We did it! We finally left the Bay Area for our first big tour in Bussie, the short bus we bought off a guy in Sacramento.
- Packing up Bussie for the first time, before rollin out on our Save the Dinosaurs tour. (evening of June 22nd)
Along with us for the adventure are Trout, Paul's little but much taller brother, as Tour Manager & Driver Extraordinaire, and Ann the Man - holdin it down on merchandise-slangin' and cheer patrol. So fricken great to have their help and company -- that's another first for us on this tour -- we could never invite guests with our old faithful GMC Safari "Bessie," God love her, unless they didn't mind riding strapped to the roof. But in Bussie, not only can we all fit in comfortably without our knees up around our ears, we can also do things like pole dance,
- These guys keep us safe on our journey... if they'd just stay on their duct tape home.
make Save the Dinos CDs, play Balafon, and stand on our heads. Maddy & Trout worked tirelessly before leaving to convert it to a both sleep 6 people and store our shitload of gear...
We drove straight through from Berkeley to Colorado Springs, taking turns driving while the rest got shuteye, gazed out the windows at the changing landscape, read books, played music, and listened to some pre-tour musical inspiration through our bumpin (uh...) speakers. The fear of drivers falling asleep at the wheel must've gotten to Paul cuz he woke up in the middle of the night and from the bed swore he saw us driving into a dirt bank... he started screaming ADLEEEEEEEEEY! which of course got Maddy to screaming AAAAAAAAAAAAAH... None of us have ever seen Trout move that fast - all 6 feet and 4 inches of him scrambled from the back of the bus onto Adley's shoulder in 0.1 seconds flat, to discover that Adley was indeed wide awake, alert, driving Bussie neatly between the lines, and feeling pretty confused as to why the whole bus was screaming. Good thing he kept his composure while we tried to scare him off the highway.
Paul here: yep, i was afeared for all our lives! I'm definitely not a fan of the overnight driving sessions but i guess we gotta do what we gotta do every now and again. Anyway, once we landed in beautiful Colorado Springs all was dandy. We had a nice dinner and show at the Front Range BBQ (try the pecan pie) with a sweet bluegrassy group from Kansas by the name of the Dewayn Bros. All you punky traditionalists should peep em out. What else did we do?
- Playin in front of the courthouse in Boulder. Thanks, The Man, for not ticketing us.
We busked right in front of the Boulder Courthouse, permitless (take that, Man!), then we got to see our good buddies Elia, Adam and Elizabeth AKA Betsy in Ft. Collins and then off to Denver for a couple of heady shows at Owlsley's Golden Road whose namesake is a combo reference to a famous purveyor of acid and a Grateful Dead song, i think. Fun times. We saw Fareed Haque's band (guitarist of Garaj Mahal).
They were pretty damn sick, all the other bands were. That's one of the coolest things about touring and playing everywhere all the time. We meet awesome people left and right like a really sick band called Tracorum from San Francisco. We had to go all the way to Denver to meet a band from home! How bout that!? And how bout Dietre and KT and JR and Elia and Adam for hookin us up? Colorado is sexy, baby. Real sexy. Oh yeah. Here we come St. Louis. Holler at your peeps, Nelly!
Over n out.