To start with, we had a hippie bus instead of a van for this outing (this point was confirmed in Aspen, when a man passing by said to his wife: “look, Jerry’s here!” Luke and Kati spend all year beautifully renovating an early 70′s Crown coach. This made quality of life far better and allowed us to drive through the night between shows. The guy who did that was Mick, Israel’s friend from second grade. On the way to our first show in Bend, the bus filled up with acrid smoke and we pulled off the highway. Was this the end? No- Luke just threw on his coveralls, got on a cell phone with a bus mechanic friend, and successfully adjusted parking break tolerances. We were all quite impressed.

Bend was our first show in 10 months. I think that it went about as well as our last show of last tour- we didn’t seem to have skipped a beat. During the show, there was a frat-ish guy in the front who lifted one side of his T shirt to reveal what we’re pretty sure were Blind Pilot lyrics tattooed under his armpit. Noticing he had disappeared later, Israel asked the crowd, “hey, have you guys seen that nipple guy? Where’d he go?” After the show as I talked to Mickey at the merch table, a drunken frat guy emerged, shouting “Where’s Blind Pilot, I’m the Nipple Guy!” Since he didn’t recognize me,  I played dumb and directed him toward Ryan and Kati and then made a quick escape.

The Boise show was unremarkable aside from the fact the we were joined by Cory Chisel and Adriel Harris- a duo version of Cory’s band The Wandering Sons that proved a great pleasure to perform and spend time with. They informed us of their terrible luck hitting animals on the highway- on their drive across the country, they had run over an owl, a crow,  a fox, and an inflatable deer balloon.

Driving through the night to Salt Lake City, we stopped by our friends Audrey and Ashley’s house in the West Valley to play a living room show for their 4 small kids before heading downtown. At dusk I took a walk to see the Temple for the first time and was completely blown over by the experience. There were thousands of people- all the men in white shirts and ties, all the women and girls in dresses from Laura Ingalls Wilder books- just milling around on the plazas and sitting by the fountains being reverent. The temple itself resembled the space ship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind- very beautiful and unearthly, although I guess that’s the whole point. Upon returning to the club, the doors were locked tight although they were supposed to have opened already and there was a line of people outside, some of whom had driven many hours to see us and were starting to panic. We told them that we were worried too because at the very least, all of our gear was inside! Finally, some club employees showed up and let people in.

We drove overnight to Aspen, that beautiful but ridiculous enclave of wealth high up in the Colorado Rockies. It’s an old mining town, but walking through the streets now the storefronts are populated by names like Prada, Gucci, and Armani. We saw a house for sale for $16.8 Million. The sound guy from Belly Up mentioned that although the club only held about 400, they had booked The Flaming Lips and two nights of Jane’s Addiction for the week following Christmas at $100,000 a night. Anyhow, we went for a great hike up into the hills, got cocky and did some boulder jumping in the stream, and I missed one and smashed my knee open. It was worth it though,  and I’m healed now.

As Mick crested a pass on I-70 on the way into Boulder and entered a tunnel at around 11,000 feet, the static charge was so great that our GPS exploded and started smoking. Luckily, the damage was not to the unit itself but to the wiring leading into it. We cobbled together a solution- ultimately splicing the cigarette lighter leads to the toggle switch on the driver’s wall mounted fan. Hooray for safety! The Fox Theater was great. Some girls had taken a bus up from Colorado Springs for the show and missed their return trip, so we let them wait for the next one (4am) on the bus. They proceeded to do their music theory homework for next morning’s class. The next day, most of us hiked up a trail to the Flatirons- giant rock faces that loom over the city. Kati and I got split off from the pack and took the trail to the very top of the face, and as we headed down we passed a woman who was clearly a stripper complaining to her companion about 70 year old men that really only want phone sex but won’t be straight about it. I guess in Colorado even the sex industry is outdoorsy.

What do you do in Santa Fe? Buy cowboy shirts and visit Spanish churches. Done. To be generous, the club was not ready for us. There was a drawer full of knotted-together cables,  some speakers in various levels of operation, and a few employees that didn’t move too fast. As our sound guy Mike and the club sound guy were still trying to piece together a PA system, the owner announced that she was opening doors and turning on house music. A bit of semi-heated exchange ensued. The show was fun though- lots of nice folks in Santa Fe!

more to come..

nearing the top of the pass

Heading into the ski towns of Colorado, we left the regular world and entered some sort of very expensive fantasy landscape. Expensive, but stunningly beautiful, mind you. Our van did a stand up job of hauling us over the 12,800 ft. Independence Pass, an altitude equal to the summit of the Middle Teton that I climbed years ago and higher than the top of Mt. Hood. We were forced to learn about downshifting for the remainder of this journey.

what a giant poster!

The Belly Up in Aspen was a cute little venue with very a fantastic sound crew and really nice employees. It supplied an oxygen machine for the talent. Given its size, maybe 250 capacity tops, we were all astounded to see the amazing level of talent that the club brings in. Rufus Wainright had been there the night before us, and Talib Kwali was to follow. Sara was quite honored to set up our merch next to a giant framed picture of Snoop Dogg. Despite being a Monday night, the club filled up and we had a great show. We played every song we had, also introducing the long gestating new tune Always and a drum solo/ chorus reprise ending for We Are The Tide that really got the crowd going.

Blind Pilot and Snoop Dogg, together at last

After the show we headed to our pricelined hotel in Snowmass Village, only to find it shut down with a note to go to a different hotel. Following the trail, we sent Ryan and Israel to check in (priceline reservations are only for 2 people) and they came back reporting that the second hotel’s computers were down and they hadn’t gotten the priceline info, so they had no way to trust that we had paid already. A confirmation number was not enough to convince the cranky front desk man, although he ultimately gave in when Ryan brought his laptop in and showed him the emailed receipt. Unfortunately there was not way to sneak seven people into this hotel, so we had to buy a second room. However, this was the first hotel-sneaking-in failure in several tours- pretty good!