after a long overnight journey from albuquerque to dallas which i believe took about 11 hours in total, we arrived and checked into our hotel rooms around 2 this afternoon. good thing too cause many a shower were needed by that point!

after our glorious 2 hours of downtime, the band and crew headed over to the house of blues, dallas at 4:30 and as usual were greeted by the many friendly faces of the tesla crew. being early, there was time to get into our green room, relax, eat and soundcheck with no stress whatsoever before doors.

this was very nice for me because i really wasn't personally feeling well today and needed the nice slow pace to get myself together mentally and physically. sally was a total gem for me tonight, finding me tea and a stomach sedative at the venue.

what can i say about the show...it fuckin' ROCKED!!! the end

just kidding, i'll tell you more...

the curtains opened to a dallas crowd that would become our best friends for the next 45 minutes. it only took to the end of the opening song to have them waving hands in the air and holding up drinks in approval. kyle (our front of house engineer) had everything dialed in right away for the crowd and the stage mixer gave us one of the best monitor mixes we've had yet! that made it so easy for us to do what we do!

hal's voice was so on, he was belting out licks he's never done before. as had been the case at many recent shows, "strange things happen in the dark" was a crowd fav and when we got to the end stab, they wouldn't stop cheering.

during earthman, hal took care of the crowd through the verse and first chorus under solo spotlighting while dave, domo & i lit up some cigarettes, shared a little jack and caught our breathes over by the drum riser and sally chilled with her beer.

when that song ended, hal intro'd "son of a gun" by saying "this is a song about telling people to fuck off!" and the crowd both laughed & cheered in approval and we were off & running with guns-a-blazing.

here's where we broke the mold though. that was our last song of the set, we went all out and gave them a king sized ending and were getting ready for the curtains to close. the crowd would have none of it though. they started yelling & chanting for an encore...and ENCORE...for the OPENING act that they'd never heard of before they arrived tonight. we were given the green light to give the people what they wanted and we broke "spy vs spy" out of the vault and tore it up one more time.

after the show, it was back to the green room for a quick smoke, a few hugs and some fresh beers and then off to the merch table to meet & greet. this dallas rock & roll crowd bought almost everything we had to give them and stood on lines to get our signatures and shower us with love! at times, we were all standing in front of stacks of cd's and t-shirts piled 7 and 8 high each trying to keep up. i don't know how to properly describe the feelings of being appreciated like that but, in my opinion, we handled it with true rock & roll class and style and made sure we satisfied everyone who stopped over to us. sally even got to sign her first breast tonight and i can't say i wasn't jealous ;o)

we headed back to the green room once again to relax, hang with a few friends who came to support us and get some delicious HOB ribs in our bodies, with occasional trips side-stage and out to the balcony to watch tesla weave their magic over the crowd. they were dead on as usual and amazing to watch. they once again proved to us why they can still rock the house like few other bands in history!

toward the end of their closing song "no way out" we made our way back to the merch table to see the crowd out and got bombarded once again like we'd just came off stage ourselves. an hour later, we were able to sneak back to our room, pack up and load into the van taking us back to our hotel.

we have to thank everyone who was there tonight who reads this blog for coming out in time to catch our set and show us all the love and support that was thrown our way! dallas people can totally rock with the best of 'em and we can't wait to come back to this town and do it all over again sometime soon!

also, many thanks to kyle and dereck for doing their jobs to the "T" and making our night as a band both easy & fun!

thank you all! we'll write again tomorrow with all new stories from the road.

randy