The 8 AM soundcheck at today’s Wharf to Wharf show would not have felt so early if I hadn’t stayed up until 4 AM last night celebrating my birthday with friends, but so goes the life of a rockstar. 

Let’s start with last night.  Ken and I had a couple friends come up from Los Angeles to hang with us - George, a great guy who just happens to be homosexual and Mexican (both of which I’m supportive of) and Vero who happens to be hot, straight, and attached to nearly all of Ken’s man parts.  So it wasn’t surprising that my birthday night turned into a 1-on-1 celebration with George while Ken had his own 1-on-1 thing going on.  George and I ended up at a few bars on Castro Street in San Francisco (which is apparently a predominantly gay area of the city) and before I knew it, I was the meat in a giant homosexual danceclub sandwich.  Luckily I am very comfortable with who I am, and so I just rolled with it as I had 6 gay men dancing around me, grinding against me, and making me their sex object.  Ladies I now know how you feel.  Needless to say it was my own “Night at the Roxbury” moment.  What I learned is that I am a sex object, not just to women, but also to some dudes apparently, and that is flattering.  Let it be known that Kevin is cool with men and women and their individual sexual preferences.  However, let it also ring forth across the land that Kevin Burdick is totally straight and is only attracted sexually to the ladies and the boobies.

So, after my birthday celebration we pulled into the area of the Wharf to Wharf Festival in Santa Cruz and slept at about 4:00 AM this morning.  Big thanks to Ken Gray for driving while I attempted to sleep.  We got up around 7:50 AM and quickly started setting up.  To give you an idea, the Wharf to Wharf Festival centers around a 12ish mile race that wraps around Santa Cruz from the boardwalk across the city.  There are a number of bands that entertain the runners and the townspeople throughout the city-wide festival.  We got to introduce the music of Kevin Burdick to 15,000+ people today and it was a lot of fun.

The highlights were some of the improv songs we did, and also playing with Max and Dave here in San Fran, which is always a highlight in itself.  One improv song in particular that makes me chuckle was “It’s not too late to win” which I sang to the people in the very back of the race about not giving up.  I reminded them that, although they were in “14,235th place” it wasn’t too late for them to win it all - especially if we could figure out how to teleport them to the finish line using techniques I’d learned on Star Trek.  Funny stuff - I really don’t know where it comes from, even at 8 AM.

Being on-tour isn’t always just shows and partying.  There is plenty of downtime and this week, while waiting for my big “Wharf to Wharf Festival” show in Santa Cruz, we have had our share of it.  I’ve written two more songs in the tour bus (with business manager Ken Gray even chipping in with some lyrics), we’ve tried a myriad of local California restaurants, we’ve been kicked out of two parking lots (it’s tough to find parking for this 31-foot monstrosity sometimes and FYI the Santa Cruz Safeway guys are total dicks), we’ve played a ridiculous amount of video games, spent countless hours at the 24-hour fitness, and have made some great strides with booking for September and October.

So yesterday, when decided to finally get out of the tour bus and wander the streets of Santa Cruz randomly (labelling it ‘Adventure Day’) we decided to film the momentous occasion and share it with all of you - see below.  Consequently, we did find a ‘hole-in-the-wall’ restaurant in Santa Cruz called the Peach Garden which was some of the best Chinese food I’ve had in a long time.

PS  A quick reminder, only 2 more weeks to order the new CD “We Are The Walking Wounded” at the discounted pre-sale rate:   http://www.kevinburdick.com/buy.html

A walk in Santa Cruz with Kevin Burdick: