Macy Gray in Marion

We are playing a show at Beatnik’s in Marion. To grab some food (and kill some time), the band headed down a street to a local bar. I stayed behind to set some things up.

I got a call a half hour later. “Dave, you gotta get down here now.” I asked why, thinking something was wrong.

“They got Karaoke here. You gotta come sing ‘Sweet Caroline’.”

So I walked over. To my massive disapointment, they didn’t have the song. I know, right?

So I picked a new one, letting Breezy in on my choice. The DJ had my song ready to go. I stood up, rocked it, and sat down to a standing ovation. Nailed it.

We left right after. On the way out, the band was laughing. Turns out, some lady just did a very serious version of the same song two songs ago. Oops.

Back at Beatnik’s, we saw a brilliant piece of art in the co-ed bathroom. The owner had collected a bunch of nursing home glamour shots of old women with their eyes closed. He called it “No Peeking”. The photo below hardly does it justice.

Hope Thanksgiving was good for everyone.

Stuck in the Mud… Again

We arrived in Holt, MI after the Avett Brothers. Their tour bus was parked on a very narrow driveway and we needed to get past them.

I asked our stage manager, and he suggested driving in the grass. Well, I guess he wasn’t aware that the grass was just top soil. To make it worse, the grass was soaked in melted snow.

So, we got stuck. After a half hour of digging, we made no progress. We asked around, calls were made, and finally a gentleman named John Manning came to our rescue. He hooked our van to his F-150 and dragged us to flat land.

We put him and his family on The List, but he couldn’t make it.

Here’s to you, John Manning, wherever you are.

The Face Game

Yesterday at the club, we played the face game. The face game involves one person drawing the upper half of a face, using a piece of paper to cover up their work, and having a second person draw the lower half of the face.

The Rev and Jayme used to play the game as kids, and they taught me how to play. The results are below, including one photo of me posing with a drawing that Breezy tried to make look like me:

Grand Rapids

Here in Grand Rapids, we are playing next door to an abandoned Obama headquarter office. There was a sweet hand drawn Obama in the window, shown below.

On the other side of our club, there is a jewelry store/Mexican restaurant. It has one of the most amazing exteriors of any building of it’s size that I have seen.The building below is the size of your typical Radio Shack.

Finally, I included a shot of our club. It’s packed in here already. .357 String Band played a great set. The band should tear the roof off this place. Not bad for a city we’ve never played.

Avetts in B-ton

I’m camped out at the Bluebird in Bloomington waiting for the Avett Brothers to check. We’re doing a two night stand with them, with a follow up show in Holt, MI. I wish I was hungry enough to grab a slice at Rockit’s.

BR in Fall

I have seen several places that, at a specific time and place, seemed… ripe. St. Augustine in the summer, the Rockies in winter, Wyoming in spring. And yet, my favorite of all of these might still be Indiana in the fall.

Here’s a shot of Broad Ripple after a day of running errands:

Oh boy oh boy…

I finally took the plunge. I broke free of the oppressive chains of the BlackBerry and switched to the iPhone.

I’m still figuring out this touch screen keyboard thing, so I will keep this brief. But I’m hoping that this wordpress app will revive this rusty old blog.

If you are still with me, let’s give it a shot.

Since I Left You: Part II

Sitting here in semi-boring Sacramento, CA.  Do you know what rules about being in a boring city?  98 degree weather!  However, I did see some of the Northern California forest fires first hand yesterday.  I drove through the smoke.  It was smoky.

Let’s post some pics.

This is a burger and onion rings from Dyer’s in Memphis.  The famous part about this restaurant is the fact that they have been recycling the same grease since they opened 70 year ago.  When they switched locations, they hired armored trucks and a police escort to transport the grease.  Good idea; the food was delicious.  I mean, just look at that wax paper.  It’s almost transparent!

A creepy statue of children in an almost-abandoned mall in downtown Memphis.

We played Summercamp in Chilicothe, IL.  The show was over by 5, so we stuck around for a few hours.  Some old hippies in a big bus brought us aboard and gave us a homemade bottle of wine.  It was good wine, I think.  I ended up wandering around alone through this hippie haven with a bottle of wine in one hand and a suitcase in the other.  Good times.  I also got to see 15 minutes of The Roots set.  What did they play?  A 15 minute cover of Bob Dylan’s “Masters Of War”.  By the looks of all the blissful grins, neon glow sticks, and bouncing beach balls, it seems as though lyrics like “For threatening my baby/Unborn and unnamed/You ain’t worth the blood that flows in your veins” went over the crowd’s head.  Still, tight work by the band.

A picture of the rain in St. Louis.  It rained harder than Pacman Jones at a Las Vegas strip club.  However, the fans were tough and hung around.  Kudos to them.  My job consisted of squeegee-ing the stage until the sun came out.  It did, and the show went on.  By the end of the set, the sky was clear and bright.  We also got free ribs, which was going to be a total score until I discovered that no one had macaroni.  Weak.

This is the greatest bathroom wall art I’ve ever seen.  This was somewhere on the west side of Indiana.

Scenes from outside the club we played in Wyoming.  Man, what a beautiful place.  We were over a mile up and we had to load in up a flight of stairs.  It kicked my butt.  But it was worth it for the views.  We heard the Harrison Ford was in town, but he never showed.

Looks like we hit a bird on the way into Wyoming.  Poor little guy.  Hitting birds and bugs is a constant problem when driving out west.

One man.  One sock.  One dream.  I heard this guy’s sock single handedly ended apartheid and is currently working to legalize gay marriage in Boise, ID.

Also in Boise, we were treated to a meal at the Brick Oven Bistro.  It was the best meal I’ve had on tour.  Crawfish etouffee, lemon vinaigrette salad, and a New York Cheesecake milkshake.  Killer.  I made about 7 “There Will Be Blood” milkshake jokes because I was in such a good mood.  All the men on tour agree: “I drink your milkshake” jokes will never get old.

I like the way this duck does business.

Damn it!  I HATE inconvenions!

A collection of bizarre postcards we saw in an antique shop in Boise, ID.  The building next door was under construction, and the walls keep shaking to the point where figurines were crashing to the ground.  It felt like an earthquake every 8 minutes.

That’s good for now.  Part III coming up in a jiff!

Since I Left You: Part I

I know it’s been awhile since I rapped at ya, so I’m cranking out an extra long one.  That’s what she said!

A guy in North Carolina had the exact same hat as I did.  London Fog represent!

The Rev and The Coug.  Brothers from other mothers. (Photo taken in Orlando.)

The Rev wins a burrito somewhere in Florida.  He does this every time we go to Taco Bell.  Which, honestly, is a lot.

The beautiful beach in St. Augustine.  We swam there at midnight under the full moon.  It was almost a religious experience.

This is vegetarian lasanga and pesto garlic bread I ate at Cafe Eleven in St. Augustine.  One of the three best meals I’ve had on the road.

Scenes from St. Augustine.  We had a day off there, and we had a great time hanging out in the city.  A perfect day.  Until…

…I got sunburned.  3 hours on the beach with the Florida sun glaring down on a Midwestern body with no suntan lotion will do that.  This looks bad enough, but it got a lot worse.  Ouch.  I almost got addicted to Excedrin in the aftermath.

My first armadillo!  This dude was cool.

A chicken made entirely out of car bumpers we saw on the side of the road.  No idea where.  Hey, guess what?

Chicken Butt.

Getting squashed/electrocuted to death seems like a blast by the looks of this guy.

Part Two coming soon!

Update Thru May 14th

 

I almost was in big trouble.  In New York, I thought I got two things stolen.  One thing was my awesome green jacket.  The other was my camera.  

Turns out one out of two ain’t too bad.  My jacket did indeed get swiped.  But my camera surfaced several days later.

So, now I’m back, ready to report on the days I missed while my camera was gone.  On to the pictures:

 

We played an awesome show at the House of Blues in Chicago.  We sold the place out, the staff was friendly and professional, and the food was great.  But for me, the highlight was playing a show beneath the Wilco towers.  Awesome indeed.

And I thought I was the only Ubs fan on earth.

We stopped at a Steak and Shake in God-knows-where (my guess is outside Toledo).  It felt a little bit like home.  Jayme kept drooling at the idea of a chili 5-way, but we got him under control.  Our waiter made a borderline inappropriate joke to us that fell flat.  To fill the silence, he inexplicably asked us if we had ever been cow tipping.  As a nod to this bizarre moment, he drew us a kickass cow on the receipt.  It worked; he got a good tip.

We stayed with a friend in Buffalo.  This was his hair dryer.  It is the most badassed hair dryer I’ve ever seen.  Scratch that, it is the only badassed hair dryer I’ve ever seen.

Someone wrote this on our van while we ate somewhere in Massachusetts.  Not sure what we did, but we’ll take the good vibes any way we can get them.

I’ve said this joke a million times, but now I have the photo to prove it: Why do they call them ‘Boston Market’ in Boston?  Shouldn’t they just be called ‘Market’?  No one ever seems to think this is as funny as I think it is, so with this blog I hereby retire this witty observation.

Here’s a slice of Little Stevie’s pizza in Boston.  The perfect dirt cheap pizza, this slice cost me $1.75 and was (relatively) delightful.  Awesome.

The classiest store in Boston.  They sold copies of “The Dark Crystal” on DVD for $25.  We weren’t in there for long.

We stayed with a friend in Boston.  Her place was filled with plants and Christmas lights.  We all sat around a fireplace, eating sushi and drinking homemade beer while surrounded by greenery and tiny glowing specs of soft light.  It was beautiful.

Jayme and I woke up early to spend a few hours milling around Boston.  We ended up at the Museum of Science.  I had been once before, but it was just as fun the second time.  I generally dislike museums, but science museums I dig.  I think its the hands-on approach.  Or maybe it is the Carl Yastrzemski statue in the lobby.  Either way.

I guess this is why science people prefer Windows.  Oops.

I’ll give a prize to be named later to whoever can guess what this is.  Answer in the comments.  Multiple prizes for multiple correct answers, only one guess per person, void where prohibited.

The New York skyline, barely visible due to a mix of poor weather and poor industrial emissions standards.

This piece of interesting graffiti was found on a garage in Williamsburg.  I googled it, and five other people have posted about it, but no one seems to know what it means or who did it.  Blog detectives, the game is afoot. 

Luckily it was noon, so we went ahead and broke into that shed and stole some Johnsonville Brats.  

We spent two rare days off in Virginia Beach.  It was a lot of fun.  I ate real crab for the first time, and we spend hours at an arcade because the weather wasn’t great for some of our stay.  Apparently, this sign is to warn tourists of their strict no cursing rule.  A local told us that the police will fine you $200 if they catch you saying obscenities.  They have copies of the Constitution in Virginia, right? 

The King Neptune statue on Virginia Beach.  This is far and away the most badassed statue I’ve ever seen.  This is a good tour for seeing unexpectedly badassed objects.

Screwing around on the beach at night.  I can throw my driving hat like a frisbee a pretty long way. The wind was so strong on the beach that I could throw the hat full strength into the wind, and it would come right back to me like a boomerang.  I’m going to try to upload a YouTube clip of me doing this later, so stay tuned.

We looked over at this car as we passed it and freaked out when it seemingly had no driver.  Wrong way indeed.  

This last week has seen Otis Gibbs playing with us.  Even though his music is genius and his voice is spine-tingling, the real pleasure has been spending time with one of the nicest guys you could ever meet.  Thanks Otis.

 

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That’s it for now.  Thanks for reading, thanks for the patience.  I’m just glad to know I still have a camera.  Take care.