Jam Cruise 10 Recap: Day Two - Guitar Solos, Tigger, and Mr. Davis

Day two began with a late afternoon start around 1pm. When I awoke my quirky roommate Gypsy had moved her mattress out onto our balcony and she was fast asleep, soaking in some ocean air and getting some rest. I gathered myself together and headed to the pool deck to check out the scene.

As I mentioned in my Day 1 recap, I created a new toy for Jam Cruise 10 – a disco guitar. It is a disco’d hot lixx, and it still works. Jam Cruise is a place where you can be silly and let it all hang out. I certainly did that, taking the guitar to the artist signing and getting each of the Umphrey’s guys to play with its arpeggios and sign the back. I taunted them with the disco guitar, showing them how I had learned to play some of Jake's solos. After the artist signing I spent some time on our first day at sea casually enjoying the music on the pool deck and drinking frozen cocktails. Oh how I love a Miami Vice on Jam Cruise.

At 4pm I headed to the Theater for Lets Make A New Deal – a Jam Cruise take on the game show Lets Make a Deal with members of The New Deal and Joel Cummins from Umphrey's McGee. I was a contestant and won $20 in merch by throwing playing cards at a watermelon and getting one to stick...by cheating to win. My buddy @petelikesmusic was sporting his Tigger outfit and was a big winner. Check out Pete bouncing up and down as Tigger in the video:


Next up was Get Lit Up with Kuroda and Waful, also in the Theater. I found the discussion quite interesting about the lighting of Phish and how Kuroda got his job when the original lighting director for Phish took a restroom break. I and had enough cocktails in me to be one of the first to ask a question from the audience.

My question went something like this:
(Directed at Waful) “Ive been to a lot of shows where the band gets the crowd riled up and the energy in the room makes the band change what they are doing as a result. Please give an example of when you made a change to the lights in reaction to the crowd energy. And part two of the question is directed at Chris Kuroda – I was at Big Cypress and saw a UFO land. I was wondering if you can confirm or deny that.”

The everyone in the theater chuckled at the UFO question and I thought I heard Kuroda say reluctantly admit “Yeah, that was me.” Mission accomplished.

The costume theme for the night was zebra night. Every year since we have been on the MSC Poesia there has been a zebra night because of the Zebra Lounge, a venue where everything from the carpet to the couches to the lamps is zebra print. Participation in Zebra night gets bigger every year and there are some fantastic creative zebra costumes.

After a meal in the sit down restaurant I changed into my zebra gear and caught a powerful set by Galactic on the Pool Deck. Check out the videos of Kashmir and 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover.

Next up was another high energy set by Umphreys McGee at 11:30pm in the Theater, but the highlight of my evening was the Surprise Me Mr. Davis set in the Zebra Bar at 1:45am. I danced through most of the SMMD set and left a little early to catch a couple of The New Deal songs before their second to last set ended 4am. I cant wait to listen to the SMMD set again – I'll post the recording when it becomes available. SMMD is a breed of animal similar to Dr. Dog or Wilco – but with strange superpowers that I cannot describe.

Every night before going to bed I would make a lap of the boat. The freaks come out at night, especially on Jam Cruise. I lost my notes so I can't tell you exactly what happened late night, and its just as well - a lot of things on jam cruise you just have to be there.

Stay tuned for the recap of Day 3 where we visit Haiti and party with Rosario the inflatable monkey on the beach.