Dinner.
Just stopped for dinner at The Corn Crib in Shelby, Iowa. Meatloaf and potatoes for me, a bacon cheeseburger for Anton… and photo opp’s galore.
On the road again…
Greetings from somewhere outside Kearney, Nebraska. For those of you new to SoundRabbit, welcome – and thanks for joining us on our journey (literally and figuratively). While this is the first post in this iteration of the Road Journal, we’ve actually had three years of Road Journals for past tours, all of which lived behind the ‘wall’ of our password-protected Backstage Community website. We’ve decided to put this year’s tour Road Journals on the public SoundRabbit website, for all to enjoy.
[We’ll soon be launching the all-new Backstage Community site, which will have other goodies and journals of a different nature for our Members.]
So – here we are. Anton and I (Russ) are cruising down Interstate 80 in Nebraska, with our destination being Iowa City, Iowa. No show today, just a travel day. We play in Chicago tomorrow night. This is a duo acoustic tour in support of our recently released Duo Acoustic, Live in Boulder album (get it here). The last tour we did was in August with the full band, so the van is feeling quite large right now. Our tour manager extraordinaire, Fred, will be flying into Chicago tomorrow and we’ll pick him up to join us for the run.
We’ve got a couple of solar panels on the dashboard powering our cell phones and wifi devices, two full empty bench rows for sleeping in the back, and Taylor Swift on the radio. Just like being at home.
Denver is an island. It’s a 6- to 10-hour drive to the nearest big city in almost any direction… making it one of the more challenging home bases to tour out of for indie bands like ourselves. Typically on Midwest run like this, we drive 10 hours to Des Moines and then play a show there; this time we decided to push to Iowa City (12 hrs), grab some dinner, and rehearse our set in our hotel room rather than playing a show. Makes the day a bit less stressful with no deadline at the other end, and we’ll have some time to play around with some new arrangements for the tunes, along with maybe some new covers.
We left Boulder at 9am… and crossed into Central Time Zone maybe an hour ago or so. I’d highly recommend to all of you that if you haven’t yet, you try taking a drive across the country at some point. I-90, I-80, I-70, Rte 66… doesn’t really matter which one you take, the experience gives you a great perspective on the country. Some things you learn:
#1 – Truck drivers work their asses off – and as the bumper sticker says, “When trucks stop, the USA stops.” As I write this, I see nothing but 18-wheelers going West bound.
#2 – The vast, vast majority of this country is farmland/rural. Cities are tiny little dots, mainly grouped on the coasts… the rest is grass, cows, creeks (“cricks”?), stands of trees where water can be found, farmhouses with propane tanks and no neighbors, random billboards, Bible camps, silos, corn fields, tire signs (tires hung on fences, with things like “no trespassing” or “no hunting” written on them in white paint) and 75mph speed limits.
#3 – Watch for State Trooper speed traps in Ohio.
#4 – Get gas at least two hours outside of Chicago on either side. Anywhere within an hour and you’re suddenly paying 10% more per gallon.
#5 – When you fly from coast to coast, you miss things like the Archway Monument in Kearney (NE), the Pony Express station in Gothenburg (NE), the World’s Largest Truckstop in Walcott (IA), the SPAM Museum in Austin (MN), Prairie Dog Town USA in Oakley (KS), the Corn Palace in Mitchell (SD), the Wall Drug Store in Wall (SD), the Pioneer Village in Minden (NE), and other amazing sites.
#6 – If you have a pond near your house, you can make a mini-resort. All you need is some plywood for a dock, rope for a swing, and a couple of jet skis. Even if you’re 30 yards from the interstate.
#7 – There are 6 major brands in trucking: CR England with their fancy swirly Monty Python royal font, Swift Transportation out of Phoenix, Covenant Transport (with “It is a child, not a choice” on the back of all of their trailers), M.S. Carriers and Werner Enterprises with their robin’s egg blue trailers, and Estes with their mustard yellow trailers. Wabash seems to make the majority of the trailers and mud flaps. You can spot all of these from a quarter mile away.
#8 – You can find a Subway restaurant attached to just about any gas station west of Iowa, but they’re not all staffed by sandwich ‘artists.’ Some are sandwich maulers.
#9 – Bridges may be icy.
#10 – There is a severe shortage of storage locations for orange construction cones and barrels, so states instead line miles and miles and miles of interstate with them, to trick drivers into thinking that they are in the world’s longest construction zone. Conspiracy theory: it allows state troopers to double your fines for speeding in said psuedo “construction” zones.
#11 -New Hampshire has the best license plate motto, hands down.
#12 – Virginia is, indeed, for lovers.
#13 – A.M. radio in the middle of the country is priceless.
#14 – Gas station hot dogs won’t kill you. Gas station bathroom floors are sticky and may kill you.
There are more, but typing in the van while moving is a bit of a headache-inducer, so I’m going to sign off for a bit. Somewhere around here is the ranch with the “Outlaw Sodomy” plywood sign on its fence. I don’t want to miss that, either… it’s a highlight of this stretch of Nebraska.
Tomorrow we’ll be having breakfast at the World’s Largest Truckstop, which is very exciting. As those of you who are Backstage Members know, the World’s Largest Truckstop has been featured in many past Road Journals as a favorite landmark for SoundRabbit. The array of fine retail items, the all-you-can-eat buffet, the power animal t-shirts, all amazing. We’ll post an update from there for sure, and something later today, too.