February 16th 2006 - Tin Angel - Philadelphia, PA

We've hauled Larry's hardware box up two flights of stairs. This is a group effort as it weighs approximately 2 million pounds (admitted hyperbole). It's the piece of equipment that, under most circumstances, stays in the bus the longest because no one wants to grab it. Hell, I'd rather carry the bass drum by myself than be a fourth man on that piece of luggage. But we take it in first today to get the 2 flights out of the way.

The Tin Angel is moy petite (very small in Spanish and French). It's a shoebox of a room, long and narrow with a stage no bigger than a drum riser. So it's back breakingly apparent that we'll be taking Larry's hardware box for another hike promptly. We set about arranging stools at obtuse angles and varying heights so we'd all be visible for the audience's viewing. But clearly, Ben and I are pretty big people and I don't know how much of Gwen, David or Larry (now on cajon and shaker) people actually got to see.

The bus was parked across from an old-fashioned candy store, which, while closed, was distracting enough to make me late for sound check which sucked… Not being late, but sound checking. My in-ear monitors were acting erratically, jumping dbs for no reason, and then cutting out entirely. I came away feeling frustrated at the lousy way I felt I was gonna sing if something didn't changed quick. Then I exited the Angel right into a police blockade.

"There's been a bomb scare ma'am, get off the street now." Said an anxious officer. Didyaever notice how officials think they can get away with being rude so long as they call you ma'am or sir? Overhead three black helicopters are circling, hovering, blinking their greens and reds like sky-sewn sequins. "Are we in any danger?" I call out to the policeman but he's too preoccupied with walkie-talkie to answer. I guess I'm playing in what I'm wearing, which happens to be what I wore to sleep last night.

Someone has thoroughly cleaned up the green room. Even the graffiti on the walls has been manipulated to look friendlier. The "fucks" are now "funks" and the butts have been colored in to have shorts.

There's not a lot to do, trapped in the dressing room for the next couple hours, so Gwen and I show off our tummy talents to the rest of the band. We can both do pregnant belly, and the wave (both forward and reverse) but Gwen can do this anorexia thing that's beyond my skills. So I retaliate by throwing my tongue into a 360 spin but Gwen is right behind me so in a last resort, ditch effort I give them froggie. "What is froggie?" you ask improperly imagining a hopping acrobatic act? "Froggie," coined by my high schoolroom mate 'Nimi,' is my version of a burp. I've never been able to do a proper burp. Instead, any trapped air comes out without a sound unless I force it in which case a little rib bit sound is produced from my throat. Gwen's got nothing on me now and the band is on the floor in hysterics. It's not a loud sound and I have to do it repetitively for each band mate. But what I forget about froggie is that, once I do it on purpose I can't stop it on command.

This makes for a difficult show to say the least. I open my mouth for a harmony and froggie comes out in amplification and not like once or twice but like three times per song. Ben has me sing one of my songs for the first time in the tour (Split Decisions) and I'm nervous, not because I don't remember the chords or the lyrics, but because of friggin' froggie! I wonder if any one even noticed. It was a really nice show and any ghosts in the machine seemed to have been exercised before we went hit the stage.

Larry, of Marji and Larry, my old Walden buddy was in attendance and handed me off a large bag of presents which Marji had hand picked (incredibly thoughtful woman that she is). Thank you Marji and Larry. I am now in possession of enough chocolate to keep me on a sugar high through Kansas City. WAHOOOOO!

February 15th 2006 - Bowery Ballroom - New York, NY

There's a giant Khols outside the window, in the parking lot I woke up in. Ben, Saw, Larry and Dom went to the city early this morning for a radio show that left us here in the parking lot that is New Jersey just past the G.W. Bridge. Kindra decides she's too lazy to go into her bag under the bus to find a clean outfit. But not too lazy to go to Khols to buy one. I've never been to Khols so I go with her just for the experience (and to see if I can pick up a new deodorant. I left my last Old Spice Mountain Rush stick in Phoenix). Khols is potently overwhelming and stocks nothing in the way of antiperspirant so despite the mile long walk I take from one end of the store to the other, all I do is break a sweat. Kindra, on the other hand, is wading in clothes when I find her again (a miracle in and of itself), "The line's too long for the fitting room so I'm just gonna buy all these," she points to a pile knee high of fabric "and try them on in the bus." Somehow she gets out of Khols for under $100 and avoids having to fish under the bus for her daily attire. Brilliant.

The snow in New York is black with little speckles of white blinking through like diamonds. We load into the Ballroom which, if you haven't been there, is an amazing place to see a show in New York. It's located at 6 Delancey.

Some History:
Six Delancey, a 1929 Beaux Arts construction, was completed weeks before the stock market crash of 1929, replacing a three-story brick theater. What remains of the earlier theater is its stone foundation, exposed in the lower-level lounge.

Six Delancey stood vacant through the Great Depression and Second World War, and was then occupied by a number of high-end retail concerns: a jewelry store, a haberdashery, and Treemark Shoes for approximately thirty years. When the neighborhood again fell into decline, the store housed lighting and carpet stores until the Bowery Ballroom took possession of the space in 1997.

Much of the 1929 construction still remains, such as the brass rails, the brass and iron exterior metalwork, the mahogany lined VIP rooms and the coffer-vaulted plaster ceiling of the mezzanine bar. However, the majority of the Bowery Ballroom today is new construction to support a state-of-the-art music venue.

I walked up to the second landing of the spacious, lung of a room. A beam of sun lit up a single table at which I sat and began to knit some guitar strings that The Saw had abandoned. The copper bound strings were difficult to weave and cut gashes into my needles and left black, metallic smelling grime on my fingers but what I came away with was a quite pretty mesh and I wore it as a bracelet that night.

The show was no less than a triumph. The band played smashingly. It was the best we've been able to hear ourselves and each other since we got started on this crazy musical adventure and the fans were out in style and yelling for more. It was the first show I haven't wanted to jump straight off the stage, onto the bus and fall asleep after and the whole band ended up outside in the artificial day light of New York City's night chatting it up.

L.T., a unusually tall female fan of Ben's joined us in the snow and handed off a baggie of goodies for us including bubbles, chocolates, games, tea, books, and a garden gnome we're naming Raz and suppose to hand off to someone new along our travels. If you're at a gig and want to continue Raz's journey please let me know. Ben's got some great fans!

At around 2:00, some of us took a van over to the bus in New Jersey and some other's of us stayed in the city to whoop it up until 6:00. All you need to know is that The Saw is no longer a strip club virgin.

February 14th 2006 - Barns at Wolf Trap - Vienna, VA

Blanch came with specific instructions "Do not feed her people food." But when we got off the bus for load in and sound check she managed to get hold of an extremely large apple fritter which someone, who will remain nameless, left out on the counter. The next time we saw her she was powdered in sugar. Her little black nose caked in glazed white cane (sugar, not coke, cane) was a dead giveaway. That and the expression of culpability coupled with deep remorse and probable bellyache.

Ben, Larry and I ate dinner at the hotel steakhouse last night. I know you're thinking 'Eewwww, hotel steakhouse?!' But it was actually a pretty high class joint. The menu was painted on a football (not that that's any indication of refinement) and consisted of:
Filet minion
12 oz. Porterhouse
32 oz Rib eye
22 oz NY Strip
40 lb. Maine Lobster and a
48 oz Porterhouse Steak

"That's A LOT of meat, right - or am I crazy here?" Ben looked up from his football podium. "No, Ben that's A LOT of meat" Larry confirmed. At this point our waiter strolled out from the kitchen with a wheel-y cart bearing almost the entirety of a cow chopped and Saran wrapped next to a very frightened, barely mobile giant 40lb purple lobster on a head of melting lettuce.

Immediately we were reminded of a very funny comedic act about the obscenity of steakhouses and the gorging and obesity they represent in America. The skit is called "Steak" (appropriately) and can be found for your listening pleasure at I-tunes under Patton Oswalt. (It is strongly recommended that you listen to this comic act while reading the rest of this entree).

When Ben gets hungry he orders like he were a 2 ton gorilla. He ordered the 32oz T-bone, creamed spinach, a side of asparagus, extra sourdough bread, a baked potato and a Ceasar salad which he refused to split with Larry and I.
"Ben, you can't eat all that food!"
"I sure can sister."
"If you eat all that food, I'll lick that football." Even the waiter grimaces.
"That's a deal." He says with a competitive glint in his eye I haven't seen since grade school.

Of course when the steak comes it's bigger than his head (literally) and twice as thick and he can't finish it. But you never saw a dog so happy to get a bone or a sister so happy to have avoided licking a football!

Barns at Wolf Trap is (surprise surprise) a barn. Originally it's from up state New York but was moved here to Virginia, piece-by-piece, nail-by-nail. It's wonderful. The stage is tall and has an electric blue backdrop that looks deep enough to run out into. As though doing so would deliver me to the horizon at dusk where I could bask in the vacancy of pure, quietness for a moment of mindless meditation. But alas, it's two-dimensional. On the walls downstairs - amongst The Bob's and The Molly's (2 of many 8X10's on the walls) is our uncle Liv. "OK Taylor, Up against the wall." He's written.

Little did we know we'd get a chance to see Liv live - the very next day.

February 12, 2006 - 3rd and Lindsley - Nashville, TN

Ben, The Saw and I are practicing new harmonies in the back of the bus because Gwen got snowed in after her gig in New York last night (Victor Krauss will be filling in). Ben wants me to take all her parts and is making David take all of mine. You might think this'd be easy but it's not and Ben's throwing around harmonies like an angry caged orangutan.

I've been to 3rd and Lindsley before. It was back in 1999 when I was just starting out my musical journey. My Journal spelled out a similar and yet very different experience as the one we were soon to have:

September 19th 1999 - 3rd and Lindsley - Nashville, TN

The humidity is deep when we arrive in Nashville. The hot, stagnant, air laps waves at my bones as though my skin weren't even on. The sky melts orange marmalade over the already black and brick landscape. We load in, meet the openers, the bartenders, the chefs and the owners who tell us that the first 1/2 of our set will be broadcast, live from the club on "lightning 100" and that we should have a good show, as though it were a demand not a proposal. We're just glad that it's the last of the tour and I find myself 1/2 way to Kansas already, in my vague and removed conversations with people there at the club.

We get food. Brian, (drummer) who can't, or just won't, eat cheese and specifies this to the waiter, nonetheless, gets cheese on each and every course of his meal and frustratedly returns all his orders for their proper preparation while we scarf. In the walk in/guitar closet/green room/hospitality that the venue has given us to change in. There's a mirror on the wall with some bald bulbs above it and I change into my newly acquired black pants and maroon top as a friend and I giggle and try on lipsticks. There hasn't been anywhere to shower since North Carolina and my hair is taking on a very rat like quality but the boys tell me I look all right (they're the best) and we go on. There aren't too many people there but those that are there are there to stay and we launch into the radio show.

"No curse words...NO FUCK, SHIT, ASS..." They tell me...but I forget a little (oops). Nashville, what a place. It's boots and business and tiny dogs with bandanas around their necks, and pancake make-up that looks like it would be painful to take off. It's acoustic music and slide guitars and shooting stars and smoke filled bars with denim lights left on all night. And somehow it's all good and all cozy and back yard: familiar, unpretentious, not lonely the way New York is.

"I'm just assuming there's no one in the record business out there in the audience," I joke, looking into the crowd as 1/2 the room throws their hands up. "Good," I say "This next one is about the people in the record industry. It's called Strangest of Strangers." The night goes that way, with me poking fun at the audience and the audience turning from their crossed arms to embrace us.

At the end of the night we load up. I change back into jeans and sneakers in the mirrored closet. I pick up the $25 bucks they give me for doing the gig and leave out the back door into the heat.

Go ahead. Color...OUTSIDE THE LINES!!!

Outside it's blizzarding like Nashville 'aint never seen the likes of and we get deliciously spicy Tilapia for dinner not cheesy poofs. But the changing room is the same bare bulb closet and the radio show is still adamant about not cursing which my brother also forgets a little (oops…we did it again). Ben starts out the radio show with a Mos Def song that goes:

See me, want me, keep me, touch me.
Feed me, fuck me, love me trust me.

Which I'm quite sure the lightning 100 people didn't have time to bleep out.

Near the end of the show, right in the middle of You Must've Fallen, I stop hearing Ben's voice in my monitor. I look over to find him lipping words, which have no sound behind them. His throat is so dry that his vocal chords have refused to make more notes. He'll need moisture before more music comes to his lips and that won't be before this song is done. It's all up to me now. I feel like a relay racer who's just been baton-ed. Of course it's no big deal to the audience and by the next song his voice is once again melting the hearts out of the captive crowd. But to Ben this is a travesty. So now he's in the back of the bus sulking and he's not coming out.

Jen Lowe (Tristan's precisionist) comes to the bus with a wiry haired, white Jack Russell terrier. "Would you guys mind taking Blanch for a couple days?" she asks. Would we?! Some puppy love is exactly what this group of minstrel vagabonds needs. Blanch rushes past us into the back where Ben is swimming in his pity pot. We wait with mouths agape for the response Blanch will evoke. With a little white wiry hair dog under his arm, Ben appears and he's got a big smile on his face. Blanch saves the day.

February 11, 2006 - Phoenix Hill Tavern - Louisville, KY

Luckily I slept late so that when Ben came on the bus, just before sound check, there weren't many other bodies available for a massage. "This is Grace and Mama Jo.", Ben introduced me to a lovely Boulder-esc beauty with a gem in her nose and lavender in her hair and her mother, an air cast-ed, curly, jolly, magnanimous character with clear braces and the same scent of x-hippy which wafts off my parents sometimes. "Grace came to give me a massage but I don't have time till after sound check," he explained, "Do you want one?"

The band house is covered in tinted mirrors multi-color, multi-dimensional shag carpet, which covers the walls as well as the floor. From the massage table I lift my eyes to find myself on the ceiling in a circular mirror that flanks a wide, wanna be mahogany fan. Grace's gentle hands move emotions more than muscles, the same way the rain does when I'm quiet enough to notice. The scent of cedar and lemon and sandalwood cloak my senses and I fall into deep bliss.

When I go to get Ben for his turn on the table I see the Tavern for the first time. Imagine a Chucky Cheese crossed with Terra, the house from Gone With the Wind. Red and white valentines streamers hold on tight to gigantic fans, which turn like slow Ferris wheels. Multi tiered fringed lamps sway from the fans breeze, like flapper girls wading in for a dance. Miniature photo frames pinned to sepia wallpaper, house images of people's people's great great grand parents who've misplaced their lineage. And then, in a shock of neon paint, on either side of the stage, are dancing girl's cages. The kind with the mock jail bars and the leopard skin carpeting. Weird.

A familiar face peeks around the corner. It our old babysitter, Terri Thomas 1982-83. Ben and I had quite a plethora of sitters. So many that I can't remember even ½ of them and often find myself uncomfortably confronted by someone who say's they used to sit us but who doesn't look even remotely familiar. But Terri was one of my favorites. She taught me how to knit and played with us on the beach and was cool and hip and a semi professional photographer so she has visual proof of our fun year together. It's all in a large black tote bag slung over her shoulder. We spend the next 45 minutes over semi glossy memories. I wish I'd had time for more. I covet those innocent times. But show time came rushing up on me and I had to run through the bitter, BITTER alley way cold to get stage cloths from the bus. I'm definitely beginning to regret leaving my coat back in Colorado.

The show was relatively uneventful save for a woman, front and center named Amy. Amy was perhaps a little tipsy or maybe just feverishly outgoing. She was yelling, "I love you Ben" and "Stay over tonight, I'll cook you breakfast!"

There was an oversized cardboard parcel on the bus addressed to Ben, which I tore into on Larry's recommendation. Inside were all things good: Nicorette gum, chocolates in valentines day boxes, lavender pulpuri hearts, the softest hand knit scarf you ever felt, videos and sugar free Ricola lozenges. Who could have sent us this mysterious (perfect) gift bag? Some one named Stephanie who we don't even know, but who must love us a lot. These acts of kindness are what make the world a brighter place. And the Bus a tolerable home.

Thank you Stephanie.

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