“I play in a band” LA to PHX

The week or so before a tour is a blur. Once you hit the open road, things have no choice but to settle down. Planted in a van barreling down the highway, cell service waning, no more time to tinker and obsess over the last %1 of a recording. You are forced to realize there is a world outside the studio and office, and a hell of a lot of gorgeous countryside rushing by you.

Welcome to the first leg of the THE SKY EATS THE LAND tour, spring 2011.

I have done us both a disservice by reporting to you only through twitter and facebook lately. I’ll stop filling up my black and white dollar journals in my illegible lefty handwriting and use the laptop to do my best to dictate the trails and tribulations of a road family setting out on it’s 9^th year of touring.

This tour blasted out of the gate a little different than any other My sister, Jenny, is moving to Austin at the same time we are heading there for SXSW. Billy drove her Penske with her car and cat in tow, Jesse and I drove the big white freightliner with her dog, Army, in the back.

I10 East is desolate and peaceful- the sun dissolving in streaks of pink and burnt orange in the rear view. Saguaro cactus and sagebrush. Two hours from Surprise, AZ, a tire blew on the Penske and Jenny and Bill were stuck out on the highway. Everyone met up again around midnight, visiting with Danny Dark, the most passionate radio promoter in the West, and eating veggie pizza with enough Garlic to kill anything that ails you.

I got on the landline at the hotel and spent a great hour on the phone with Gary Hizer from the Urban Tulsa. I talked about the new record and my hopes for this tour, and Gary and I geeked out about the force that is Bruce Springsteen. I haven’t heard a bad thing about Springsteen EVER. A former manager of ours said he was once at a party with Bruce, and this very old and well to do woman walked over and asked Bruce, “so what is it that you do?”…Bruce answered…”I play in a band”. When things get heavy out on the road, that’s a pretty good way to find your footing and remind yourself how simple it really is... “I play in a band”. It’s more than enough.