Thursday, April 02, 2009

Rest Stop


We're back.

Balthrop, Alabama's got its second tour ever under its belt and all we have to show for it is a bunch of good memories, an unbroken trail of satisfied listeners, more than a few empty whiskey bottles and the overwhelming desire to do it again.

And a video tape of every show that I have to go through so I can start making some more movies.

For a band which at full strength is one third ladies, this was a dude cruise, with Lauren representing the girl folk and the rest of us six studs taking turns trying to sister-bond with her the best we could. Josh pulled it off right good and Laura gave me Twilight to read on the road, so I was about two thirds chick when we started, but I lost interest after 100 pages or so and let my natural resources of testosterone spike me up to my default setting of two thirds of a man, belch, fart, scratch. Jason spent most of the time getting March Madness updates, so he wasn't hardly a woman at all and Matt's too tall and stoic to get in touch with his inner sisterhood. Chris and Pascal are just dudes, period, except for when Pascal was in college and he was a girl living Another Hell, but I've been asked not to draw that.

We drank ginger beer in Pittsburgh, ate french toast in Louisville, colonized Rita's place (again) in Huntsville, and slept in the Bobo Gallery after a gig in Asheville. Josh and I slept in the van one night when it seemed like the lesser of two sleeping evils; driving away the next day, Lauren reckoned she might have been curled up on a Dirty Sanchez someone left lying around. One leisurely afternoon in Montevallo, we sat around a campfire and burned windows, doors and anything else that wasn't nailed down while Walker played us tunes and showed us art. We played the Feed and Seed in Loachapoka and played the unofficial after-party for Ani DiFranco in Mobile. The lead singer of Sugar Loaf told us we were "Perfect, Goddamit" from the front seat of the pickup truck he's been permanently bonded to down there in Nashville. We watched a guy get cold-cocked at a bar, played an open-mic night, and recited most of Forgetting Sarah Marshall from memory. We had a scary night in downtown Birmingham, partially mitigated by the fact that we were sharing a hotel with a Mary Kay convention, so at least the elevators smelled good when we got back. We imposed on parents, sisters and anyone else with enough floor space to spread out some inflatable mattresses on.

We laughed and we had a good time and we made a lot of good music and we met a lot of great people and forgot again all about having any fights or gripes with each other and after a bit of rest and a few hometown shows, we'll figure out the next step and take it.

We're getting really, really good at doing this and it's changing all the time and we like sharing, so this one fades in the rear view mirror, but we're looking forward to the road ahead. At least I am.

1 Comments:

Blogger Cindy said...

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

much love to yall.

the road already misses yinz.

xo
Cindy

7:23 AM  

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