Notes from the Road...volume1

     Well tonight is definitely one of those weird nights I seem to have from time to time.  No nothing dramatic has happened, no one was killed or anything like that.  But, it’s now close to midnight, and I’m sitting in some state park somewhere in the middle of Michigan, twenty minutes north of Hell; Hell Michigan that is.  Tatiana and I just finished our drive from Ohio, and as usual we pull into some strange town in the middle of a pitch black moonless night without the foggiest idea of where we’re going to stay. For those of you not familiar we just bought a 2002 Volkswagen camper and camp all over the place between shows, but we never seem to get everything planned in advance.  So here we are, 20 minutes north of Hell and there’s thunder crashing and lightning flashing, rain pouring down.  Like I said the scene is surreal.  I expected the lightning bolts, but never expected it to be raining in Hell.  And oh yeah, Tatiana just saw her first skunk walk by.
 
     Notes from the road, that’s what I’m calling these next few updates.  Since we’ve left Maui a couple weeks ago we’ve traveled thousands of miles, laughed like bastards, fought like ninjas, played great shows followed by abysmal shows, taken pictures of bull elk 5 feet from our window, driven through mountain passes that damn near made me pass out from fear of falling over the edge, made money, spent more money, and most important, watched the sun go down over more towns than I can remember.  I’m probably going to forget some stuff and embellish on other stuff.
 
So here it goes…
 
     We got to Northern CA for a few shows and here are the results.  Tiki Tom’s started off rough with the happy hour crowd making too much noise for anyone to hear a damn thing I was saying.  As the night went on, those people left and my people started singing and it turned out well for all of us.  Travis showed up on harmonica and we played and played.  Good night.
     The next night’s show was a tentative one in Chico CA that was supposed to be played with my buddy Shelby Cobra (Shelby is someone you will be hearing me talk highly of in the next few months!).  Well the show fell through but as we drank in the bar we somehow ended up on stage for an hour and a half singing all the dirty outlaw country we could muster.  Nuff said. 
Well I expected my recording equipment to get to California before me and of course, only one box out of about 12 made it.  Long story short I didn’t record any of the California shows.  Anyway to make a short story longer, those four or five shows were the best ones I’ve had so far.  The actual drive across the Midwest was long but beautiful for the most part.  I now see why John Denver had such a hard-on for the Rockies. They are absolutely beautiful. I’ve driven through Colorado before but never the rocky mountain state park.  We actually thought we were taking a short cut (looked like it on the map but that’s another story) and wound up driving about 3 hours out of our way.  However, if you’ve never driven through that park, do it.  It was well worth the drive.  Of course we kept zigzagging back and forth up to somewhere around 13000 feet. We thought it was odd that we could see snow on the top of the mountains in June.  So you can imagine our surprise when we were driving through it.  This was Tatiana’s first time to touch snow if you can believe that.  I myself hadn’t seen snow in quite a few years so I did what anyone would do…  I stripped down to a pair of board shorts and ran right out into the middle of the snow for a most awesome photo moment.
     You have no idea how freaking flat it is from the border of Colorado until you get to the east side of Ohio.  Nebraska is roughly 10,000 miles wide, 3 feet above sea level the whole way through, and grows enough freaking corn to feed…  god knows who the hell is eating all this corn!  There is one gigantic corn field that runs the entire stretch of land from Colorado to West Virginia.   In Illinois alone you can sit on your porch and watch your dog run away for 3 days.  Three days! 
     So we were thankful when we pulled into Akron for the JB show.  Unfortunately we had driven all night and had 2 hours of sleep before our show.  That first Captain Morgan damn near put me out.  Not drunk, just asleep.   No one was really there when we went on as hardly anyone knew we were coming (don’t ask).Let me finish by saying this was not one of our best days.  After Akron we were off to Ohio’s version of the Florida Keys; the “Bass” islands I’ll call them.  On this little island called Middle Bass, year round population about 40, lays a very cool piece of what appears to be the Caribbean.  St Hazards is the “resort’s” name.   We got off the ferry, arrived at the show and noticed my sign,  “Waleshrack Tonight”.  What the hell is a waleshrack I wondered?  It apparently had something to do with the Bulgarian student workers…  The next two days were a blast, pool parties, drunken hula, pretty girls in bikinis, (not that I was looking).  We would have recorded that show as well but of course I was still missing one essential piece of gear. 
     Next show: Hell Michigan.  Well this was one show that I was really interested in playing.  I met Mike the owner of Smitty’s Dam Site Inn in Maui and he promised me he would hire me at his bar if I would write a song about his town.  Well this I had to see before I could write anything.  Hilarious.  The town is only 1100 meters long and only has 3 buildings: a convenience store, ice cream shop, and a bar of course.  As we set up the show, my recording equipment was still not working and yet another great opportunity was lost.  Damn!  On a side note, we did get an opportunity to mountain bike some of the trails in the Hell area.  Believe it or not there are some really world-class trails up there.  But what I really didn’t expect was to turn a corner in the woods and come across two birds standing as tall as my shoulder, screaming like pterodactyls, and then running like an ostrich down the trail.  It’s apparently some sort of crane.  Scared the crap out of me!   
     From Hell we had to make it out to Janesville Wisconsin for what is the craziest Buffett show in the country (if you know of one crazier I’d love to hear about it).  We arrived in the area at about sunset and found a beautiful campground right next door to an adult dancing facility for men.  The Kitty something I believe.  The campground was beautiful however, and we had the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen in Wisconsin.  We check into the Janesville Best Western the ext morning and the next few days were one giant blur.  I had 3 shows in about 20 hours.  Two at the hotel and one right in the concert parking lot.  A hell of a lot of fun.
     Sunday morning we headed out to meet some friends of Tatiana’s in Indianapolis and wound up stopping somewhere in Iowa (maybe Illinois, I couldn’t really tell them apart).  Another beautiful night and I managed to start and finish another song.  After Indy, we stopped at a bike shop in Columbus for some stuff and the guys gave us a brochure for Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia.  It’s an incredible ski resort set up for mountain bikes in the summer.  Take the lift up, and fly down the hill. We had sometime to kill so the next thing you know…  we’re navigating our way to West Virginia.  We stopped at a camp ground near some “Chew Bob’s Tobacco” sign (or something like it) and I wound up writing the “Greetings from Hell” song.  That was a load off of my mind.  That night we were serenaded by a god-knows-what-the-hell-was-making-that-noise and 50 thousand other creatures of the West Virginia night.  It was really cool (in a Friday the 13th massacre sort of way).
     Well Snow Shoe resort is awesome.  We rode the mountain for two days until we were so sore we could barely feed ourselves.  We decided we have to schedule shows at all of these places next time we tour.  Pretty cool stuff.  The next week was spent with my family in Pennsylvania who I hadn’t seen in a while.  I did get to see flying squirrels launch out of my brother’s house.  Amazing.
  Two days later and here I am.  Sitting under a home made awning somewhere in Michigan.  It’s raining and that lightning is still lighting up the sky every few minutes.  We’re both dry, warm (from my excellent fire), sipping on glasses of Guinness, and typing on our respective laptops.  Ok, I know the laptops don’t really fit in that whole outdoor thing but hey, it is 2004!  And oh yeah, I just finished another song.  The tour is four shows from being over and we’re both a bit sad.  It’s been pretty awesome and we haven’t been homesick once amazingly.  We have to be back in Maui in a week but kind of don’t want the whole thing to ever end.  Oh well.  More news next week!