This Tuesday, we leave to go on tour for an entire month!  The tour is called, yep — you guessed it — the Michigan Bailout Tour.  We’ll be on the road with some of our very favorite michigan bands (and people): The Hard Lessons, The Great Lakes Myth Society, The Javelins, and Deastro.  Oh boy oh boy oh boy we just can’t wait to get into some of that warm weather.  And silky smooth grease.  Stay tuned for stories from the road!

 

Here’s a nifty map of the routing that we are looking at:

 

View Larger Map

What you are about to read is an epic tale of hilarious disaster.

 

After yet another gorgeous, relaxed day spent in Boulder, we packed our bags and boarded the veggie bus, less than thrilled about driving east into stormy weather and grey skies. On the bright side, our tour karma  had been pretty amazing so far, so we tipped our hats to Colorado and yelled a fond “Farewell!” as we warmed-up the bus. 

“Wait…uh, I think the brake lights are stuck.”
“Stuck? What do you mean? They look fine to me.”
“Yeah but I mean they’re not working—like, they don’t respond when you press the brakes—they just stay lit constantly.”

 

First Problem:

 

The brake lights don’t work. We mess around with fuses and wires for an hour, then decide to hit the road regardless. We’ll drive slowly and make sure to turn cautiously—the most important thing is that we get to Kansas for our gig tomorrow night.

 

Part  Two:

 

About 20 minutes after our departure, we see flashing lights in the rearview—we’re being pulled over. The brake lights…
“Howdy officer—is there a problem?”
“Well, you failed to signal a couple miles back, and you were swerving onto the shoulder a little bit—is everything OK?”
“Yes , sir, absolutely.”
“No drinking or anything?”
“No, sir. I must have forgotten to signal, and this trailer’s a little difficult getting used to.”
“Yeah, I know how those things are. Well, I’m not gonna give you a ticket or anything—just make sure you signal, and try not to swerve that trailer.”
Christian hands the officer a CD, and we get back to driving. Good thing he didn’t notice the brake lights…

 

THEN (Part Three):

 

After an hour of driving into the heart of eastern Colorado, Joey stands up.
“YO—Christian, turn the lights on! Turn the lights on! I think there’s grease back here!”
And he was right. We flip the cabin lights, only to find that THERE IS GREASE EVERYWHERE!! Oozing down the center aisle of the bus, slathering our clothing and sleeping bags. We are literally in the middle of nowhere—and in fact, it’s quite beautiful outside. The stars are the brightest we’ve seen on the tour—the air is clean and crisp. We’re in the desert.

Which means…there’s a lot of dry dirt everywhere. In a quick-thinking moment of genius, Justine grabs our emergency  snow shovel and starts padding the floor of the bus with dirt. Several of the band members are skeptical—we’re shoveling dirt into a bus filled with garbage oil—-but it actually works. We get the mess reasonably cleaned up, transfer our personal belongings to the trailer, and FINALLY start heading to Kansas.

 

Part Four: The final chapter—

 

When we heard a loud pop and started smelling burning rubber, we knew we were screwed. We’d only been on the highway for 25 SECONDS!! Our tour karma had reversed. This  was the last straw. We opened the hood and found the serpentine belt tangled in a knot and half-melted.

 

As the the tow truck pulled-up, I couldn’t believe this was all happening—WHAT A DAY! Sitting on the hotel bed, it seemed like the only thing we could do was laugh and have a beer.

 

And the beer was perfect.

Boulder is a sweet town.

We arrived at The B-Side Lounge with plenty of time to load-in, set-up, walk around town for a bit (and get lost), and still make it back to the club for sound check.

The staff at the B-Side are some of the nicest, coolest people we’ve met on the road. In addition to hooking us up with more grease, Matt (the head chef) made us some killer tacos and rice. Morgan, the house sound engineer, did an awesome job mixing us and made the vibe totally relaxed. And to top it all off, Andy (the bartender) was what I like to call a “Cool Ade” guy. In other words, this dude was so awesome, I would drink the cool ade if he told me to…you know what I mean?

The show was a blast, and after we finished playing, we all jammed-out to the DJ for the rest of the night. Luckily for us, our good friend (and an Ann Arbor legend) Justine Anthony just moved out to Boulder, so we crashed at her place for the night.  Dane (her house mate) and I stayed up late rocking some acoustic jams, and the rest of the guys in the band built a sweet sleeping fort. Dane also cooked some delicious redskin potatoes with mushrooms, spinach, and onions, smothered in Cholula hot sauce. PERFECT midnight snack!

We awoke the next morning to an absolutely gorgeous day: 60 degrees with the sun shining bright. After a couple hours of relaxing outside, we walked into town and got some coffee at The Laughing Goat. I had a goat’s milk cappuccino, which was honestly one of the best things I’ve ever tasted.

What’s with all this great coffee and beautiful weather? Colorado really has it figured out…

–The [rewind] button

 

WYOMING!!! Just minutes out of Nebraska, the temperature is up (40 degrees), the sun is shining, we found the cheapest diesel price so far ($2.14/gallon), and we also snagged some veggie oil for the bus. Halelujah! I also just had the best Subway sandwich of my life (12 inch veggie sub on toasted “Italian herbs and cheese” bread, with banana peppers, green peppers, olives, spinach, lettuce, tomato, and honey mustard sauce). I’ve had this combination of ingredients before, but this time the lady wrapping the sandwich was so nice. She really hooked-it-up. 

 

Check out this video of the Wyoming grease run: 

 

 

Thank you Wyoming!

 

Band morale is high as we cruise the last 90 miles to Fort Collins. 

 

***

 

 

We arrived at the club with plenty of time to get some KILLER GREASE (the cleanest we’ve ever seen) from Taipan Restaurant (thank you). After filling the tank with vegetable oil and eating way too much food at Rasta Pasta, we got on stage and rocked a 60 minute set. There weren’t many people in the club, but by the last song (“White Lies”) people were starting to fill the dance floor, and seemed to be having a great time. 

Now for my favorite part of the night: ROCKING OUT to Bustle In Your Hedgerow, an absolutely all-star lineup of ridiculous musicians playing instrumental versions of Led Zeppelin tunes. In case you haven’t heard of these guys, you should know that the band is comprised of Marco Benevento and Joe Russo (from The Benevento/Russo Duo), Dave Driewitz (from Ween) and Scott Metzger (from Rana, and formely of Particle). I know I’ve written quite a bit in CAPS so far, but I’ll take it all back to emphasize that Joe Russo is an ABSOLUTE MONSTER ON THE DRUMS!!! I’ve seldom heard anybody rock with the true spirit of John Bonham…it was beautiful to watch. To top it all of, these guys were really great people—totally down-to-earth—the nicest rock stars I’ve ever met. We had a blast hanging with them. 

 

During the show, we met a crazy character named Jacob—a total B.A. (bad ass), who invited us to crash at his place (Thank you Jacob, you are the man!). We stayed-up pretty late listening to Herbie Hancock’s “Feets Don’t Fail Me Now,” and some Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and when we woke up the next morning it was 55 degrees outside and sunny. What a relief from the Michigan cold! After a quick stop at the local food co-op, as well as a great coffee shop called The Bean Cycle, we hopped on the veggie bus and started cruising to Boulder. 

 

This tour is turning out to be a pretty amazing experience. 

 

More to come…

 

--The [rewind] button

Day 4: Boston

A beautiful morning (aka noon -- 4pm) at the carpenter family residence. Words can’t describe the beauty of this house nor the love that it contains.

One thing we always look forward to when coming to boston is the cannolis at Mike’s. ANYONE thinking about investing in the cannoli industry — this is the cannoli of the future. Imagine looking through the glass at 100’s of fresh, hand-made ‘nnoli’s in 20 varieties. It’s . . . perfect.

A day 4 mini-highlight: the paul mccartney and michael jackson music video for “say say say” i wish i could meet the people who wrote that script . . . i wonder if they live in a bathtub of jello tequila.

Follow that with a post-thanksgiving thanksgiving dinner — good god.

DAMN IT GETS DARK EARLY, how is it only 4:30??

Load the bus after dinner, get to the club (Johnny D’s), load in during their local blues jam. They have a half barrel of grease for us! (“um, someone called and asked if we could save some of our throw-out grease for a bus . . . )

A lot of great friends showed up for the show, and a good crowd in general thanks to our beloved street team and a great article in the local paper.

Staff was incredibly nice, and how about kevin doing the splits 20 times during clubbing?

Good pre-game and post-game talk on the bus (dude, could you try that beat on the other snare? hey dave, can we get more of tyler in the monitor for the 3rd verse of all i do? MYF bridge is in a 4 measure phrase, lets wait till measure 7 for introductions, oh man i love that feedback delay loop in the break of lost in a day… holy $#! michelle and mike killed it tonight!!).

Someday we hope to have a show where everything can go wrong and no one in the audience will know . . . i guess we’ll have to have a few more of those shows to get some good practice. Is there a book about playing legendary drum solos in the face of screaming feedback?

End the night with the discovery of a pizza box to the right of the stage, filled with cookies, with a note saying:

Dear, My Dear, My Dear Disco,

we’ve baked no less than 3

class I narcotics into these

cookies. Can you tell which ones?

Just kidding, the only ingredient

was love.

Sincerely,

Miguel and Marilyn

. . .

Thank you!!

(and another point for the karma team)

Sincerely, the [record] button