August 28, 2010

We made it off of I-80, now northbound on I-35. This road goes up to the Twin Cities of Minnesota, but we’ll be getting off at Rt 20 to head East to Dubuque. We should be there in a few hours. Lots of grain silos and farms. Same scenery that we’ve had since we left Colorado, but with more trees and hills. Haven’t hit any traffic at all, which is nice but expected out here. The van is running really smooth, which is great – we had it tuned up before we left, and it makes a huge difference. Waiting to see if we get pulled over in Iowa, because we’ve pretty much never made it through Iowa without getting pulled over (see road journal below, with Anton sitting in the back of an Iowa state cruiser).

Just passed a Barilla pasta factory, but the air doesn’t smell like pasta. Just passed Iowa State University, too. And now more silos and cows and corn. Sign says “Mason City – 82 miles.” I don’t think we’re going that far North before turning East, though. Can’t wait to get out, stretch the legs, unload the gear, and start setting up the stage. We’re headlining a “Welcome Fest” event on the quad in the middle of the University of Dubuque campus. Should be fun, and we’ve been told that it’s going to be almost all freshmen, which means that we can mold their minds to join the SoundRabbit fan army. It’s massive. Just passed a sign that says, “St. Paul – 209 miles.” Funny that we were just here in February, and will be here again in 6 months, driving this same road to play St. Thomas University. To that point, this tour has a different feeling – and not just because Fred now has an official “2010 Goodbye Summer Tour – SoundRabbit Crew” t-shirt. We’re all feeling really settled in the van and on these roads, missing some of the nervous/jittery excitement that we used to have, exchanging it for a “we’re doing exactly what we should be doing” feeling – which I have to say feels very, very good. Far from being rockstars or anything of the sort (wondering if there will be 10 people at our show in Madison tomorrow night), but feeling completely at home in the role of touring musicians. Pretty awesome.

Okay, enough stream of consciousness – if you’ve made it this far, you win “fan of the century” and we owe you a drink at the next show that you attend.

More pics and updates from Dubuque in a few hours, unless something exciting happens in the interim – like seeing a cow fall in a hole.

Got up early to push on East, after enjoying the continental breakfast in the lobby of our hotel. French toast, English muffins & jelly, and little boxes of cereal where you can pour the milk straight into the bag. Mmm. Beers is taking the early shift, with the rest of us checking emails and fighting our bodies’ “hey, I was in the middle of R.E.M. sleep!” instincts. Everybody Hurts.  (wokka wokka)

We’ve got about 10 hours to Dubuque today, covering the rest of Nebraska and all of Iowa, end to end. The landscape changes a bit between the two, with Nebraska lacking in hills and Iowa having plenty rolling away from the interstate. For those of you who haven’t made this trek, I-80 is dead straight for as far as you can see. We basically set the cruise control at 80 and the van gets us there. Almost zero traffic west of Chicago, just lots of blurry cows and corn stalks out the side windows.

We had absolutely perfect driving weather last night – 60’s and clear with a slight breeze. It’s a bit warmer today, but still nice… 70’s right now, I think. We’ve got all of the windows open in the van and we’re all feeling quite good.

Gothenburg, which we just passed, has a Pony Express station from the 1800’s. I remember stopping to check it out a few years ago on a road trip with my dog. Pretty cool to think about those guys riding this same route back in the day.

Here are some pics from the van this morning… more updates later.

Beers at the wheel.

Jay and the Funk’s older, stretchier brother.

Franton comes alive.

Crew.

Nebraska.

Hello from our hotel in North Platte. We were hoping to push to Kearney tonight, but we were all too beat to push another hour, so we’ll be spending the night here and getting up a bit earlier in the a.m. to head on to Dubuque.

Here’s the setlist from Golden:

Park
From The World I Have Known
Story Of
Hazel
Nightlite Jesus
Don
ZED
Heat
Marula Binge
View From Way Up Here (somewhere over the rainbow)
Turn My Egg
Life During Wartime

When on tour, we always have to look for the best deals for hotels by shopping the massive flashing signs that are viewable from the interstate – it usually doesn’t make sense to book online in advance, because we don’t always know exactly where we’ll be spending the night. That said, tonight we saw a sign for a Ramada with” $59/night rooms & a BIG pool!” Sweet. We need 2 rooms, with 2 queen beds each, non-smoking. Simple enough. So we pulled off and headed in.

Turns out the only $59 room (yes, one) they had was a smoking room with a single King bed. Awesome.

Rather than get back in the van, though, we settled for their $80/night rooms, and walked up to find Room 214 and 216. As we approached the rooms, we noticed that the hallway appeared to be under construction – looking like the end scenes of E.T. As we got to our rooms, we were greeted with a “Danger! Asbestos!” sign closing the hallway beyond our doors. Fantastic!

Fred documenting the E.T. stage set.

Sleep tight!

So we’re sitting in the room about to grab 4 hours of zzz’s… taking deep breaths and questioning the water on our toothbrushes.

More from the road tomorrow!