Arkansauce Farkansauce

Room 710 was a good show. The other bands were so great. They even forfited their share of the money we all made to us so we could have some extra cash to get to Nashville! Thanks Stickpony and Grub Dog and the Modestos!!! We made it to Nashville on that cash--

Well we made it to Tennessee, but not without driving through Arkansas making up crazy songs (to no music whatsoever) about men named Alexander who make a specialty Arkan"sauce". We won't, however, divulge their secret ingredient.

I have never driven across the United States before, and have never been to Arkansas. I knew we were out of Texas (that is a BIG state) when we hit Arkansas because Arkansas is so different and beautiful. We went from 90 degree hot, humid Austin to freezing cold Arkansas. It really felt like we were beginning to head East.

When we reached Tennessee I set eyes, for the first time, on the mighty Mississippi. Now I know why we call it that. It is awe inspiring. We were just driving by, so I didn't get to stop and rest and think on it, but we will see it again when we go through Illinois over to Missouri later on in our tour.

We had another mishap with sleeping arrangements--AGAIN. Luckily we have the BEST publicist EVER. We were supposed to stay with a friends sister, but because she started working an odd schedule, it wasn't convienient any longer for her to have us stay last night. We called our publicist and asked if she had any spare floor space for us to sleep on. She didn't but she did get us a really nice hotel room to stay in that is only 20 min away from Nashville! This is something we didn't expect, and that we don't expect, but that we will not forget! Thanks Laura!

We watched some crazy movie on TV, I practiced playing Anybody's Guess on our new Roland keyboard, and went to sleep. Bonnie chewed on her bone and crashed...I think she exhausted herself from all the sleeping she did on the way here.

We have a show tonight at Mega Used Books and Discs here in Nashville. It should be great. We are meeting with a booking agent after the show--we'll see how that goes!

We'll keep ya posted.

Station Wagons East!

Alright. I thought that it would be easy to keep our travel log updated while we've been out on the road. I was wrong! It has been difficult to get even a second to update everyone on how our tour is going. Between strep throat and a screwey wireless card, updating has been next to impossible.

We are healthy now, and our wireless card is too, so updating shouldn't be that
difficult. Being on tour and not yet having become a big name artist with a huge tour bus and comfy sleeping conditions can be very tiring. For the summer and west coast leg of our tour, we slept in our car in the national forest a lot. We have a station wagon that when the seats are put down, turns into a full bed. But, now it's getting to be fall and winter and we've had to make arrangements with family and friends for places to sleep. If we stayed we would wind up freezing to death, so would our little black lab/pomeranian and our instruments would crack into pieces and beg to be fire wood.

We started out going west and came back through New Mexico. In New Mexico, we stayed at Levi's sisters house (which was filled to the brim with screaming kids, a bird whos squacks are never ending, and a cat who perpetually lives on the counters--but very fun none-the-less). The night before last, we started out toward the east. First stop--Austin, TX. We left at 9:30pm and drove for about 6 hours before pulling off on the side of the road at the New Mexico/Texas border to sleep. We slept till about 8am and headed out again. We made it to Austin by around 3:45pm. We had to change our clothes and brush our teeth, so we did what anyone would do--we went to Albertsons supermarket! Levi was lucky because (and only god knows how this was possible) the men's restroom didn't smell like exploding bowels, but the women's bathroom did. So, while levi took his time smelling the sweet scent of that bathroom bubblegum spray they use everywhere and washing up thuroughly, I quickly changed clothes while standing on my shoes so that whatever brand of ecoli was floating around on the floor wouldn't soak in through my feet.

Mean while, outside it was pouring rain and extremely humid. When I travel my sinuses get home sick and pissed off about me leaving New Mexico, and almost always get infected. When we went to California last Christmas, I got a HORRIBLE sinus infection and was laid up in my sisters apartment for days. My dad told me that when I travel I should take a hot shower right when I get to where I'm going and take decongestants with out antihistamines along the way. So, we stopped at walmart before going over to End of an Ear records (where we played at 6pm last night) and while they didnt have a hot shower for me to take, they did have a good decongestant. After promising the pharmacist I wouldn't make meth with my sudafed, we were on our way. The down side of all of this was that when we were playing our set, the humididty was exhausting me and the decongestant was making my heart race. My guitar playing wasn't affected that much, but the set was a little subdued from the humidity. It didn't really matter though because there were only around five people who showed up. The rain makes it hard for a good crowd to show.

We were supposed to stay with Levi's friends that he did some landscaping work for in the summer, but through some mishaps with our cell phone(s) while traveling, we'd lost their number. We wrote them an email but they didn't get back to us until we were about to sleep in our car. We were at a place called Cafe Caffiene (we have played two shows at this coffee house) constantly checking our email to see if Levi's friends had written. A band came in to play a show, but no one came to see them (boy, that sounds familiar--End of an Ear anyone??). I told Levi that we should stay to watch them, that this had happened to us before and that it would be good karma for us to stay and watch their show. We stayed and listened, they were great, but I didn't catch their name otherwise I would plug them here. Our good karma was granted, and Levi's friends wrote back to us with their phone number and we got a hot shower, a hot meal to eat, and a warm bed to sleep in!

Right now we are getting ready for our gig tonight at room 710. If you are in Austin, please come out and see us!