Ahoy There!
Back up into the blog-0-sphere.
Where were we...
Ahhhhh yes Tuesday morn.
I awake fully refreshed, and our most gracious host Erin & Piper have taken a walk and got us bagels, (again a trillion thank yous to Erin and Piper for sharing their space with us)
Brando explained that his NUCLEAR Coffee had his mind going and his tum tum and he had to pull the trigger and sleep with a plastic bag in case he called his hurl-friend. He also slept on this bed that was like 4 feet off the ground so he had to keep jumping down to go to the bathroom. Luckily he's a trooper, and felt better in the morning.
So we dined on bagels heard a few of Erin's adventures of getting to dance in China for two weeks and then she was off to rehearsal, so we loaded the gear back up and got directions from Josh, since Geebus (GPS) had a case of the butterflies and didn't want to locate his signal. Anyways so Josh got us going in the right direction (big ups) and off we drove to the Fermilab in Bataivia, IL. OOOOOOOhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh SNAP!
The Department of Energy's 3.9 mile particle accelerator sits on a beautifully tranquil plot of land where buffalo roam, and on this dreary Tuesday morn the sky was cloudy (and a tad rainy) all day. But we got through security just fine, and started in the visitor center which had all kind of experiments set up to help kids (and adults) try to understand how small and how huge the space inside us is. There were two excellent videos that moved you inside the human hand and one that took you away from the human hand, I don't know if link will work but it is essentially what the videos were showing.
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/
So we tried out all the different experiments and joked around, there's an excellent photo of one of the fermilab workers, the picture looks like its from the late 80's and this old guy has a hat on that says "Psycho" top notch.
We went to the Robert Rathbun Wilson Hall which was just around the corner and went inside and saw all the scientists eating lunch and this huge swinging pendelum that tracks how the Earth is spinning. Pretty cool. Then we drove around the property a bit more, saw all the houses and a lot of cool architecture and saw the buffalo and the baby buffalo and that concluded our Fermilab trip.
Next stop was the Walmart down the street to buy a new GPS (pronounced "atlas" (cue up floor tom pattern)) and we were on our way to St. Louis!
New city new font.
We listened to a ton of music here's some highlights:
GBV
Dosh
Tomahawk
Bad Religion
Chromelodeon
Lite
Brando and Benny saw a "1800-Raper" sign, that's one unfortunate last name.
Pretty flat.....still flat...
We were getting close and when we saw the sky line we happened to be listening to "What a wonderful world".
St. Louis Armstrong!
Our panoramic view of the city also had this HUGE geyser going off in what looked like the middle of the city, it was really strange looking, brought to mind some sort of time portal/space rip.
(We talked with some local friends and even some of them didn't even know it existed)
So we found Katie's pad, and were greeted by Sam. A ridiculously friendly beagle mix and we relaxed a bit, made some sammiches, got our stuff inside and then set sail for the Way Out Club.
I received correspondence to arrive around 7 and so we did, and there laying in her car was my sis, who was our part time merch girl for the evening. She made the 2 hour drive from her internship to hear us play and hang out, respect. So we caught up with her, and waited and waited and sure enough around 830, Bob and Sherri arrived in their golden cooper and we got the evening kicked off. We loaded in right on stage and then got to relax a bit and explore all the crazy collectibles on the wall/ceilings/everywhere. Very cozy place, Angus the house cat was hospitable and greeted all the patrons of the WOC. Bob and Sherri made us pizza (which was fantastic) and we played a pretty good set to The Daydream Astronauts and the Smiling Thief. We got all our gear off and the DA knocked'em dead and ST nailed the coffin shut, proper tight performances from both bands, and proper nice guys. We talked with those guys for a while and then eventually loaded out. A brief Van scare occurred, it looks like some hungry homeless folk opened up the sliding door and took one bag of food, one bag of guitar strings and year old cigarettes from the glove compartment. Luckily, found my bag of strings down the alley behind a dumpster. All was well. We went back to Katie's house and had a few brews, dished with Sam, talked with Katie about St. Louis living and her next step forward. Big ol' thanks to Katie/Sam/Katie's other roommate for the hospitality. We did a little bit of internetting and then hit the hay.
Awaking to that St. Louis sunshine, we had some scrammby eggs and we were off (Katie, Brando, Benny, me, and Kel) for an awesome tour of the museums, parks, and food eateries of the St. Louis area. We parked by the arch and walked around looking at from different angles and taking photos of how far the water has risen up. The Lewis and Clark statue that is up to his sad eyes, waving his hat, with the industrial plant behind it was kind of downer. Makes for a good picture, but holy smokes it felt like he was looking right at me saying "Really? Industrial parks and polluted waterways this is what has happened? Good luck!"
Katie unfortunately got called into work early so our last stop was this awesome graff wall that ran for a mile or two. Brando got a picture of the Lorax that someone had done an incredible job with.
So we said our good byes' to Katie and Kel and Sam, had some open face sammiches, which I deliciously sampled several sauces (thank you kindly) and we were on our way to Memphis.
The drive there seemed pretty quick and was filled with interesting signs and music.
We saw one car towing another car with only the red straps used to tie stuff to the roof, there was a woman and her child being towed, looked hella-fuggin dangerous but made for a "What in the dog fuck is going on right there?" kind of moment. "Ghet-tow"
Cooter Holland - real place
Kaiser Wilson - real place
"upwards march" by bell orchestre triumphantly brought us into the city at magic hour, lots of oranges/grays/and pinks and that huge black pyramid that kind of comes out of nowhere. We immediately noticed that there were not a lot of people around...just felt a bit desolate.
Arriving at the P&H cafe around 8 we went in and spoke with a real "no bullshit" kind of dame, who said quite succinctly "no music till 9, don't leave anything in your car it'll get stolen"
(cuts to me)
"Swell, thank you kindly"
"Hi we're called Suburban Commando"
Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo what d'you do with an hour in Memphis?
We went into downtown Memphis proper (passed Sun studio, mad respect) and walked around looking for some tourist trap rib place that some homeless guy pointed out for us, since it was literally down some alley. We got in there and the spot is notorious for taking a long time to get your food, so since we drove all the way to Memphis to play music (and it said on the website they'd make you a meal) we ventured back to the P&H and met up with the Community Bubble and The Warble. We had some free sammiches on the house (huge thanx) and although we would have had plenty of time to sit at rib place, we were thanked by the other bands for arriving on time, apparently the communication flow for touring bands coming through can be a bit dodgy. So the Warble kicked things off and by that time, a decent crowd had turned up for a Wednesday evening. They played one song acoustic (I think it was a cover) and the whole place was singing, time stopped, everybody was into it, it was great to see the versatility of The Warble ensemble. So they wrapped and we set up and rocked. People seemed to enjoy the set and we played pretty well. We moved out all our stuff and The Community Bubble got their players together and sound checked and off they went with their psychedelic music show. Both bands were incredibly good folks and really put on a good show, it was a fun bill to play, and thanks to Alex for drawing/painting the flyer. This one lass would not let up about me looking like Heinrich Zetterberg, she said she had to restrain herself because when I walked in she was ready to jump my looking like-HZ's bones. She didn't, which was good, but I really didn't know what else to say since I don't know shit about hockey or even who the hell Heinrich is/was/will be, but luckily Benny jumped in and they talked hockey and hockey rivalry and sports jumboliah.
Took us a while to leave but it was well worth as we were stopped by several folks asking for cd's. A great night, thank you Memphis!
So with our longest drive ahead of us, we set sail into the Tennessee night to find a hotel. We pulled off after a little over an hour or two and into a stretch of 3 hotels and I put on the "steveman smile" and went into the first one, 55 bux, second one 75 bux, third one 85 bux. We went back to the first one, smiling, and I feared that in our snubbing of the initial rate that some sort of "now its' 3:36 am, our rate goes up...D-bag!" transaction had taken place, but the rate stuck and we got into our cigarette burned beds and unstoppable (literally) crust shower and got all our passports stamped for slumberland.
Good night Brando
Good night Steveman
Good night Benny
Shut up asshole (Benny(aka Grump & Crump's) signature line for 3 days straight)
Don't holla atcha yer boy, he's asleep.
Shhhhh
see-ya
Controlled Storms.
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