12) Recapping My Night As A Rock Star

Well, it happened. Last night I joined my band mates in OAR on stage last night in Central Park, NYC, to play tambourine on our song “Just Like Paradise”. And let me tell you, it was awesome. Well, I can back track. I had never been more nervous in my life. I didn’t expect to be nervous because I’m on camera every day, my blogs and life are on the Internet for the millions….and millions, and I feel in the last 5 years at Barstool I’ve done enough that nothing should really faze me too much. But this was so different. Even though nobody besides like 10 people were there to see me, I didn’t want to fuck up. I didn’t want to screw up playing the tambourine in front of 5,000 people. I practiced staying on beat all day…with varying results.

When I got there, Marc gave me my custom tambourine for the night, which is when it got real real.

I actually don’t have a picture of it on my phone so I just screen-shotted that from a video. But you get it, it’s a custom Barstool tambourine. It’s awesome.

The guys gave me a quick lesson on staying on beat backstage, which helped ease the nerves.

And then HHH and Stephanie McMahon showed up.

That’s right, two of my favorite people in the world, WWE’s HHH and Stephanie McMahon, were at the show, backstage, standing 5 feet away from me. And let me tell you, one does not simply approach HHH and Stephanie McMahon. They were there for Connor’s Cure, WWE’s charity for pediatric cancer that OAR has teamed up with. I briefly chatted with HHH but he’s HHH and I’m me so that conversation didn’t go too long. They then did an electric intro for the boys before they hit the stage:

And then the guys hit the stage and played all the hits and jams and tore the house down. All the while I was backstage, waiting for my time to go up. Just Like Paradise was far back in the set, so I had plenty of time to practice aka panic. Also during that time DMC from RUN DMC showed up. Absolute legend.

He was so chill and so cool. He hung out and chatted for like 20-30 minutes, telling stories and cooling my nerves. Can’t stress enough how awesome he was.

And then it was time for me to take the stage. Marc intro’d me, and there I was, on the stage, ready to play and really to just have fun:

At the time I didn’t even know if anyone could even hear it, but looking back at the videos, that thing sounded amazing huh? Chimes on chimes on chimes! I played the hell out of that tambourine and tried my best not to fuck it up. I think I was kinda on beat? The funny thing is that is as authentic as you’ll ever hear that song, as I’m the tambourine part on the actual studio version too. So every other time you hear OAR play it live without me, it’s not the real version, nbd.

When the song was over, and I was drenched in sweat, I hopped off the stage and oh who was there? That’s right, Mr and Mrs Lavesque.

The night ended with DMC and OAR doing “Walk This Way”. DMC is a master. He had the crowd in the palm of his hand from the second he got up there, and he told the crowd how nervous he was, which he stole from the conversation I had with him backstage which made me laugh.

All in all, a pretty awesome night. Thank you to OAR for making it happen, OAR’s family who was so nice, and everyone who came out in the rain just to see me and support me.

Oh and one more really cool thing. For the last, I don’t know, 6 months, CEO Erika has been texting and telling me nonstop about how much she wanted to hear the song “Dangerous Connection”. I’ve sent Marc text’s of screenshots like “she loves Dangerous Connection so much” and Marc was like no problem, we’ll play it. Show up yesterday, and Dangerous Connection was not on the set to play. So what did the guys do? They added it. For Erika. That’s the type of guys OAR are. They let my dumb ass share the stage with them, and they added a song, pretty much on the fly, for Erika. So when they come to your city, go out and support them, you’ll see an amazing show from the most genuinely nice people on the planet.

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PS: My only regret is I forgot to grab a setlist. I was on the setlist. I’ll just live forever on the internet version of the setlist.