Sunday morning. 3:30am. Atlanta, GA. It’s pouring down rain outside and we just loaded all of our gear into our new (and un-named) bus. Some might call this miserable, but I was genuinely happy. It had been a jam packed weekend of meetings with music industry folks, early morning performances, and late night rock shows. I kicked my feet back in my chair and took a short nap as we drove up the road to spend the night in Marietta with a good friend.

Weekend started on Thursday night at the Doubletree in downtown Nashville. You wouldn’t believe the deals you can get on hotels through Priceline.com and the William Shatner Priceline Negotiator. We slept like kings, woke up and went to Fox 17 for a performance on their Tennessee Mornings show. Played “We’ll Be the Light” acoustically and then did an interview with the morning show hosts. Everybody was really kind and it was just hilarious being a guest on a morning show in general. Well, as we’re doing the performance, in walks David Koechner. Personally, I didn’t know his name but I knew that I was looking at Champ from the movie Anchorman… and Todd Packer from the TV show The Office.

So, Koechner walks in and is late for his interview. He sees our band playing and loves it… and then proceeds to start chit chatting with Justin. There was only room for 4 of us on the couch so Justin and Aaron just stayed out of the interview and talked with Koechner. Koechner then has the brilliant idea to bring Justin and Aaron with him to the interview couch after the interview with the band. I’d like to think that this video is the beginning of Justin’s comedic career.

The shows at The Basement in Nashville and Smith’s Olde Bar in ATL both went really well, with about 150 folks coming out to each. The show in ATL was my favorite because there was room in the crowd for people to move around and dance all night.

Things are starting to get really fun. We’re cruising with Zac Brown Band 2 weekends from now. Hopefully it will be the beginning of an even longer relationship with ZBB. We’ll see.

Either way, the journey continues.

james