Nicholas Lutsko

Home from TOOUUURRRR!!!

Added 2023-04-12 16:50:23 +0000 UTC

Wow! What a week. Apologies its taken me a few days to provide an update. I tend to become creatively paralyzed for a minute when I complete any stupidly large task.

This tour was a whirlwind. When we went to L.A. last fall, we got to visit Universal Studios, see Danny Elfman at the Hollywood Bowl, enjoy some sights and fine dining, etc. This trip was non-stop van > air bnb > van > venue > van > air bnb > van > venue > van > air bnb, etc, etc, etc. I didn't have an opportunity to grab a gift for my daughter until Buc-ee's on the way home!

The journey began with me and my wife flying to NYC a few hours before the band departed in the van. Mike Diva hooked us up with dress rehearsal passes for the other SNL. It was awesome! It's truly a marvel seeing what a well oiled machine that show is, seeing all of the sets basically on top of each other and the hundreds of crew members making it all happen on a moments notice. Mike's sketch didn't make air, despite its [REDACTED] dollar budget 🙃 They cut a lot of good stuff!

After the show, Mike pulled some strings and let me and Clair hangout in his office while the actual show aired. It was crazy seeing the changes between dress and live and honestly convinced me to start doing full dress rehearsals for my SNL. Mike was adamant about getting video of me adding my photo to the wall of cast members, despite my concerns that he might get in trouble. They had a zero tolerance policy on cell phones during dress resulting in confiscation and removal. Luckily(?) barely anyone watched that video so I can't imagine anyone getting too upset by it. Mike invited us to attend the infamous SNL after-party, but we politely declined due to us being decrepit old parents and having a show the next night. Mike was able to attend the Gramercy Theatre show and grabbed pizza with us after the show, it was great to finally hang IRL!

Meanwhile, the band embattled high winds in our very tall van en route to NYC and they arrived in Apple Town at 4:30 am 😬

We tried really hard to make each night a unique experience. Writing each setlist was a grueling, hours long process. We were trying to do shorter sets to help preserve my voice, but there were so many songs that we felt like we needed to play. Our first task was listing all of the songs we planned on doing every night no matter what. We knew we were in trouble when that list was already 20 songs long (We had a pool of 40 ish songs and we planned to do 20 ish songs a night). We became less precious about which songs needed to be played as we got deeper into the trip.

In addition to trying to differentiate each set, we came up with ten or so city-specific phrases for AI Greezy to spit out at any given moment.. We had a lot of fun coming up with those, but it was always last minute and a race against the clock. We had Donald Trump call me from prison in Washington DC. We didn't get to my favorite part of the conversation which had him enthusiastically reciting "Bawitdaba" by Kid Rock. Steve Harvey called in during our Cleveland set and challenged us to an impromptu game of Family Feud. Maestro Adam was operating all of these from his drum throne.

Each venue was vastly different than the one before it. The VIP experiences were fun! We would take a few requests and then hang out and chat and take pictures. All of the openers were fantastic. Because we were doing the VIP packages, we needed to sound check, strip the stage, let the opener check, strip the stage, do our VIP set, strip the stage and get the opener back on stage. Incredibly hectic for everyone involved!

I'm sure I could write another 1,000 words but I need to pick my daughter up from daycare. I'm incredibly proud of the $100K Band! I think the performances improved every night.

Thanks so much to all of you who came out, and to everyone cheering us online. Truly can't say thanks enough for giving us these cool opportunites.

I'll see Triple Taxers Saturday evening! I'll be opening up the Obituary logic session and walking through the full lifespan of the project. Lyrics, production, mixing, recording, composition. Excited to go DEEP! I'll post more info ASAP.

Here's a list of the songs we did on TOOUUUURRRRRRR: