beautiful, funny, sad & true

Thursday, June 26th was our longest day. We had a twelve-hour drive ahead of us, from Reno to a tiny town in Utah called Torrey.

I was the first one up, at 5:45 in the morning. I took a shower, got dressed, and then took some pictures of the hazy morning street scene of Reno. The haze is actually the smoke from the California wildfires. It didn’t clear up until we were well into Utah, by the way. Incidentally, all of these thumbnail pictures expand to full size if you click on them.

While I was packing up my suitcase, Kate woke up. We talked for a while, she in her makeshift bed in the windowsill and I on her papasan chair. I took pictures of the cats, and of her place, and out the window, and even some of her. The best ones were of her, waking up and snuggling with her cat Samantha.

From there, it was time for breakfast and various morning activities, which on that particular day meant more picture opportunities. Here we all are.

The water-drinking one actually has a little video too, as if by technology.

I would be remiss if I didn’t post a picture of Kate’s other cat, Secret. She and I became instant friends, and she actually slept on my sleeping bag for a while during the night.

Suddenly it was time to say our goodbyes, give hugs all around, and hit the road. The scenery in the rest of Nevada was uneventful. If you haven’t driven through it, it basically consists of many hours of rolling hills covered with sagebrush. There are only a couple of sections where it’s beautifully desolate in a good way, and the rest of the time it’s pretty much God-forsaken wasteland, broken up only by the occasional bit of run-down machinery or mining equipment, or even a power station out in the middle of nowhere. At one point there are even a couple of tunnels. Wowee! Breanna and I both took pictures of the tunnels, in fact. That’s how exciting it was. Nevada is a very strange place. Luckily, we had an especially deep (and private) conversation that day, with which to while away the hours.

Oh yeah, I just remembered. We stopped at the same rest area that Stephanie and I were so horrified by when she and I played in Elko last summer. This time was not nearly so eventful, but I should mention that each of the rest areas we stopped at in Nevada had neither soap nor running water, so we weren’t able wash to our hands. Pretty sexy, huh?

Incidentally, and apropos of nothing, the lasting inside joke from this day was when I told Justin, “I’m gonna punch your mouth right in the face.” That would have been the name of this entry, if I didn’t have the more plebeian title so firmly established already.

This trip, for all its amazing qualities, was not without tragedy. Justin realized at some point along the way that he had left his pillow behind in Reno. This was not just any pillow, either, but a super-special pillow that was bluish gray in color, weighed a ton, and was apparently the most comfortable pillow in the history of pillows. He was seriously distraught about it. I imagine that he’s gotten it back by now, because he offered to pay Kate a bunch of money to ship it overnight that same day.

Utah is as beautiful as Nevada is barren. Almost from the minute we crossed the state line, the landscape became more interesting. We drove through the Bonneville Salt Flats, which are gigantic, and a bit eerie too. We kept expecting the weather to be cold, because we were seeing what looked like snow on the ground everywhere. Very strange.

After that, the landscape became more green, the hills became more steep, and everything seemed more inviting somehow. In the immortal words of the Lewis and Clark journals, ‘we continued on.’

As we got closer and closer to our destination of Torrey, the landscape just kept getting more and more beautiful. The hills turned red, and the sun started getting lower and lower in the sky. The Picture of the Day Award definitely goes to Breanna for this lovely, cinematic shot. My pictures I had to touch up a bit with Photoshop, but this one is perfectly fine without any so-called enhancements.

We arrived at the venue and met Wendy, who was very sweet. She opened for us, and also took pictures for us during our set. At first we thought we’d play unplugged and unmic’ed, which ended up being too quiet, even for the smallish space we were playing in. So we mic’ed everything and played a normal show.

Can I just take a minute to say that while Reno was definitely the place I had the most fun, the gig in Torrey was by far my favorite venue we played. I mean, here’s this tiny little venue in the middle of nowhere, with these amazing red cliffs all around. And I’ve never seen as many stars as I did that night. We kept looking off into our surroundings the entire time. It’s a miracle that we didn’t play any wrong notes. Here’s what I’m talking about. Justin was singing, and Breanna and I were totally staring off into the distance. And yes, Justin and I did the same thing on Breanna’s songs too.

Between the cliffs and the stars, and the interesting people, we had a total blast. Afterwards, Wendy put us up at her place. We all stayed up for a little while, and then Justin and Breanna went to bed. Wendy and I stayed up talking, and she asked if I played with any other groups. I told her about the people I play with, and the various instruments that I play, and when I mentioned the accordion, she said, “Oh, really? I have two accordions. Maybe you could show me some things.” I agreed to do that, and we pulled them out. So after getting up at 5:45, driving twelve hours, and playing a gig, I stayed up until about 1:30 giving an impromptu accordion lesson. After a while, exhaustion got the better of me, and I had to give in and go to bed. The room I stayed in was very warm, so I opened the window and the blinds, which meant that I fell asleep staring at the huge canopy of bright stars, in which the band of the Milky Way Galaxy was clearly visible. That’s a nice way to fall asleep, by the way. I totally recommend it.

More to come in the next installment of. . .ON TOUR.

OneYearAgo

Day Three of the trip started with a surprise knock on the door around 7:00 a.m. from Breanna. “We gotta bounce. We have eleven minutes.” We thought we had plenty of time to sleep in and take our time, but Karlee’s parents were leaving, so that meant we had to leave too. I took a quick shower and packed my stuff in record time. We said our goodbyes and headed out to Country Kitchen for breakfast. After so much ice cream and stuff the night before, we were ready for some real food, which came in the form of eggs, biscuits, and potatoes in various forms. Good stuff.

As we were getting ready to leave, one of the other waitresses stopped to tell us, “You guys look like rock stars.” We all laughed and said, “Well, we’re musicians, actually, and we’re on tour from Portland. We’re on our way to Reno right now.” The waitress chatted with us for a second, wished us good luck on our trip, and then walked away, but we talked about it among ourselves for a while longer. Justin said, “I guess you look like what you do.” I replied, “Yeah, she didn’t say, ‘you guys look like bankers’ or anything else. She went straight for ‘rock stars.’ ” It was a funny and nice moment.

On our way out of town, we stopped at a Safeway gas station. This was the first time I’d ever seen a Safeway gas station, so I commented on that fact, and got out of the van to take a picture of it. Breanna and Justin both piped up, “Oh yeah, they have them all over. There’s even one in EasternPortlandSuburb,” so it suddenly lost its appeal as a novelty. Sure made for a good story, though, no?

Incidentally, there was a closed business that we drove by in Redding called Smart & Final. We all thought that was a strange name for a business of any kind, and we wondered what it was. I just now looked it up, and it appears to be sort of a grocery close-out warehouse.

So finally we headed out of town. The acrid smoke continued with us for the entire trip, as we had to drive through the mountains, where there were countless wildfires. Some were even burning along the side of the road, and we heard when we stopped at a little convenience store (where gas was five dollars per gallon!) that the Department of Transportation was considering closing the highway.

Our rental van had a GPS unit that we absolutely lived by. It could calculate our route for us, and then it would speak various commands when it was time to turn or whatever. Our favorite thing it said, if we got off course to go to a rest area or a gas station, was, “When possible, make a legal U-turn.”

In the late afternoon, we finally arrived in Sparks, Nevada.  The three of us split up and went our separate ways for a while. Justin and Breanna went to find a wi-fi hotspot, and I made a couple of phone calls. My brother and I talked about funny childhood memories, and somehow started talking about steampunk too. We thought it would be funny if I dressed in that Victorian style and wore a monocle and marketed myself as the Accordionist With The Monocle. I don’t know how that conversation started, but we were cracking each other up with that.

Across from our venue was the historic and cultural hub of the city of Sparks. There was the old train station, an old locomotive and cabin cars, an old schoolhouse (not in its original location), and a good-sized modern amphitheater right next to each other. Across the street were the modern library and the spruced-up old buildings, and that’s where we played.

We spent a bunch of time taking pictures and screwing around in the amphitheater.  It was really hard to choose which pictures to share, because there were so many good ones, but here are a few.

I started doing a stand-up comedy routine, telling a heightened version of one of the stories that I’d told in the van already, but telling it as if the audience was there, and ‘working the crowd’ and all that.   It was very funny.  Breanna took a million pictures of that.  Suddenly, it was time for us to head across the street to eat dinner and get set up for the gig.

We played with Kate and her band, and we were completely blown away by them. Kate’s songs were beautiful, and GuitaristEd and BassistGia were great as well. Here are some pictures from the show. There will be many more from this night in my upcoming ‘best pics of the tour’ blog entry. Again, it was hard to choose from so many great pictures, of both groups.

Afterwards, Kate put us up in her apartment.   This could be a whole gigantic entry by itself.   Kate was an extremely generous, friendly, and accommodating person, great in every way, and her apartment was absolutely stellar, located right on Reno’s main street.  Justin and Breanna were anxious to listen to the mixes of the songs for Justin’s upcoming CD, so they stayed in and listened on Kate’s computer while I went for a walk to take pictures.

Reno looks like a regular city during the day, but it completely comes alive at night. I walked around for over an hour, until well after midnight, and took almost three hundred pictures.   Here are some of my favorites.

When I returned, Bre and Justin were still sitting in front of the computer with the music cranked up, listening intently, and Kate was lying in the windowsill.

After they were done listening, Justin and Breanna turned off the computer and the lights and went to bed, and Kate and I sat in the dark and talked for an hour and a half. We talked about music, and what it’s like living and being a musician in our respective cities, and about life in general.  I also took a few more pictures. Here’s the view from her window.

This is the day I remember most fondly from the tour, and it’s days like this that make it so exciting to be a musician on the road.   I wish every day could be like this one was.  I feel incredibly lucky to have had even one day like it in my life, and this is only Day Three of the tour.

OneYearAgo

Day Two consisted of us driving from Breanna’s aunt’s house in Salem, Oregon down to Redding, California.  I did the lion’s share of the driving, all the way from Salem to the first rest stop after the California border, when Justin took over.  Although it was a clear and sunny day, Mt. Shasta was almost completely hidden by haze until we were practically right up next to it.  The little town of Mt. Shasta City is really pretty, and we only drove through it long enough to park and switch drivers, but I would love to explore it sometime.  Northern California is so pretty.  So I drove from there to Redding, where we had Gig #2.

I love that both Breanna’s and Karlee’s names are misspelled on the sign.

Karlee is none other than ViolinistKarlee, who plays with us often when she’s here in PDX, which is where she goes to school.  Her parents live in Redding, and they very generously welcomed us into their home.  There were many wildfires burning in Northern California at the time (there still are, as I’m writing this more than a week later), and the smoke in Redding was thick and acrid.  It was actually very uncomfortable to breathe outside, so we spent the whole time inside talking and eating.  Karlee made these amazing ‘wraps’, her own special fried potatoes, and an amazing grape salad.  Then it was time to leave for the show.

Karlee (on the left) cracks me up in that picture.  Don’t be fooled by her sweet and innocent exterior; just under the surface lurks a straight-up gangsta who can’t wait to pop a cap in yo’ ass.  I just look constipated.  What, you think we gangstas can’t have a little trouble wit da stool once in a while?  Sheit.

After the show, we went back to Karlee’s place and ate (I really should say ‘gorged ourselves on’) ice cream, pretzels, otter pops (made from real otters!  I’m lying.) and various other delectable treats while we watched DVD’s of Planet Earth.  What an amazing show.  We watched the episodes about mountains and about caves.  The cave one was particularly riveting.

Then we all crashed and went to bed.  Find out what happened in the morning in the next installment of. . .ON TOUR.

This past week was one of the best and most memorable of my whole life. I had the opportunity to tour with Breanna and Justin through the American West, and let me just take a minute to say that it was a total blast.

The cast of characters:

Breanna

Justin

and me. :)

Breanna and I both took hundreds of pictures on this trip. After I get done with the entries for the individual days, I’ll post another entry called ‘Best Pictures of the Tour’ or something. But you’ll find that out for yourself soon enough, I suppose.

So here we are, van packed, ready to hit the road.

Somehow it became our ‘thing’ to pose for every group picture twice; one in which we pose normally and the other in which we pose ‘gangsta’. Yeah, I don’t know what’s wrong with us either, but it did make for some funny pictures.

One other thing that’s important to know about Breanna and Justin is that after a year of friendship, they recently started dating. This, by the way, is awesome and gets my full blessing.

Okay, so on with the story. We started the tour in Eugene, Oregon, at a pizza place with a cosmic theme. We shared the evening with a duo from Los Angeles called Homesick Elephant.

They were really great, and super nice people as well. Their music was very influenced by Simon and Garfunkel, in a good way. One of their songs is entitled “Ghost of Philadelphia”, which is actually a phrase that Justin had randomly said earlier in the day, so we both kinda perked up and looked at each other when they sang that line in the song, as if to say, ‘Did they just say that? That’s so weird.’

One of the waiters had a very funny and effeminate way of inhaling through his teeth while he was thinking of something to say.

For example, when we asked him about good places to explore, he answered, “Well. . .sssssss. . .try going downtown–” which Justin and I immediately adopted and incorporated into our own speech patterns for the rest of the trip. The three of us walked all over downtown, and went shopping for clothes at Buffalo Exchange, but somehow we ended up empty-handed.

There were two guys in the audience who kept making me laugh. One guy was drunk by 5:30, while we were arriving and setting up. He came in to have some pizza and sober up, but he kept having difficulty sitting up straight, while dealing with his duffel bag at the same time, so I kept trying to surreptitiously take a picture of him. Here’s the only one that actually came out:

There was another guy who sat right up front and clapped for an uncomfortable (and slightly creepy) length of time after every single song. You can see what I mean from this picture:

He seemed a bit loaded also, but harmless enough. He was just a little bit weird, that’s all I’m saying. But the night was a blast, and the show went off without a hitch. Afterwards, we backtracked and drove an hour back up north to Salem, to stay at Breanna’s aunt’s house.

It was the perfect way to start a tour.

OneYearAgo

It’s midnight on Saturday, and I’m writing this entry from Meridian, Idaho, after our end-of-tour show in Nampa. Tonight’s show was one of our best shows ever. Every note on the cello sounded perfect, and our vocal harmonies were spot-on. We made tons of money in tips, including a fifty-dollar tip from a woman who came to see Breanna the last time she played there.

This week has been amazing. I have tons to write about, and both Breanna and I have about a million pictures to plow through and copy for each other. I’ll be writing each day of the tour as its own separate entry, because if I didn’t, the entry would be thousands of words long.

Tomorrow morning, we’re getting up early and driving back home to Portland. It’s about a six-hour drive, which will feel like a walk in the park compared to the ten- and twelve-hour marathon drives we’ve endured this week.

Talk to you when I get back!

OneYearAgo