WInter Park noon set (liz copan pic)

Well, there we were in downtown Winter Park at about 9am. There was a big stage set up in the city park for this SolShine Festival thing that the Chamber of Commerce was putting on. I was delighted to find a basket of Special K breakfast bars and an urn of coffee for the volunteers. We beat all the volunteers and sound crew there (hence stealing their breakfast). Supposedly there was a three story condo that was to serve as the communal green room for the day, but I never actually went there because we also each got our own swank hotel room! Thanks Winter Park! Our set was at noon and we played to about a hundred people as they wandered by, wondering why there was a band playing in the park. As soon as we loaded off, a lightning storm erupted and everyone ran for cover. I sat under a tent next to the Trampled By Turtles guys, ate a plate of BBQ, drank some strange Colorado beer called Shock Top, and met a man named Ron who had fallen in love with Blind Pilot two years ago at the Lyons Folk Festival and had been working ever since to bring us to Winter Park. Done. Ron pretty much ran the town, so getting Blind Pilot was an inevitability. He would also prove to be an extremely generous and interesting person, even to the point of buying us all a fancy dinner and having us out to his mountainside ranch for breakfast and kayaking the next day.

@ Belly Up

Next up was Aspen at the old Belly Up. Recently my heroes Medeski, Martin, and Wood had played the same room. This was maybe our fourth time there and it never gets old: the framed posters of mega-stars like Snoop Dog that they pay six figures to play their 400 capacity venue, the oxygen machine backstage, and the TV screen lowered in front of the stage showing surfing and rock climbing videos between bands. The next day in Telluride, we were reunited with one of America’s most beautiful towns to spend a night in. Everyone in Telluride is so smart, attractive, wealthy, and nice that we never quite want to leave. The promoter here gave us a condo for the night that ended up being about a mile and a half away- I tried to walk there to take a shower and got caught in the most intense lightning storm I’d ever seen. I was actually really scared, especially crossing the raging creek on a long, exposed bridge. Finally finding the place after endless circling, I opted to use the dryer instead of the shower, putting my socks and pants in for a few minutes before beginning the walk back.

above venue, SLC

Next up we had Salt Lake City, opening for Josh Ritter at a place called Red Butte Gardens. The venue was a big outdoor amphitheater and the backstage facilities transitioned magically into trails leading into the Wasatch foothills. After sound checking I followed one up a nearby hill, looked down and could barely make out the speck of the stage on the horizon. Realizing that if if my timing was off, I could easily miss our set, I hurried down.

The following night we opened for Josh again in Boulder CO at Chatauqua. No mere venue, this century old wooden barn-like structure and its accompanying small private town of well appointed cabins at the base of the Flatirons were what remained of a national utopian/ self-improvement movement from the heady times before The Great War. Boulder was one of the pillars of the early twentieth century Chautaqua Movement, the idea that social elites should spend their summers in these enclaves, sequestered from the grit and poverty of a newly industrialized America, bettering themselves through story telling, speeches, musical performances, and spiritual workshops.

inside chatauqua

our vs josh ritter's bus

Speakers such as William Jennings Bryan would do the national “Chatauqua Circuit,” which ranged from places like our venue to tent encampments on the edges of small towns. Though the national movement faded in the 1920s, Boulder’s Chautaqua Association still functions as a local cultural mecca. Visiting this scene was an unexpected treat for the token Blind Pilot history nerd.

From here we headed North forever- all the way to the Calgary Folk Festival. As mentioned, these Canadian folk festivals were both fun and hospitable and I hope we get to do more in the future. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see guitarist Vernon Reid, but I did get to watch keyboard legend Bernie Worrell lead a very funky workshop on a small stage. I was also floored by Yo La Tengo- I’ve heard them enough in the past, but seeing them made me really love them. The festival was on an island in the middle of a river that ran through downtown. There were nice hotel rooms with pool, sauna, and gym (very helpful for long tours), and I got to do my new favorite tour move: run on the treadmill secretly wearing my swim trunks, let the families in the pool notice that I’m gross and sweaty, then remove my shoes and shirt and jump in next to them to cool off before hitting the hot tub. Brilliant.

Last official show of tour: Missoula. We played with another Portland band called Weinland and that was a lot of fun. The show was alright; a low key way to finish a tour. We spent the night parked in front of the venue and were soon woken up by delivery trucks and street sweepers. After listening to a few hours of this, we moved the bus to a band friend’s house where we spent the day lounging in the backyard and watching kids, chickens, dogs, and cats interact. At this point, I was hopelessly sucked into a steamy adventure novel I had taken from the cabin in Boulder. We played a “secret show” this evening- actually a back yard concert that was a high school kid’s birthday party. It was fun but I think I drank to much Hansen’s Soda. That stuff has a lot of sugar.

On that sweet note, it was time to head home- we left that evening, stopped in Eastern Washington for sleep, and drove to Seattle. At this point, Ryan, Messick, Ian, and I reclaimed the minivan that had been left by Luke a month ago in his dash for a new passport. We peeled off from the Astoria contingent, said goodbye to the bus, and drove back to Portland.

I know it was only a month, but this tour really covered a lot of ground and I felt like I’d been gone for a year. However, the more tours we do, the better we get at touring. This time around we had the most fun of any tour, and I think we played our best as well.

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!