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Thanks.

Greetings good people.  It is 2 am and I am wide awake.  When I was in Jamaica last month I was visiting a children's home and had very high hopes of capturing some of their beauty onto an audio recording.  Lauren had taken hundreds of amazing pictures of these kids in her four months with them and I really wanted to record them singing.  I took my small handheld digital recorder (which no one at any airport security checkpoint had ever seen before) and after having spent several days with the children, pressed the red button to record.  I had gathered a group of 4-5 young girls aging from 9-15 who had enthusiastically agreed to sing Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds" with me on the back porch.  The time had come and I was ready.  We sang our hearts out, smiling and laughing through every take.  In my excitement, I forgot about the wind blowing into the microphone and the recording did not come out. However, I did have another chance the next night.  After a heartfelt evening of sharing stories and giving the children their Christmas gifts, we tried again.  This time the entire household of over 15 people (13 children) were gathered around me singing the very same song, "Don't worry about a thing, cause every little thing is gonna be alright, singin don't worry..."  I couldn't have asked for anything more.  It may have been one of the greatest musical experiences of my life.  Actually, no, it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. Period.  Before the kids were off to bed for the night I was able to get the recording on to a CD so that they could hear it.  Again, they gathered and smiled.  Again, the recording did not turn out like we had hoped.  I think there may have been some toe tapping going on that jiggled the cord to the recorder.   Perhaps it was only meant to remain in our memories. 

Four days after leaving the children, one day before leaving Jamaica, I decided to pull out the recorder and set it on the table one last time.  I recorded it once and called it good.  Loud reggae coming from the speakers outside of our room and treefrogs, its all there.  I decided to upload it tonight so that some of you out there may download it (from player at bottom of screen).  It is what it is.  For me, now, it is a reminder of how thankful we should be for everything that we have.  It is a reminder of those who have less than us.  A reminder of how the people that have less somehow manage to rise above...

                                                                                                        and live with more. 

Thank you Jamaica. 

     As many of you already know, our tour ended prematurely and we cancelled our final five shows on the west coast. On the day before Thanksgiving, while visiting Thom’s family for the holidays, Peter received a phone call from his father notifying him that his brother, Chris, had passed away.  Chris (34) and his newlywed, Mandy (31), were in a car accident in Baja, Mexico. Mandy survived and was airlifted to El Paso, Texas. She suffered serious injuries but will fully recover.
     On wednesday night, I drove Peter to Chicago to catch a plane home to Virginia to be with his family. I feel fortunate that we had two separate visits with Chris and Mandy in North Carolina just weeks ago. They were both with us for three of our shows and kindly welcomed us into their home in the hills of western North Carolina. They took us on several amazing hikes amidst the fall colors and we shared a few fun meals together. (you may recall from previous blogs that the entire band borrowed Chris’s clothes for our show requiring a dress code) They are beautiful and positive people. Chris radiated a gentle warmth and had a calm and quiet peace to him that was evident to anyone in his company. I am thankful for my brief, yet very memorable time with him. My thoughts are with Peter and his family and my heart is completely broken for Mandy. Fortunately, we have enormous faith in the human ability to heal. I am leaving tomorrow to fly to DC to attend the funeral and be with Peter’s family and will be returning his guitar to him. Peter will be joining other friends on thursday to play music in honor of his brother.
     We’ve much to be thankful for everyday. Celebrate. Tell someone that you love them. Love deeply. Love today.

Thank you Chris.

-Dave

November 26, 2007
It is a cold but clear morning in the Mile High City. I am sitting in a car in the parking lot of Denver International Airport and have been listening to classical orchestral music on a public radio station for the past hour. I dropped my dad off to catch a plane to Cincinnati and am waiting to pick up my mom’s boss and good family friend, Scott, from his own holiday travels. For the first time in a long while, I am alone and with nothing to do for two hours but sit…and be. Mount Evans, the familiar and most prominent peak on the Front Range, is already covered with snow. The moon is waning in the western sky and moments away from falling behind the Rockies, and I am home. It is almost 9 am and I think I am now also…awake, awake from a 60 day journey that ended just one day ago. 13,000 miles and 30 states later, the tour has ended. As anyone that has traveled could attest, the mind can have a difficult time keeping up with the body when sleeping and waking in different locales night after night, day after day. This being said, however, the reverse can be equally true. The mind will occasionally play a mean game of leap frog leaving the body wanting nothing more to do with, in this case, traveling. My goal is to now have the two make up, get along, and rekindle their love for one another. Ahh, balance…


(Afterthought)…who am I kidding? I’ll travel more miles in December alone than the entire fall tour…details on that to come… Balance Schmalance…

November 12, 2007
Miles driven: 11, 361
Days on tour: 47
Shows played: 25
States driven through: 20
Couches slept on: 11
Floors slept on: 21
Cups of coffee consumed: 329
Number of motel fire alarms that have gone off at midnight: 1
Number of 7-11 Taquitos consumed: 6
Number of times car top carrier has blown off: 1
Number of blogs Dave has written: 10
Number of blogs Thom has written: 1.25
Number of blogs Jordan has written: 1
Number of blogs Peter has written: 0
Most expensive gas price: $3.34 (somewhere in the North)
Least expensive gas price: $2.54 (somewhere in the South)
Number of Dairy Queen Blizzards consumed: 16
Number of women that Floyd has kissed: 65
Number of women that have fallen in love with Floyd: countless
Highest Temperature: 91 degrees (Austin, TX)
Lowest Temperature: 23 degrees (New Paltz, NY)
Number of times we have actually used our Coleman stove: 1
Reasons why you shouldn't drink Starbuck's coffee: too many
Number of encores played: 8
Hours of "Big 80's" satellite radio station listened to: almost 100
Number of days remaning on tour: 19

November 10th, 2007
Hip grocery store gig in Raleigh, North Carolina. Taking shots of…flu vaccinations after the show…from my cousin. Reuniting with childhood friends. Beauty. Owls calling in the morning fog. 3 hours of sleep before waking at 5am to drive to Knoxville, Tennessee to play at a tailgating party before a Univ of TN homecoming football game. RVs. Orange. Hot dogs. Southern accents. Peter singing “Rocky Top.” Country Club gig in Cashiers, NC. Dress Codes. Borrowing clothes from Peter’s brother to dress up to code. Dear old ladies. Kelly from Dahlonega. Blackstone, Virginia with my very welcoming relatives. Aunt Kathy’s homemade potato salad. Apple Quorn liqueur with my cousin Billy. Albino deer heads on the wall. A Macaw parrot large enough to eat Thom's dog. Putting our feet in the Atlantic Ocean at Virginia Beach. A pub tour of colonial Williamsburg with Peter’s good friend Heidi. Cracker the deaf albino cat. Seafood with Chip. Getting road weary. A corporate office building lunch time set. 2000 Corporate Ridge. Shiny glass elevators. Fever. A fun show at Alexandria, VA’s newest art gallery, Art Whino. My first grade teacher surprising me at the show. Whoa. Live music is better David Christ Superstar. Heading northeast. Toll roads. Bad Starbucks coffee. Crossing into New Jersey. I knew it was just a matter of time but I didn’t know it would be so beautiful. Still kickin’ ass folks. Thanks for the continued support. Ithaca here we come.
-Dave

     Nov 2nd, 2007 - Greetings from northern Virginia.  I’m writing another backseat blog from the interstate, this time en route to Raleigh, North Carolina.  We have survived over 5 weeks on the road thus far, and are now over half way through our journey.  I’d first like to congratulate Thom and Kristen for completing their first marathon this past weekend in DC!  Mucho respect to you both.  We spent the last week with Peter’s parents in Alexandria, VA, and were spoiled so rotten that we hardly made it out of there.  Thank you for everything, Martha and Don!  We played our first show in DC last night at a place called the Grog and Tankard.  We were initially a bit apprehensive about the venue as we had heard mixed reviews, but we were pleasantly surprised.  The Grog is the oldest and longest running music club in DC (having opened its doors in 1964), and the staff was extremely friendly.  Word of the week: Grog. 
     After the show we made a quick stop at a packed little pub in Georgetown, and it really struck me just where in the world we were.  Sure, we had passed the Washington Monument, the Pentagon, and the Jefferson Memorial several times this week, but it wasn’t until entering Mr. Smith’s Friendly Bar that I fully understood that we were indeed in a very different place: our nation’s capital.  It has been a very long time since I was in a place with so many collared shirts and suits, and for me, it was almost a tourist attraction in itself.  I honestly can’t remember that last time I wore a tie.  Mid 90’s maybe?  And six dollars for a beer?  What?  At least they let us in with our Chacos on.  We have now made it from coast to coast, and the overwhelming realization is this: we live in a big-ass country.  While I am still extremely fearful of the rampant corporatization that is turning nearly every town in America toward a monoculture of chain stores and strip malls, I do have a renewed hope in people.  Our country’s own diversity is perhaps our greatest asset, and through these travels I can feel my own mind opening every day.  Mission accomplished.  Tour successful.  My final conclusion for the day: there are a lot of very nice people out there.

Raleigh or bust…

-Dave

A painfully romantic old farmstead from the 1800’s outside of Canton, Mississippi with Peter’s wonderful relatives. A “Party Pig” of Orange-Coriander beer. Coffee shop show in Jackson. BBQ Tempeh Sloppy Joe. The departure of our fourth band member and favorite person, Jordan Watson to Seattle. Pecans that make my mouth swell and my throat numb. Panic. Staying with my brother and his delightful family outside of Atlanta. Guitar Hero video game. Playing music for my nephew’s 2nd grade class. An elementary school cafeteria. Chocolate milk. Watching my niece ride a horse named Kit-Kat. Dinner with my dad at the first Thai restaurant in Atlanta. Incredibly cool folks from Dahlonega, GA that came down for our Atlanta show. Crossing the GA/NC state line as the sun rose through the foggy hills. Candy land colors as the trees lose their leaves. Missing Jordan Watson. Drunken college kids in North Carolina dancing to every song we play. Drunken college kids repeatedly falling into our music equipment during a show. Missing Jordan Watson’s sense of humor. Our sound system coincidentally no longer working. Sleeping outside under the full moon at Peter’s brother’s house with Floyd the wonder dog by my side. Pondering what it must be like for a dog from the desert to experience acorns constantly falling from the sky. Thom running his first marathon in Washington D.C. at this very moment. Thinking about Jamaica.

-Dave

     We returned to Dallas on Friday to see Tony Furtado play at Poor David’s Pub.  To our surprise, there were very few folks at the show, which made us question what folks in Dallas were thinking!  Even as a young musician, Tony is somewhat of a living legend to many pickers out there, and we were fortunate to have met him and experienced a very intimate show.  Do yourself a favor: www.tonyfurtado.com
     The next morning we fueled up with some coffee and proceeded to make the biggest mistake of the tour yet.  When getting gas at a 7-11 before heading out of Dallas, we hit rock bottom.  After filling the tank, Thom returned to the van with a bag of some sort of fried piece of food (if it can be classified as such) that resembled something between a corn dog and a taquito.  Having been on the road for 24 days at that point, our defenses were down, and I now recognize that we had become a little too comfortable in gas station food marts.  Our better judgment was likely left behind somewhere in the deserts of Nevada.  Jordan and I exchanged some brief glances, and he went back into 7-11 and returned with four more of these fried pockets of nastiness. Two flavors: Chicken with Monterey Cheese and Chorizo with Egg, all wrapped up in heavily fried batter in the shape of a hot dog.  No need to say more.  I tell you this story only so that you may learn from our mistakes.  To the 1% of people reading these blogs that would actually be inclined to do something so stupid as to buy fried food from a 7-11:  Do yourself another favor, and reconsider.  (NOTE: Through this experience, Peter clearly emerged as the wisest person in the band. To his credit, he not only avoided making the aforementioned mistake, but warned us about such foolish behavior.)    
     Guilty and ashamed, we rolled into Austin four hours later.  We played an outdoor patio show at a pretty cool coffee shop and were joined by singer-songwriter Havilah, who I had met years ago in Bellingham, Washington (www.myspace.com/havilahsings). She was a fabulous hostess, and gave us a musical tour of the city that included a neighborhood honky tonk, a funky jazz lounge, and a rock n’ roll venue, all in one evening.  It is true what you hear about Austin--there is incredible live music everywhere.  Thanks, Havilah.
     We stayed in Shreveport, Louisiana last night, and made it to Jackson, Mississippi today.  In just 48 hours we went from eating the worst food of the tour…to the very best.  Today I had grilled catfish, blue crab, “dirty” rice, Creole shrimp, collard greens, okra, and homemade wine, all for the first time.  Much more about where we are in Mississippi to come…

-Dave

     Hey folks.  I must say that we hadn’t really expected so many of you to actually be reading these road blogs, but we are thrilled that you are!  For those of you that are connected to us through myspace, I am sorry for the virus that hijacked my account and sent out some nasty stuff to you.  Hopefully, those of you that are reading this know me well enough to know that IT WASN’T ME….or my mom for that matter.  I am, however, a little disturbed that some of you seemed to enjoy it.  But moving on…
     TEXAS TEXAS TEXAS!! We all know that there are some strange politics down here, but this state is full of some of the friendliest people around.  We have officially made it to the South, and yes, southern hospitality is alive and well.  It didn’t take any time at all for Thom’s drawl to return (for those T.Lo fans out there--he spent his early years in Georgia).  “Yes sir, Yes ma’am.”  Chicken Fried Gravy? What?
     It was an enormous honor for us to play at the legendary Poor David’s Pub in Dallas last night.  This was the booking that was the impetus for this entire fall tour.  The venue has showcased such greats as Townes Van Zandt, Alison Krauss, Lyle Lovett, and many others for over 30 years.  The on-stage sound was by far the best we have ever experienced, and we had a room full of family to share it with.  Peter’s folks flew in from Virginia, and mine from Colorado.  We dedicated a new song, “Blue,” to my aunt and uncle, while Peter brought out his lap steel for its first public appearance.  My grandmother was in the audience with a pink shirt that read “It’s ok, I’m with the band.”  Enough said--what more could we ask for?
     Thank you Dallas and Sherman, here we come Austin…

-Dave

    I’m writing in the darkness of our Motel 6 room
(Lubbock, Texas) now, the morning slowly kicking each
of us into action (at different speeds).  I must say
that the idea of a shower motivated me out of bed
earlier than our late night of slumber party giggling
might have suggested, but I now feel clean and have,
somewhat regrettably, removed the last traces of
vermillion dust from my (dry, cracked) feet.
    I joined the band in Flagstaff last week just a few
hours before the show at the Flagstaff Brewery.  I see
you all quickly scanning to the bottom of this now to
see who this elusive new fourth member of the band
could be. Nope, not a drummer, nor the long sought-
after cowbell player – just a fellow vagrant that had
some time off and figured that the best way to spend
it was to try to sell merchandise at the shows.
    So far I have been lucky enough to catch the shows in
Flagstaff -where several people had driven a number of
hours just to see these guys play (and to pay homage
to agave) – and the show in Vermillion Cliffs.  While
the former was especially fun because I got to hear
“Cat Creek” and “Little Boat, Little Bird, Big Ocean”
live for the first time, the latter was especially
memorable.
    I’d never heard of Vermillion Cliffs before and was
pleasantly surprised when we pulled off of the
essentially deserted highway to one of just a few
buildings scattered radially from Lees Ferry Lodge,
the apparent heart of the town.  Home to just a few
scores of people and nestled at the base of
vermillion-colored (duh!), vertical rock ledges and
craggy outcroppings, I was instantly enchanted.
    I spent most of the first day there just watching and
listening as it seemed that everyone in the town of
Vermillion Cliffs not only played a musical
instrument, but had some sort of musical project
brewing with Dave and/or Thom.  It was almost like one
of those movies where the now bigshot celebrity
returns to their small town.  Everyone had some
nickname or special story for the two of them (and
even Peter Cottontail had his own nickname by the time
we left).
    As they played an incredible non-stop set after an
equally incredible introduction by Chris et al, the
energy of the town (because the ENTIRE town was there)
grew palpable.  It was as if the room itself was
smiling and perhaps the best single word of
description is just none other than “F-U-N”.
    Having continued east for several days now, we have
since passed our time driving, camping in a forest of
crimson and yellow maples, and searching (usually
unsuccessfully) for lattes on route 66… onward tonight
for Dallas.

-Jordan

    I woke up this morning with the Vermilion Cliffs glowing red and indifferent through the blinds, my lips cracked and my throat sore in the dry desert air, and I felt at home for the first time in weeks.  We are, in fact, at a home of sorts in northern Arizona, staying with our good friends and former co-workers on the Peregrine Fund's California Condor Restoration project here.  Dave and I worked on the project for a number of years, and in many ways this place is the origin of everything that we're doing right now.  Dave's genesis as a singer and songwriter, and mine as a bassist, were right under these cliffs just a few years ago.  At the time, we had no long-term plans for our involvement in music, and couldn't have imagined living the life that we're living right now.  We had no plans at all back then, really, but the feeling of being pushed along creatively was palpable.  The time felt like a beginning, even though we had no idea what the endpoint might be.  We still don't, I suppose.
    It's funny to remember the decisions that we were making at the time, like deciding between going into debt to set up a decent recording studio or making do with a Radio Shack tape recorder.  Considering that neither of us knew what we were doing, it may have been against our better judgment that we decided to put our credit cards to use.  We never looked back.  Before we knew it, we had recorded and released Dave's debut album, and he started playing live solo shows for the the first time ever.  The ball kept rolling, and we were happy to be along for the ride.  We shortly moved on to establish Badger Creek Productions, a somewhat amorphous entity devoted solely to making sure that the world gets to hear those great musicians who might not otherwise get the time or resources to record their music.  Dave introduced me to Peter, we played as a trio a few days before our first show, and that was it.  And, with the help of some incredible people that we've been fortunate enough to meet along the way, the ball keeps rolling, growing bigger all the time, and we're doing everything we can to keep up.
    It's a futile but entertaining exercise to try to parse the present into the events that have gotten us here.  I'm often amazed to look back at the unlikely combination of choices and chance that have combined to produce the person that I am, and the life that I'm living.  The irony, of course, is that no matter what that combination was, or who I was as a result, it would seem equally as unlikely.  In any case, as I sit here in the home of some of my best friends in the world, on a tour with two of the most incredible musicians I've encountered,  the sense of wonder at it all is overwhelming.  If only everyone could feel so fortunate.
    We'll be playing a show right here in Vermilion Cliffs on Friday.  I've been more excited for the this show than almost any other that we'll play on this tour.  In perfect testament to the creative energy that exists here, Condor Project coordinator and our good friend Chris Parish will be opening the show with his first full set ever.  Two other friends and very talented musicians, Tim Hauck and Evan Buechley, will  be joining us for a few songs a little later on.  After the show, we'll all move outside to a fire beneath the stars in an implausibly large desert sky, as we have so many times since we found this place.  We draw from this area in some capacity every time we write a lyric or strike a chord, and I imagine it will feel like a homecoming every time we return.

-Thom