I spent six weeks from the middle of March to the other day living out of a van with Hattie and Nich, playing shows all over the western United States. It all goes by in a blur; while I’m on the road I forget what the everydayjob life is like – when I get back home I wonder if I imagined the whole thing. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Colorado, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, California, Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, Illinois… this is where I’ve been? It went back and forth from summer to winter, mountain to desert to near tropic, depending on where we were, and today I struggled with brutal wind on a Michigan April day. We played in a damp warehouse, an immaculate cafe, the semi-abandoned gift shop to a cave tour, legendary all ages punk venues, living rooms of houses, and a wide array of “watering holes” both ritzy and well dived to everything in between.
I woke up from a half-sleep state in the passenger seat to the sound of “To Hear Knows When” by My Bloody Valentine at the exact moment the sun crested over the horizon on an early Arkansas morning. I stood on the shores of Lake Tahoe with friends that I had just met days earlier and people that I’ve known and shared my greatest experiences with since we were teenagers. Every day we made new friends that were hard to leave but brought exhilarating thoughts at the idea of meeting again. I saw trees that had no discernible heights and plains with a horizon hundreds of miles away. I had a bouncer try to fight me and then apologize to me three times when he realized that I wasn’t trying to fight him, it was just the way the crowd pushed me.
I got to see City Mouse play every night for two weeks, and was dismayed when I remembered that this wouldn’t just be every day for the rest of my life. I’m a staunch midwesterner and feeling curmudgeonly that I think I left part of my heart in southern California – I mean, come on! The state that consistently produces musicians who love to sing about how great the state is! Stereotypes of paradise! This is betrayal, eh!? – but then I realize that, fuck it, it was awesome and I can’t wait to get drenched in sweat at a warehouse show in the Inland Empire again.
Too many people to thank, too much to process. I kept notes, they’ll be up on this page before too long. We’ll do it again.
tommyplural
GTG RECORDS 