supposed to be on 2 minutes ago, but there are some issues with the sound system, so we’re waiting ’til they’re ready for us.

Nice place. They (or someone near here) has free wifi, so I plugged right in, so to speak.

This is a sort of farewell gig for me and Holly, as we’re both departing the core group of the One Drum collective. What a sweet farewell it will be. This lineup features Cory Coleman (vocals, dundun & bass), Kristin Urban (vocals & percussion), Cecilio Negron, jr. (drums, congas, vocals), Holly Haebig (vocals & guitar), and yours truly on guitar and vocals. Poor sound guys. It’s 8:43 pm and they’re still fiddling with the system.

This is where the fans & the musicians both learn patience.

I’m back in Milwaukee now, well rested, and I now have the energy to complete my tale.

After we checked out of the hotel, we made our way to the college. On the way there, we stopped by at Atomic Coffee to get some caffeine. While I was waiting for the cappuchino and mocha, my eye was drawn to a large green apple. I grabbed it, and was holding it in my hand when the coffee was brought to the counter. I paid for the coffee and left.

En route to the college, I discovered I had the apple in my pocket. Which was strange, because I didn’t remember paying for it. Which essentially meant that I had inadvertently pinched the apple right under the cashier’s nose! I didn’t have time to return the apple. I was going to have to chew on the karmic debt later.

We arrived at Concordia and met an extremely diverse group of students, who seemed excited to have us perform. Unfortunately, the scenario was extremely disorganized. No one seemed to have any idea of what was going on. The sound crew seemed taxed by our requests. And all the students there were eager to start their talent show, which made us realize how secondary our presence was going to be. On a brighter note, I discovered there were a lot of Sri Lankan students at Concordia, which was quite startling to me. I was unloading my gear when I heard “Nah bhang…machang…etc,” and I thought I was in a different country.

Overall, the show was a success, but it was not without some inherent hitches. The best songs were Invocations and Malaika. Everything else was passable, but certainly not the best One Drum fare. I always find it a challenge to play without a drum set player. It’s hard to keep consistent tempos without a good timekeeper. The audience seemed to enjoy the show, but wanted us stop far short of our contracted two hours. Which was fine. In the end we drove for 21+ hours to perform for a little longer than an hour.

Don’t get me wrong…the students were great, and seemed really nice. They could benefit from some organizational skills, or some coaching from experienced advisors. Either way, they were unprepared for our band, even though we had forwarded full spec sheets, stage plots, requirements, etc. We live and learn.

One Drum packed up our stuff and were right about to leave when Dave Wake discovered he was missing his wallet. Time passed. He finally found it in his bag…

We were about to drive off when we discovered the back door was open. Much congenial laughter was shared over that episode. We ended up leaving Moorhead at midnight, Friday night.

The return trip was extremely foggy, and I was driving. In the end, I decided it was best to simply ride the center line, which left me a good buffer of road in case the road curved. I had three Red Bulls during my shift, which ended at 5:00 am. I was wiped out. I don’t recall much of what transpired thereafter. I tried to sleep, with mixed success.

Hours later, we arrived in Madison and dropped of David and Ian Stocker. And a little later, we arrived back home in Milwaukee, exhausted, but with heavy pockets.

That was the shortest nap. Or the longest blink of an eye. One moment, I was closing my eyes, and it seemed like only a moment had passed before I opened them again. Four hours had passed. It’s time for us to go set up for the show.

We’re finally here. One Drum is in Moorhead, Minnesota. I can barely type anything, I’m so tired.

We checked into the hotel, got some breakfast, and our plan is to sleep for a few hours, then go set up for the show. While the drive was grueling, it was not as bad as I thought it would be, and it was made so much more enjoyable by the company. We covered a lot of ground in the last 12 hours: terrestrial and celestial…

We’ve seen 3 or 4 cars in ditches by this point.

We seem to be going in and out of patches of mild snow flurries in the neighborhood of Tomah, Wisconsin. The Afro-Cuban All-Stars provide musical themes for us. Dave Stocker is driving.

We are finally moving again after waiting for about 45 minutes at the Perkins parking lot in Madison. Eight more hours to go? We have barely slept.

We finally leave Milwaukee.

We picked up Jahmes’ stuff (not him), and got food at Qdoba. I’m tired & grumpy.

Just picked up Cory Coleman. We just spent 10 minutes deciding which of his dun-dun drums to bring. We are in Urban Empress’ killer 15 passenger van. The incense smells nice (golden sandalwood).