Visceral Conviction

I had a dream last night that basically encapsulated every stressful moment I have experienced over the last few weeks. Needless to say I woke up feeling very unsettled and not unlike I had been taking the SAT's all night instead of sleeping.

The dream involved me moving into a new apartment which suspiciously looked exactly like my old one in Boulder.... Once I moved all of my stuff in, I realized that a door in the back of the living room led into a very congested and busy hallway in a sports arena. People were using my apartment as a shortcut from the hallway to an outside entrance (The sports arena and congested hallway I can definitely attribute to tour. One of my duties at each venue was designating rooms for production and bands - preferably ones that weren't close to any major thoroughfare.) Clearly I could not live in an apartment with so much foot traffic. I mean sometimes I don't get out of my pajamas until dusk. Embarassing! So I started to move all of my stuff out. One advantage to the sub-conscious experience is the surreal aspect. I realized upon lifting it that my couch was light enough for me to carry all by myself. AND there was a magically convenient shoulder strap on it all of the sudden, so I just threw that sucker over my shoulder and was on my way. I am sure there was more but I cant remember anything else. 

When I was a kid I would have these crazy vivid dreams and was able to recall them down to the smallest detail when explaining them to my parents. I asked my dad once to tell me about his dreams and he said that he could never remember any of them. At 5 years old I thought that was so sad. And now I do it all of the time. I attribute this in part to the numerous brain cells I have killed over the years. And PS, at what age did I stop being able to fly in my dreams? I used to do that shit almost every night (usually when I was trying to escape from Dracula - it worked like a charm). At one point I just stopped. I need to work that back in somehow...

On another random note, my sister cutted my hair. I like it but when I got home I realized that I look a little like the blond version of this guy....I wear less makeup though...

Oh well. Hair grows back and this kid's 15 minutes are almost up anyway.

Blur of days

So I made it to LA. It was actually not a bad drive. More on that later.

It was Scotty J's bachelor party one of my last nights in town. There were girls there. This IS the year 2009 after all.



This is the infamous Lou Perka (we are under strict orders to use this alias when posting his name on the interweb. I think it has something to do with illegitimate children personally).

He is the inventor of the 'Man vs. Wild' spinoff 'Man vs. Apartment' as well as the creperie he has yet to open called 'Statutory Crepe'. He also introduced us to a move named after an older gentleman that is a friend of his family's. It basically involves hugging a young woman in greeting or farewell and having your hand linger on her ass for a few seconds. Its kind of brilliant actually as it causes said young lady to question whether the seemingly ambiguous gesture was an oversight, or just plain pervy. He has pretty much been cracking me up for the last 15 years or so.

This is Ryan. He kept wanting to cheers everyone with his glass. Toward the end of the night, apparently his cheers-ing got incredibly aggressive and Sarah had to remove all glass from his general vicinity.


I am sensing a trend here.....



The ladies moved on to another bar while the boys went and did bachelor party type stuff. We ended up at The Downer which was filled to the brim with douche bags. While in line for the bathroom I noticed that one of the only two stalls was long occupied by two chatty girls. The intermittent snorting coming from said stall gave away to the lame reason why they taking so long. I think its really rude when people do that. So I made sure to say so loudly as I left the bathroom. Cara went in a few minutes later and reported back that the girls were still in there and were talking about finding "that girl that was talking shit". I stand by my summation. No one likes a coke head. 

This guys was madly in love with Cara (there she goes with those faces again....)

Upon closer inspection of his pupils, I think we figured out why. He also had rather large pants. I couldnt really get a good picture, but look at Cara's cute boots that she got in Italy.

I made Sarah fake pose so we could get a shot of this girl's pooh dreads. White people with dreadlocks are rampant in Boulder......


So then I took a little drive to LA. My camera decided to be a dick and refused to have any photo I took during daylight hours come out better than this.

You can't tell but this is actually a breathtaking shot of the Rocky Mountains. I think I am going to return my new camera...

I was bummed but also driving by myself, so really had no business trying to snap photos while I was behind the wheel. I did stop in the middle of Utah to take photos of this, but got spooked after a few minutes when these two dudes that had also stopped started talking about me in French (the phrase "La fille en sueur" tipped me off. It means sweaty girl)



At dusk I hit the stretch in Utah that has no gas, food, towns or civilization for 100 miles. As the night fell, I started imagining all kinds of 'Children of the Corn' scenarios were my car to break down. I decided to just get through there as fast I could and hope that there were no mutants or particularly evil children lurking about.

The drive was bearable, but not something I would want to do every day. Some road trips are fun and involve several stops along the way. Utah and Nevada just really are not that interesting unfortunately and involve very little that is stop-worthy. I did however drive through the breathtaking Zion National Park. In the dark.

I heavily relied on the many mix cds that have been given to me over the years to get me through the boring stretches. There was one an old co-worker gave me that had a bunch of do-wop on it and also the epic but somewhat obscure collection of 80's songs from Cara. But my favorite were a series that my friend Dave Luzius made for me a few years back. He interspersed sound bites (mainly dialog from movies) and music to create awesome 20 minute "songs". Stuff like 'There are 3 girls here at Ridgemont that have cultivated the Pat Benatar look....." followed by 'Total Eclipse of the Heart'. He is pretty much one of the funniest people I know. Once we went to a record store in San Francisco so that he could try and sell some crazy 60's French pop records. As the record store clerk was inspecting the quality of the vinyl, a 7- inch of Wham's 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go' fell out of the sleeve. Dave pretended to know not how that particular gem got there, but I suspect it was all pre-meditated. Needless to say I claimed the Wham 7-inch and still have it. He still owes me a Sheena Easton t-shirt. I miss him....

So now I am in LA trying to get my bearings. But I do get to hang out with this little monkey for the time being, so thats good.

So long, farewell

So I am all packed up and ready to go. After having been gone from Boulder for so long and then back for only a week, the fact that I am moving away hasnt really sunk in yet. Thank you to Sarah and Cara for helping me get everything moved (boyfriends schmoyfriends. Who needs them!). 

Unfortunately I will not have time to stay here on my drive out to California. 

But I did spend a crap load of time over the last few days procrastinating by looking at this. Brilliant.

Will check in when I get to Hell-A. Until then.....

Sigh.....

It looks like my house got ransacked by drug lords.




But really I am just trying to pack and get my life in order after being on tour for 5 weeks.

Moving sucks......

Hot Mess

I just thought I would share.




Swollen cheek, haggard after missing my first flight and on a pay phone because I left my phone behind. This, ladies and gentlemen, is no grown up.

It really can only get better from here!!

Everyone barks and they are all still believing

Fox Theatre in Atlanta








It looked like a massive space ship. But then again, I liken this whole experience to being in outer space.






I am home now. Rested and feeling back to normal. Sort of!

Same zit, different day!

So, Nashville pretty much rules. We had two shows at the legendary Ryman Auditorium, original home of the Grand Ole Opry. The place was beautiful and I swear I could hear the other worldy echoes of all of the amazing folks who had played there over the years. Oh wait, that was just the country radio that the venue pipes into every room.










During the day, the auditorium is a museum and there is tons of memorabilia all over the place and cool stuff to look at. Lots of little old ladies work there as tour guides and such. The crew rolled in off the bus early the first morning looking raggedy and generally sketchy (seriously, its just how you look when you tour, you cant help it) and these little grandmas had no idea what to make of us. They were really, really adamant that we not disturb the patrons and wanted us out of public view as fast as we could get there. It was sort of hilarious. I wasnt even offended. I know what I look like when I get off of that bus. It goes a little something like this:
It was a great room. I got to see the whole show from my office!


After the show we went across the alley to Robert's Western World. The coolest thing about Nashville is that day or night, there are bands playing in pretty much every bar. The band at Robert's was, at first glance, just four dudes jamming out to covers like 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia'.

Then the fiddle player sang a Gram Parsons song. And he was amazing. I think he thought I was in love with him or something. I was totally awed by his old timey, smooth as butter, mahogany voice. I couldnt resist snapping many photos. 




We all surmised that even though this cowboy was a little paunchy, he must still be a big hit with the ladies. It just goes to show you what being in a band can do...

This guy was way into it. He danced so hard he lost his shoes!
Will picked up this awesome beer koozie 

This was also the night we inadvertently invented the "hamburger bed". This is when you have two beds in your hotel room and you use one to, say, eat a hamburger in at 3 in the morning. You then sleep in the other so as to keep the dirty and the clean separate. Hence one is the hamburger bed and the other is the sleeping bed.

Anyway. The next day I made a quick trip over to Hatch. They are kind of a big deal in the history of country music posters. They are one of the oldest and last letterpress print shops in the country.





Although a lot of these posters are not graphic or artwork based, there is something really fascinating about the technique and time involved in making one of these suckers. I wanted to snap some shots of the printers in action, but I could tell they were a little shy.



Atlanta is next. Two more shows and then sleepy-time in my own bed.