The first show of the first tour to support Follow The Voices was a nice adventure. Turns out the booking agent for the venue up and left in the days before my show, which means all kinds of things left in the lurch. Like anyone else having a clue about my performance. (cue the ominous funeral parlor organ dirge) Had fun playing, and played with songwriter Whitney McCombs and her guitarist Casey.
I'm sitting in the venue day after the show and a fender bender outside just shook the building. It's still gloomy rainy out. But I didn't mind last night. I was so tired, and the show was not lucrative so I slept in my car. First time in a long time I've done that.
"...Just like the old days!!"
It's not good sleeping in the front seat, sleeping sitting up didn't work out so I shifted guitars around and slept like a rock in the backseat. Got me thinking - years ago I'd sleep in my car a fair amount on tour. The worst (and there have been a lot of really bad ones) was probably Tallahassee Summer of '06. 94 degrees at midnight after another show no one saw. (#payingdues) I peeled myself off my seat in a pool of sweat after a few hours of 'dozing' in and out and that was it, I was up for the day around pre-dawn in the buzz of fluorescent gas station solitude. I remember two nights of surprisingly good car sleep have been in Lincoln and Denver.
TOUR SOUNDS. In addition to vocal exercises on CD, I'm listening to one of the greatest songwriting records of all-time. Please go find Street Ballads and Murderesques by Cameron McGill. He gave that CD to me at the Midwest Music Summit (music festival) in 2006. Indianapolis. Summer. We were starving and strangers picking over empty catering bins of beans. That’s how we met.
His voice became my traveling companion and songwriting how-to. Listen to “If Darkness Would Rather Come.” You're welcome. Also, I got into the Counting Crows’s double live album Across A Wire for a bit. Off to Champaign, Illinois for an in-store at Exile on Main Street around 5:30 and then tonight at Mike N Molly's.
