April 22, 2009

Just finished loading out of the venue, headed to our beds for the night. Really fun show, felt really good to play after 10 hours of driving. Fred updated the setlist in real time in the forums here on the Backstage as the show progressed. He’ll do that for all shows ongoing where we have wireless at the venue, so if you’re curious about what we’re playing as we’re playing it, you can log in here and go to the forums to see the play-by-play. The owners of Java Joe’s want to have us back this fall, and we’ll look forward to it… really cool room (215 capacity) and they just invested in all new sound equipment.

Tomorrow morning we head to Columbus, Ohio… another 10 hour drive. One thing to look forward to is the World’s Largest Truckstop, which we’ll hit on I-80… and we hear that the World’s Largest Cuckoo Clock is somewhere on our route, too (in Ohio).

Here are some pics from tonight… after the show / loading out a few minutes ago:

beers and the coffee man

the room after the show

fred going through our things for loose change

trailer. gear. bags. loading out. beers.

barking orders. distorted lens. sloped head.

cool bird stencils that were all over the alley (someone tagged doors/signs)

Catch you in the morning from the road…

Hello from Des Moines… we’re just pulling into the city from 10 hours driving on I-80. I actually wrote a nice long Road Journal post way back in Lincoln, Nebraska, and when I hit “publish,” it erased the entire thing… so we’re not entirely slackers here, just had some bad technical luck.

We’ve had great luck with the weather today… clear skies and 70’s the whole way. All of the band members took shifts, with Jay driving right now and me (Russ) in the passenger seat updating the Backstage and calling out directions from Google Maps.

Fred’s been taking photos along the way… check ’em out below. Some highlights from the trip so far… stopping at a creepy gas station on a dirt road and noticing two gravemarker-esque wooden crosses behind the building (pic below)… stopping at a “food court” (not sure you can call it that) near Lincoln, NE and trying to tell the woman behind the counter that I don’t want french fries as a side with my spaghetti and meatballs (she thought I was crazy to say ‘no thanks’)… Beers playing with toy animals somewhere in western Nebraska… a “live show rabbits” sticker on a van we passed… and our favorite sign on I-80, the “outlaw sodomy!” sign painted in white paint on a black tire hanging on a ranch fence in middle-Nebraska. We see that one on every tour, it really jumps out awkwardly from the countryside.

More updates later… we’re about to exit and find the venue… pics for now:

packed up and ready to go (from colorado)

uhh… let’s just use the bathroom and get out of here

live show rabbits!

this is a lot of what we saw for 10 hours today

the boys – laptops and mp3 players

jay and anton solving the world’s problems

red van, white trailer

our power supply for laptops, chargers, etc.

beers sane

the big archway in nebraska… some day we’ll stop at it

beers insane (those are little animals)

your photographer/roadie/friend/dj… fred.

Hello, all… Russ here, taking a break from packing for tour to put my eyes on the Backstage website for a quick minute. My original plan was to be in bed by midnight (ya right), a goal which has now shifted to 2am. We’re meeting at Anton’s house at 6:30am to finalize the trailer packing and hit the road to Des Moines. Some last minute preparations for tour – clearing all memory cards for cameras, backing up laptop data to external hard drive in case it’s dropped while on tour, going to the store in a few minutes to pick up snacks, 9-volt batteries for guitar pickups, bottled water, and a few bouqets of flowers for my wife who cheers these tours on from home… and with any luck I’ll be in bed by 3am for 3 hours of sleep. Wait, did I say 2am was the goal?

Doh.

Oh, and the itinerary has changed a little bit from the post below… we’re now playing in Columbus, Ohio on Thursday night (not Madison, WI). Last minute booking, hopefully some people will come out.

Catch you live from I-80, at or before the World’s Largest Truckstop in Walcott in a matter of hours.