“What are you doin’ there, Guy?”/Trucker’s Atlas/Blues for Meister/Eskimo

Total distance driven: 2947sm

Currently watching: The Pacific

We have been in several different cities/states since my last update about a week ago. It’s a bit difficult to recall what has occurred at the past few shows and in their respective cities so I will break the dates down by location and see what comes out, reaching into the folds of my memory as I sit passenger front en route to Denton—the last show before we’re home for three days!

Nashville: We met with a SESAC representative named Justin for about an hour and a half in a pretty cool looking meeting room where we also got free coffee. Excellent! A lot of talking went on, mainly about the difficulties that bands of our scale face: issues with networking, promotion, organization of labor and time and “energy” management, if you will. The music/live show is maybe only 60% of what a band does. The rest usually involves telephones, laptops, free wi-fi, lots of driving and will. Wouldn’t change it for anything! The show went pretty well that night. We played an art collective/studio joint called the Open Lot, which provided an interesting air for the performance, full of sequestered studio space and gallery walls. I later came to find out that the director of Open Lot is connected to the place we played in St. Louis, 2720 Cherokee, which had a very cool art gallery on its second floor and served as an art “collective” as well.

Memphis: The next day, Tuesday, I drove the three hours to Memphis where we played a venue called The Nocturnal. The owner of the club seemed to really like us and asked us to add our mark to the back hallway:

We stayed at our friend Cindy’s place after the show. She was not able to be at the house but was kind enough to welcome us in through the use of signs and good humor. A makeshift “Welcome Oklahomans” banner hung on the front door and duct tape arrows on the carpet lead each of us to our beds: She even scrawled a message in crayon on the tile wall of the shower (shower!).

New Orleans: While at a conveniently located Love’s Country Store, which, being an Oklahoma company, we make every effort to frequent whenever possible, an old television screen provided a not-so-nice update. In our travels we often neglect to pay attention to things like the news and weather, precipitation we encounter aside, and the message being disseminated at Love’s was one of Hurricane Alex and his ferocious approach. Normally, this kind of news gets shrugged off with a brief “wow, another one’s hittin’ the Gulf Coast,” but it is an entirely different animal, to be recognized and respected as such, when you are, in fact, headed for the Gulf Coast. The words “hurricane” and “New Orleans” do not sit well with the general public. …onward, to New Orleans!

The show was awesome! Definitely one of the better we’ve had. The criteria for a “good” show is not as simple as one might think. I would rather not place the weight of such a verdict on a variable as independent as “how many people were there,” or “how we played,” “stage presence,” “the sound,” or “energy.” Instead, it is a combination of all these things and more. The size of the venue, obviously, has a direct impact on how full it feels. The interpretation of how it looks, feels, smells, how the other bands were, the energy put out as a performer and received as a performer all factor in to the call. The call on many nights is great and this particular night is among the ranks of “shows difficult to top.” The venue we played is called The Circle Bar is lies just West of the French Quarter in New Orleans, a city I nearly claim as my second behind OKC because of other visits I’ve had there. It is very, very intimate, the stage area nothing more than a small square of floor space in what looks and feels like a living room. The venue is actually the first floor of an old, three-story house and definitely feels like it. Someone even took the time to draw their version of our tour poster on the sign outside:

Very cool. One of the other bands we played with, called WATIV, is a mind blowing free-jazz group of four, specializing in being Badass (capital B). I would strongly recommend them to anyone and everyone—they’re a step in the avant-garde direction of jazz that is new to me. Very cool guys, too, who I later came to find out are the “best bassist in New Orleans” and “probably the best drummer as well.” That would explain the seemingly countless jazz heads in the audience, several of whom flattered me by recognizing influence from several 1960s and 1970s jazz fusion groups I have been listening to for years.

We had an eight hour drive to Austin the next day. With no place to stay in N.O.L.A and its status as a somewhat-shady town (always on the brain when you have a trailer with a lot of gear in it) we elected to either find a $30 highway motel or drive all night. A motel is something we have not yet done this tour and something we will put every effort into avoiding. Only the most dire straits call for a motel; car seats easily serve as beds. Either way we had to get out of town. I took the helm and we departed the Crescent City at 2am and, finding no motels cheaper than $80 (a totally unacceptable price) we set up the drive-all-night template. In a valiant and honestly fun run, Wil sat right seat as I trucked onward until 8am, whereupon I handed the wheel off to the freshly awoken Mack and Zach. Wil and I promptly and ridiculously celebrated with a six-pack of tiny, eight ounce beers, having never gone to sleep the night before. The comic relief was not shared by the groggy M and Z who now sat daunted by the remaining three hours left to chug along. (It should be noted that we tenderly awoke them by plugging Wil’s computer into the car stereo and cranking the sound of Thompsons, .30 cals and HE mortar rounds in their collaborative effort against the Japanese defenses on Peleliu. [sweet dreams]).

Austin: After making the arduous drive, everyone needed to catch up on sleep. We were able to stay at Mack’s cousin’s house where we promptly checked in upon our arrival into Austin.

The Non Tribe of Four thence counted sheep and sawed logs until about 4pm. This day is perhaps topped by our visit to Buffalo Wild Wings before checking into the venue, the fairly famous Mohawk Lounge, for a batch of delectable, 40-cent boneless wings. It shall be recognized, as part of the code—while living cheaply on the road, embracing a life of Phillips 66 sink washing, Flying J microwave Easy Mac and Love’s coffee, a man shan’t pass a 40-cent boneless wing day at B-dubs unless a death in the family has occurred or a he has, on his person, a doctor’s note for some mysterious, debilitating illness.

Denton (last show until home!):

The drive to Denton revealed a deeply rooted rhythm as we unintentionally stopped at the exact same two gas station we had hit the previous month, making the exact same drive. To freshen up the experience we politely asked a clerk to photograph us wearing some cowboy hats:

Arriving in Denton was highly anticipated because of some plans we had—someone had contacted us through Twitter, generously offering to buy us all dinner at a place called Fuzzy’s Tacos. Needless to say, we graciously accepted the offer and now claim Dillon as a great new friend. Fuzzy’s seemed to be the Denton version of OKC’s Big Truck, a welcomed change from our inexpensive eating habits. The show was a late one, having us headline at 12:15am and went great until our 2am load out, when we realized that the Burb’s starter had failed:

The problem had been creeping in for the past two weeks and, on the night of our scheduled return home, come to a point. While it was annoying, leading us to secure yet another satellite home/crash pad (which we are very, very grateful for), it could not have happened on a better night. With no show until the following Tuesday, we had plenty of time to get the issue resolved. Everything was straightened out Saturday morning and we found ourselves home early in the afternoon, all in great spirits and very happy to be where we were. The drive was a short one in which I wore the traditional “returning home” Native American headband that hangs from our rearview mirror. Don’t ask:

Home: All too short were the days we spent in our own beds but great days they were! Later conversation revealed that our weekend experiences were nearly parallel in that we spent as much time as possible with our girlfriends and the rest of it sleeping, eating or showering, or sleeping more, or sleeping more.

On the road again: We find ourselves with a reset odometer, now at 213 statute miles after the last leg’s nearly 3200 fade into the past. Some things never change:

We can anticipate a much higher number this go-round, with ample desert states/West Coast/Pacific Northwest/Northwest driving. The longest forecast drive is coming up in about two weeks: 14 ½ hours from Seattle to Provo, UT. That will definitely be a fun drive with some beautiful scenery, I am certain. We have a lot ahead of us these next four weeks, including a planned stop at the Grand Canyon and a “layover” at a friend’s beachside condo in Los Angeles. Life. Is. Hard. So we are off! Almost to Amarillo where we will dive back into this whole thing headstrong, knowing a lot of greatness lies ahead.

--Life on the line continues!