On Tuesday afternoon I took the train up to Torrington, CT to visit F. Sean Michael Martin at the CC (Cardboard City) Mansion East and rehearse with Chauncey for Cage‘s upcoming Depart From Me tour for which I will be the main support. read more after the jump. The journey up is always interesting, probably because it takes so long from where I live in Jersey to Connecticut via public transpo and requires transferring from Penn Station to the Subway to Grand Central, which is enough to encounter the strange and unexpected several times before reaching the final destination of Torrington. A handful of my CC brethren make the same trip to the mansion and all have stories of their own I’m sure. One of many awesome things I experienced this time was an authentic Junior’s Cherry Cheesecake that I purchased and enjoyed in the lower level dining concourse of Grand Central Station where you can buy the famed cheesecake that was famous long before Diddy publicized it further on reality television. Anyway I highly suggest you cop one if you have a wait and you’re feeling relatively gluttonous, like I obviously did. Most people who follow me on twitter know what’s up.

Anyway, after this I got on the New Haven train and saw the illest Rainman era Dustin Hoffman lookalike I will ever see in my life, which was the highlight of that ride. Needless to say that ride sucked ass if that was the highlight.

This trip is one train too long because after you get on the New Haven line, you have to be very careful you don’t miss the Bridgeport stop where you will get off and transfer to the Waterbury train. The last time I did it I was wearing my headphones and was anxious the whole time thinking I was going to miss it. This time I saved myself the anxiety and God sent me Dustin Hoffman. So I transferred in Bridgeport to the Waterbury train, which by the looks of things, is unmistakably headed straight into the belly of the beast. Sean warned me not to be alarmed if I see a white girl with a half black baby sucking a nipple wrigged to a whiskey bottle. I’m not supposed to act like anything is wrong. Fortunately for me, all I got was the dude behind me singing R&B obnoxiously loud the whole time. He kept singing this specific line over and over, “I’ll be your customer,” and doing a run at the end of “customer.” If you know this R&B song, it has got to be the single worst song ever written. Waterbury of course is the last stop on this train. I get up and take a look at who this horrible song is coming from and it is a dude with nameplate earrings in his ears. I told Chauncey this story when I got there and he said to me, “If you ever see a dude with nameplate earrings in his ears, the name on the earrings is probably another dude’s.” I saw this cool ad for emusic on the way out of this train.

The next day Chauncey and I woke up early, rehearsed for tour and then live streamed a few songs on stickam.com. This part of the rehearsal was a blast and we got an amazing response from CCWM followers around the world. I was super grateful that people took the time out of their day to watch us run through some songs. I’ve never done anything like that before and I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out, however, during the stream and afterwards I think everyone including us got amped about the upcoming tour. Dates are posted in the tourdates section. BTW the Canada shows have been postponed due to recent travel laws that are not allowing for us to enter and leave the way we had previously planned for.

For a few more pics from the rehearsal check out the set on Flickr

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