april 30th, 2008

charlotte, nc to chapel hill, nc

on the road with the time bandits. 85 north slips under the wheels of the van and the day is bright blue. the white dogwoods are in high bloom and the purple thistle, tall on the divide, stands around in the tall grass in the spring sun.

seventy five miles an hour.

in our van, the white flash, we make desultory conversation but for the most part it's the sound of the tires on the asphalt and the whistle of the wind.

we stop at a gas station and i buy a bandana.

the time bandits and i stand outside in the shinning day and crack each other up while phil and brett smoke american spirits. joe puts a bottle of vitamin water on his head and walks around, his spine stiff and his hands out from his side palms down. i say that we should drill a hole in the roof of the white flash (our van) so that he can ride all the way to chapel hill with the plastic bottle on his head.

last night we played the double door inn in charlotte. it's a pretty well known joint. eric clapton wandered in there in nineteen eighty two and did a few numbers with the band on stage at the time and that's the room's biggest claim to fame as far as i know. it's a dingetastic little room with a bar on the left as you go in and black and whites in frames all over the bar of the hundreds of acts that have played there. in front of the stage there are a few rows of stadium seats, the kind where the seat part folds up on a spring when you stand. i'd never seen that in a club before. it was a cool, kind of lo-fi touch.

we'd had two days off in charlotte at a pretty cheap hotel where the venue put us. sketchy. there was an element of lurking criminality such as the loose woman who had the sallow complexion of a crack addict. she approached phil for a cigarette on our first night there. later our suspicions of the neighborhood were vindicated and confirmed when on the local news there was a report of an fbi raid on a neighboring hotel where arrests were made for drug trafficking, prostitution and money laundering. funny on these low budget tours how you end up having a couple days off in a place that's as spiritually bereft as music is rich. it's a grand equalization seemingly where pleasure and ennui balance out on a scale that is invisible but palpable.

on rolls the white flash. joe coots sighs and turns on the radio. jon loyd in his shades chews gum and gazes out the windshield from the first bench of the van. in the middle bench brett bass reads the book i picked up for him in chatanooga when i bought the motley crue book, the dirt, (good read) and phil cimino is in the back snoozing. on rolls the flash into our rock and roll destiny, crawling on the back of the world as the sun looks on.