Cirque Dreams Rocks Cancun – Week 1

From Baton Rouge, to Dallas, to Cancun.  That was my basic flight plan.  As a musician, it was my first time leaving the country to perform my craft and it was the first day of my 2013 tour with Cirque Dreams – starting with a 7 week stint in Mexico at the Moon Palace Resort.
Last year I toured with the Cirque Dreams cast and the first couple of weeks was the toughest.  This tour proved to live up to what I’ve come to expect.
After getting off the plane and clearing immigration we met up with a shuttle specifically for Cirque Dreams.  It was a nice welcome and alleviated a lot of the worry I had about getting out of the airport and to the resort.

From there it was a breeze of arriving at the resort, being brought to our room, and finally unwinding with some all-inclusive food – a welcome treat from a series of long flights and sitting around all day.
Our room was great and even had a little jacuzzi that we’ll probably never use.

That was pretty much the entire day. Just flying around and finally settling in. The next day would start the whole tedious process of re-creating the Rocks show with a cast that was almost 95 percent new from last years show.

But I’m a musician and I don’t really have to participate with the whole process known as blocking and choreography.  One of the key things that differentiates Cirque Dreams from other cirque shows is the amount of dance and choreography that goes on in the show.  The acrobats and performers don’t just come out, do their act, and then disappear.  Throughout the show pretty much all the performers have multiple roles to play – they have their featured act(s) as well as bit parts as costumed characters or onstage aids to add or remove props quickly.

And going from song to song with Cirque Dreams is very quick.  I had to learn to change guitars under just a few seconds.  And on this tour I have three guitars with me (down from 5 from last year).  I have my current main bass which is a 7-string Conklin, a main fretless bass in a MTD Kingston Z, and I have my E-flat bass which is my blue Music Man Bongo 6-string.

These basses were all crated up and shipped off to Florida where the Cirque Dreams headquarters is at.  They then added that to their large container of props and stage stuff which was shipped off to Mexico.  I then wouldn’t see them for three weeks.  So I couldn’t wait to finally go to the tent and see the condition of them.

Well, the Cirque Dreams “tent” was actually a large building specifically built for Cirque Dreams made out of tenting material.  And when I got there they were still building the stage, putting up lights, building the steps and walls, etc.
I was pleasantly surprised but a bit worried about the heat and humidity on my gear.

Now that I had my guitars I could get to doing my primary job: playing bass.

Cirque Dreams rented two large conference rooms to work on the show while the tent was being built.  The acrobats and people that would make up the core of the show would be in one room and the band would be in the other room.  It was nice having our own space but, to be honest, we were all pretty comfortable with the songs since the band was the same as last year.  We mainly sat around and practiced to the rehearsal tapes.  I used my Line 6 Bass pod and Keith used his Line 6 HD500 to go directly in to the PA and I just hooked up my mp3 player to hear the rehearsal tracks.  However, there’s only so many times we could go over the songs without getting bored.
It was nice that we had that room to ourselves though.  I had it to myself into the wee hours of the morning. So after the band was done I could stick around and practice my own stuff I needed to work on.
As the days went on and the show was fine tuned I saw the tent getting finished and I also saw promos popping up around the city. And there was a lot of Jay to be seen.

Apparently the look of my blue 6-string Bongo has a very different appearance that compliments my costume.  It’s a look that you don’t see every day and is probably one of the reasons why my image with that bass is so ubiquitous.

It’s just one of the many images from last years tour that’s currently being used to promote the show.

I also saw myself on the side of a bus.
I finally got a good shot of it before the bus drove off.
I did get some weird looks taking the picture. I think the driver thought he did something wrong and I was taking pictures of the evidence. Relax, you didn’t run over a small child, I just want to get a picture of myself on a bus.  I also saw a big billboard with my picture on it.

This is cool and all but one of the things I was most excited about was getting back to playing music with the band from last year: Keith Warman on guitar, Armando Gutierrez on drums and vocals, Christiana Rodi on vocals, and a new addition of Jermaine Sellers on vocals.

And that’s one of the best things about touring with something like Cirque Dreams.  You get paid to play music and you  make friends from all over the world.  Turns out the show’s contortionist from Ethiopia named Mulugeta is also a bass player.  So I got to introduce him to my 7-string Conklin.
It’s cool moments like this that make the long days and grueling schedule worth it.

After all the practicing and rehearsal we finally had our first batch of shows.  Thursday June 27th was the first show held for the crew of the Moon palace followed by the second night of actual patrons of the resort and surrounding areas.  The show went over quite well and I had a blast.