Homeward Bound!

Here we are a few days back from a whirlwind tour. Settling back into the "day job" is proving harder than I would have even imagined. I mean I dont even have that much goin on and yet I am mentally thinking that I need to set up and play tonight. What I thought weeks ago would be a nice hiatus for a week or so after the tour is hard to deal with now. Anyhow back to the usual.

Here is how things wrapped up. We rolled into St louis with time to spare, walked the ethnic Hill neighborhood and took our pick of excellent Italian food restaurants for dinner. Now don't get me wrong but it wasnt that anyone was dreading playing acoustic that night, it seemed more that we were so close to home and all that an acoustic show was a little anti-climatic. Well in a stroke of luck, the promoter had a band run too late and call him to say they wouldnt be able to make their opening slot, which happened to be at a very nice club across town, the Old Rock House. He in turn asked us if we could and wanted to fill in for them. There was almost no hesitation there, we would have to book it across the way and load in with no time to spare, which we did in professional fashion. I cant tell you just how eager we were to get up there, show it off, bust in some heads, and head to home. It was a great time. The band play on like a well oiled machine. Acoustics were a little mucky for some but you could tell that we had over a dozen shows under our belt at that point. Some of the same songs were just downright fun to play. After the show, we packed it up and rolled it out. Making the 5 hour trip to nashville no problem, Spotty at the wheel the whole way to the lyrics of Dave Dudely's Six Days on the Road.

We pulled into Nashville around 6 am, quiety and sleepily disbanded to the sunrise. I got a ticket for 56 in a 45, thanks lavergne police!

I have a few more Youtubes to put up, here is one, the part II from the prievious Breakdown Blues clip that features our favorite dancers of the whole tour!
http://www.youtube.com/v/Ntqz68eqQm0&hl=en&fmt=18

Soul Screamin Clip from the Eldo in Crested Butte 8/2

Here is a partial clip from our show at the Eldo. See if you can spot me playing the cowbell hanging from the ceiling!

Oh and if you arent hip to the embeded video thing here is the link in higher quality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZKU7H9EeHA&fmt=18

Thoughts about going east...

Right now we are rolling to St Louis, I am navigating and spent the evening watching crappy movies in hotel in Lawerence KS




Windmills and sunsets last night. It is weird traveling into the darkness going east. A warm welcome back home to what for us is the familiar but has historically been the old, the past, the places left behind in search of the American dream. Makes me wonder how our culture and society would have changed and been effected if we had landed on the west and progressively moved east. Granted there are amazing places in the east, but our subconscious is based on going to the light, expanding west with the sun setting. The sun rising over your back for a new day, lighting the way. You travel west while slowly emptying the landscape of your familiar topography, plants and weather. You push through the barren green and brown plains to the majestic rockies, a thousand miles of magical geologic features not even hinted at in the wooded east, then through the Cascades and Sierra Nevadas to the lush shoreline and the never ending sunsets of the Pacific.I think it is a large part of what we can define as the American Ethos and something that forever defined our culture.

Over the pass and through the woods....

Here I am staring down the end of the tour, it is bittersweet. Everything is downhill, less shows, less altitude, less spending money, even patience wearing thin, and yet I will miss it the next day upon returning. We spent the day in Crested Butte, there was a bustling art festival in town. We drove up to my brother's land outside of town at Lake Irwin were he was just finishing the foundation of a cabin. Tossed the frisbie for the dogs and even took the canoe out on the lake for a spin. The biggest challenge after stuffing some of CB's finest pizza from the Secret Stash,

was to get our gear to the club around all the hububb of the art festival what was taking place and find a place to stay for the night. We eventually found a route to get the van in amidst all the vendor/exhibitor tents, hauled up two flights of rickity wooden stairs to the second story load in. A great meal, and a great crowd that night.
We had some fun with a few songs and stayed late. A fuzzy start in the morning, breakfast at the Paradise Cafe, and off to Keystone. Winding mountain roads 10 and 11,000 foot passes, the short drive was exhausting in a van with trailer doing 35mph.

It was comforting to be back at the Snake River Saloon good people there and great atmosphere, the apartment upstairs of the venue was an oasis since our accommodations have been pretty basic for the last few nights. The show went off as well as the first time we came through, especially for a Sunday! Some great jams and everyone was pretty on playing wise. The best part was leaving the gear setup and loading out in the morning. A short breakfast stop and on to Boulder.

Boulder is a wildly progressive town, the "greenest" in the States it is said. Evidence of it is everywhere, and for good reason, it is in Colorado with a great university, in close proximity with Denver and right against the mountains. Active lifestlyes everywhere in every facet. Bikes, joggers, masses of people getting off the bus. We stayed in what was once a Holiday Inn Holidome and is under a new name as the Boulder Outlook Hotel. They stated that they were the only green "zero waste" hotel in Boulder. Which by my estimation was a pretty dubious claim, I know for a fact that six greasy road weary musicians laid wasted to two hotel rooms easily. They did their part, recycling everything that they could, composted even, strangely I couldn't find a "zero waste" drinking fountain, I had to use a plastic cup and an electrically cooled water cooler and find a place to recycle my cup. Come on guys. It was a pleasant place though with a climbing rock and waterfall in the dome area as well as hot tub, pool, game room, saunas, yoga and massage available.

Our gig that night was at a brewery, kinda in a strip mall, not necessarily what we expected but it turned out to be a fun show. It was a quasi-acoustic/electric set. It is hard to throttle this band back, it is not that we arent diverse in our abilities, it is just we have too much fun doing what we do. It was a challenge and yet exciting to pull out some acoustic version of our material. I used some broken cymbals and assorted gadgetry that I had with me in addition to my kit.

After the Boulder gig we had two days off. Most of us had plans to go in different directions and that is what we did. Johnny took off to visit friends in Vail, Spotty's lady flew in. The majority of the of band went to camp in the hills. We were hit with a pretty heavy hailstorm and deluge of rain. I went off with my best friend who lives in denver to do some backpacking. We camped in the valley above the Moffat Tunnel in the pine trees past old railroad houses to the sounds of trains and the tunnel's immense exhaust system. The next morning we climbed to a high alpine lake around 10,500 feet. On the way back my tramping gene bit me and I was convinced to ride the last pusher locomotive of a mile long coal train,2 hours through 25 tunnels down into the Denver area. It was like old times back home, yet with better scenery.


The next day the van battery died back at the house in Denver the band was staying at, with no one home to jump it, I was stranded at my buddies house as the rest of the band was stranded at their house, we caught up on some much needed R&R.


The break, the days off, did us good. I had envisioned it to be enough time away to get us ready to show up to whatever curveballs might happen that night and just swab the deck with energy. There was a immense menacing cloud that hung to the west and we were to play outside on the patio. Dark imposing skies stood threatening to push east and dump gallons on us. It only hightening our tension to play. Miraculously the clouds stayed put. Blue skies and stars prevailed as the sun set behind purple folded clouds. Our Bassist's brother (who has graciously hosted 6 grimy dudes while in town) hosted a company party at the club, we has fantastic BBQ and played a set of "hits" for afters. Tishamingo playing a reunion show of sorts inside played a set while we took a break outside. The crowd would march inside then back out. We were like a crew of mangy pirates behind the wood railing working to keep the place jumpin in a rare humid Denver night. We had the place shakin! The outdoor stage had rotted planks and my kit swung and swayed, the bases of stands centimeters away from holes in the wood, drop a stick or a drum key and loose it in the ocean. There was this giant tree next to me in the middle of the stage, the mast of our great ship. I wrapped a sweatshirt around it to keep from funnyboning myself... not much help but it kept me from getting chaffed. As for the sound PA and engineer was much more capable this time and brought a better PA, we sounded as we should. Our last set was a scorcher, one long song after another. It seemed to end too soon.

So here we are on the road on the down hill. One more out of town show before landing back in Nashville. St Louis on Saturday. I miss the mountains already. There is talk of good things to come from them already.

Short visits and a long haul....

...such is the life on the road with a band I suppose. Or perhaps we have become spoiled with the opulent locations that we have been stopping on this tour. Or is it just that we were in Portland, one of the finest cities in this great nation and had a mere hour to spend in which we ended up looking for food and hastily eating before loading in. Then playing our set and leaving out the next morning, everything went by too fast. Surely aside from the great venue and response we had, the highlight was our late night drive across town after the gig and the drive back through the next morning. I took in all I could of the area in that brutally short time. The tree lined streets, the funky culture, the king Columbia River, the dams, the beautiful evergreens, the looming mountains, the parade of trains along the river. I was in a pretty bad mood as we climbed up river back to Idaho and Utah passing waterfalls, windsurfers and apple orchards.




We ended our journey for the night in Boise and as if there was a golden light though the setting haze, we found the Flying Pie pizzeria. We were walking unknowingly into probably the BEST pizza we have ever eaten, no one could put a finger on it exactly. Perhaps it was the pizza itself with it's robust toppings or the place, which was equally unique. I think it was literally soul food, consoling us from leaving Portland so quickly. We have a show to get to 1200 miles away, in another one of God's showplaces, Crested Butte, CO. With only have two and a half days to get there, that pizza put all the uneasiness behind us and the prospect of another great show in front of us. As we left the iconic pizzeria all six of us honked the "horn of good will" to the wild grateful cheers of it's employees. Hear here! Flying Pie you put Boise on the map for the Union without doubt. We soldiered on early in the morning driving as far as we could.

An odd wobble plauged us all the way to Salt Lake City. Breakfasts and yesterday's pizza feast turned into a shake like mush in our bellies. We sang in harmonic vibrato to the shaking of the van. Hesitantly we stopped in downtown SLC to have it looked at. We were really wanting to rack the miles up, but this didnt seem safe. Our instincts were correct, tread separation on the rear two tires, a potentially messy danger. Doubled by the fact that we were soon to head into the mountainous desert of southern Utah. After two hours we rolled on confidently and thank goodness, smoothly. The Union Pacific followed us south and gave us something to concentrate on though the rolling hills, we saw train after train and a magnificent sunset as we drew closer to Colorado. Now we are holed up 6 to a room in Grand Jct thanks to our tire dilemma. We are a stones throw from our destination. All is good.