Leaving Glenwood Springs for Denver, Wed. Sep 7
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Carla from Rhonert Park writes "I love you guys! You're my favorite band! And I love your website! But I don't understand why in your tour dairies you always talk about your bus breaking down and people getting arrested and all this crazy stuff. What about the music and your shows and stuff? That's what I want to hear about!"
Well Carla, we took a quick look back through all our tour dairies, and guess what? You're right! We don't really talk about the music in these things, do we? And now that you've pointed that out to us, we feel sort of bad about it. I mean, from our perspective, we hit the road and our bus breaks down and somehow we get it fixed and we meet weird people who help us out and we sleep on strange floors and we see the country and someone gets arrested sometimes. And oh yeah, we play some shows. Really, a person who didn't know who we were could be forgiven for thinking we were some Outward Bound offshoot that prefers driving to hiking, or a really close Mormon family that just needed to post all their travel experiences online!
But Carla, that's not right. We're a band, after all, and our music is probably the only reason you're reading this in the first place (unless you're related to one of us). So this time we're going to try something different- we're going to talk about the music. But since this tour has so far been no less dramatic offstage than all our others, it's going to be hard to leave all that other stuff out. So here's what we're going to do- when you see the phrase "AN ALTERNATELY DRAMATIC AND HUMOROUS EVENT" that's your cue that something wacky happened to us that had nothing to do with our music. If you want to know what happened, click on that phrase and you'll find out. Otherwise, just keep going!
Got it? OK, here we go:
Our gig in Vail started a bit late because of AN ALTERNATELY DRAMATIC AND HUMOROUS EVENT in the Utah desert, but once we got going the locals warmed up to us quick. Since David wasn't there because of AN ALTERNATELY DRAMATIC AND HUMOROUS EVENT, Mully played both guitar parts, which lent a sparse but raw sound to everything. It's hard playing music with sixteen TV's beaming surfer wipeouts, baseball recaps and out-of-date music videos, but by the end of the night, when Liz played a great solo on a new tune we're very fond of called "El Rio de Casa de Madre" (Your Mom's House, for short), we had warmed up fine.
The next night, in Breckenridge, David did a great job playing both guitar parts, since Mully was busy with AN ALTERNATELY DRAMATIC AND HUMOROUS EVENT. The best part was when Slapsaw got some ALTERNATELY DRAMATIC AND HUMOROUS news on his cell phone right before the last song of the night.
The next day, we hit the Jazz Aspen Festival in Snowmass, alternating sets in the afternoon between Joan Osborne and the long-awaited reunion of Loggins and Messina. We play tight, short sets that leave the crowd in the packed Janus tent wanting more, especially since we have reprised our snazzy patriotic underwear costume gimmick from the Just Vote Tour for the afternoon- which prompts one audience member to call us 'thrift store superheroes'...wonder why?
Later we shift gears and play a nighttime set in the convention center, a huge cavernous ballroom that bounces the sound around like the Harlem Globetrotters.
The next day we scatter like field mice before a floodlight- to weddings, family, jobs and friends, to enjoy a few days off before we meet again in Denver. Which leaves David, Lara, Todd and Ezra to enjoy the sublime backcountry around Aspen. That is, after David has an ALTERNATELY DRAMATIC AND HUMOROUS EVENT with Willie Nelson.
No, this isn't Photoshop....
Oh hell...we can't make you click around for this one. On Sunday afternoon David stood outside Willie Nelson's bus in the hot alpine sun, palms sweaty as ripe coconuts, his mouth as dry as the Black Rock desert in July. A gaggle of would-be hangers-on waited in a makeshift line outside the brightly painted shaman art on the outside of the gleaming tour bus, all of them pleading with Willie's road manager for a minute, a second, just a glance inside. David screwed on his courage and went for Willie's driver instead. "So this thing runs on biodiesel?" he asked, as nonchalantly as possible. "Listen, I ain't no greenie," said the driver, exhaling a stream of cigarette smoke, "but this stuff's pretty damn cool." After a few minutes David managed to cajole David (coincidence? Nah...), Willie's road manager, into checking inside the bus to see if the clutch of Clean Fuel Caravan literature our David carried with him like the Dead Sea Scrolls merited an audience with his Willieness.
Beckoned inside, David hopped up the steps, parted a black curtain, and found himself standing before a dark wood desk behind which Willie Nelson reclined in a leather chair. "How are you, Mr. Nelson?" said David, and as he showed Willie the Clean Fuel Caravan pictures, opened up his laptop to show him the website, told him about Aphrodesia's Veggie oil-powered bus and the Sustainable Living Roadshow planned for next summer his prom night nervousness melted away in the face of Willie's gentle ease.
"Count me in," said Willie, and what followed was a dream, a blur of conversing with your childhood soundtrack, of plans made and commitments pledged. When David emerged from the bus 20 minutes or so later, it all seemed unreal...except for the scrap of paper with Willie's personal phone number on it, and the pictures on his digital camera that were too new to be faked*.
(*Editor's note- the preceeding few paragraphs are not made up. Well OK, they're a little made up, but only in the details that David didn't quite remember and that Ezra embellished anyway because he's bored. If you don't believe us, check back as we try and make a biodiesel-themed tour with Willie Nelson a reality for 2006....and Willie, if you're reading this....thanks)
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Commerce City, CO, August 9, 2005 (AP)- Sources have confirmed that members of the San Francisco-based group Aphrodesia spent approximately 12 hours inside their bus waiting for the radiator fluid to be drained at Bus Service, a diesel mechanic shop. Members of the band, who had played a sold-out show at a Boulder, Colorado restaurant the night before, traveled to Bus Service in hopes of preparing their bus for a drive to Grand Junction later that day and had intended to be waiting at the service shop when it opened at 8:30 in the morning. The work, however, took much longer than the group expected, leading the group to explore creative entertainment options while remaining in the bus for the better part of half a day. The band's trombonist, 21-year-old Liz Larson of Santa Rosa, California, described the ordeal as "Hella boring." 34-year-old Guitarist Chris Mulhauser of Oakland, California, said the mechanic "looked like Santa Claus but wasn't nearly as fast." Band member Todd Grady, however, confirmed that although the work took longer than expected it was completed to satisfaction, which was verified by the group's subsequent successful traverse of I-70's Vail Pass and their triumphant arrival in Grand Junction that evening.
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The Road Home, I-50 through Nevada, Sep. 12, 2005- We hit Durango's Tour de Fat like Motley Crue discovering a strip club in Salt Lake City. We're in our snazziest Thrift Store Superhero outfits (check out our photo gallery), and as we circulate into the street fair/bike parade/environmental fundraiser/beer garden we're surrounded by freaks- freaks with cow udder costumes, freaks with refrigerators strapped to their back, freaks in skintight leotards with crash helmets...in other words, we feel right at home. The Tour de Fat is thrown by New Belgium Brewery, makers of Fat Tire Ale, and right away they become our hands-down favorite brewery (sorry, Full Sail). Not only does the Tour de Fat, a series of street fairs that hit other cities like Missoula, San Francisco, St. Louis, Truckee and elsewhere, get us and several hundred other people completely drunk over the course of a gorgeous afternoon, it also donates the proceeds to local environmental groups. And throws a slow bike race, where the slowest bike "racer" wins. And has a bicycle-powered ferris wheel. And has a solar powered stage, where we set up after a few hours of beer-drenched shenanigans and tear through a supercharged set for a wild crowd that drinks it in like another Belgian-style ale.
After the show we manage to make it the ten blocks or so to the Summit, where we pour it on for a packed house that's lit to pop from the first drop. It's probably the musical highlight of the tour, and the energy level is so high that Scott Mast, our percussionist extraordinairre who's been sitting in for the departed Paul since Boulder, curls up and goes to sleep on the stage after we're done. Afterwards our new friends from the New Belgium Brewery hop on the bus with a couple gift cases of beer and we park outside our hotel with them until we hear birds chirping and coffee machines brewing for the morning rush.
The Rico Peace Garden Festival is an apt way to end things- a gorgeous mountain valley with probably all the town's residents (not that that means there were more than 150 people there probably) out in force. We joke that the granola factor here makes other hippy-dippy gatherings we've played look like Ozzfest, but the truth is that it's nice to be part of a positive-centered festival on September 11, an unavoidably dark and disturbing day. We make friends after our set, chow down some wonderful pesto-flavored pasta, and are sent on our way with smiles creeping into our cynical, road-weary selves. Quite an accomplishment.