Hey Hey In Rockers and Welcome to The Lobby, this month from the hot and humid state of Florida as we are days away from beginning our North American “Big Night Out” tour with our friends OAR and later in the Summer Fitz and The Tantrums! Hope all of you have had a great Summer so far, my wife and daughter have been in Japan for the past couple of weeks so I know it's been awfully hot so I hope you're all staying cool! When we last spoke we were headed to our last show in the UK as we played a sold-out show at The Apollo Theater in London, as always an amazing show to close out a couple of weeks of sweaty, raucous sing-a-longs throughout Great Britain and Ireland. We were quickly on a plane the next morning and back in the US as I attended a fundraiser in my hometown of Buffalo, NY for our Music is Art organization and the grand opening of our new GCR Audio studio space with 2 new studios which has opened in addition to our 3-studio main location right up the street. I managed to be home for the 4th of July celebration in the US, that's a huge holiday celebrating the independence of the US from Great Britain hundreds of years ago, it's also a time for families to get together have barbecues drinks and watch fireworks. But the very next day I was headed to New Jersey for band rehearsals using an smaller crew with Goo Goo Dolls as we prepare some new songs and arrangements for the upcoming tour. We're working in some new songs, including our new single “Run All Night” and a collaboration of the Tom Petty song “I Won't Back Down” we recorded recently with O.A.R. (which we performed on the biggest morning show in the US a couple of weeks ago, I've included a pic!). It's funny, as you can imagine many of our songs have been “tattooed” on our brains after years and years of playing them, but it always helps a ton to sit in a room and listen again every once in a while without the craziness of an audience, all the flashing lights and the distractions of a live performance. Once our band rehearsals in NJ were finished after about 10 days we made our way to Florida and met the rest of the crew for our production rehearsals. The production rehearsals were held in a huge soundstage for filming movies and TV, but all of our stuff still barely fit into the enormous space. Production rehearsals bring in all of the sound equipment, lighting, and video for the tour and this is when things really come together. We begin to pick the songs for the basis of our summer set and get the transitions and such ready for the show so we are able to smoothly move from song to song and make sure the crew is ready for the next thing that is to come in the set. So after a few hours of driving yesterday, today I'm clear across the state of Florida in the city of Clearwater where we start with the first date of The Big Night Out tour. We have rented the venue the day before the first show to set up all of the gear on a real stage, we'll run the day's schedule today like we are having a regular show to make sure everyone is clear on their responsibilities once the gates open for real at 6:30 PM tomorrow! OK, that's it for me …. Big day for us tomorrow as we begin the tour and I'll bring you along with me for the day and more here in the pages of The Mighty In Rock next month, talk soon and like I mentioned earlier try to stay cool! Peace Robby