This tour had it's moments, a whole bunch of them. It ended up with a bang and a blast. Friday night we played the ethnic stage at the Rockford (Illinois) On the Waterfront festival. Cheap Trick, local guys gone bigtime, were playing nearby, as were bunch of other big names on other stages. As for us, we followed an incredibly loud Greek band. It's probably the first time when we've played back-to-back with another band using an electrified bouzouki. I'll leave it at that.
We've played a theater show in Rockford (couple years ago, I believe), but we hadn't seen their festival. It's a big deal. Something like 120 bands over the Labor Day Weekend. Several stages. Lots of food. They close off the downtown area for three nights of music, art and hog-facing some street vendor food. Sounds like summer to me. Kinda made up a little for missing the great Minnesota State Fair yet again. That fair ends on Labor Day and I think about it every year and always think I'll eventually get there again. When I was a kid in Minnesota I thought that was the best part of the year, well after Christmas. Music, machinery, stock car races, a huge vomitacious (don't look it up) midway, including the awesome "CycleDrome" where guys in leather road Harleys around the inside of a giant barrel while the paying gorks watched from a catwalk at the top. (Ah, I love the smell of Castrol in the morning.) Anyway, I missed the Minnesota State Fair again, even though I was in Minnesota, again, but this was some help. A fine festival.
We had fans from all over the area, even out of state. But most of the crowd was new to us. Some of them, to be honest, may have just been looking for a place to sit while their kids went to hear some metal bands or get their heads pierced...or something. Regardless, they went nuts for us. Big line of people asking for CDs and autographs afterwards. OK by me. Had a fine time. Great stage and sound crew. Had John and his crew hauling our gear. I'm low-rent for sure, as I still have a hard time seeing someone else hump my gear. I think I might be able to get used to it, however, since I'm trying to be open-minded about things. Unfortunately, it probably won't be an issue, I suspect.
We shacked up at a motel that smelled like a drained swamp over in Beloit. My room was non-smoking, but they didn't say anything about it being methane-free. Got up Saturday and headed over to a Discount Tire (the Arizona company has spread east, good for us) to pick up a new tire for the Beast. We had a blow out, as you may remember, outside of Nashville a week ago and we'd been running on a spare of questionable integrity. They took care of us and we headed for Chicago and an opening act slot at Fitzgerald’s - probably the top roots music showcase venue in the Chicago area. It's an old place with a lot of history, based on the photos on the wall. A long time ago (it dates back to before the turn of the century - the one about 99 years back) it was on the outskirts of town (it's in Berwyn, one of those close-in Chicago burbs). Now it's downtown, but it still looks pretty rustic. I was told that the night on the town/dancing scene in "A League of Their Own" was shot here. They used a different place for the exteriors, but the interior shots were done at Fitzgerald's.
Opening acts can be a crap shoot. On one hand, you're the underdog and don't have much to lose; it's the main act's crowd. If you do well, great; if not, it's their fault. Well, we noticed early on that we had a bunch of our crowd there showing up early, some from as far away as St. Louis and a bunch that used to come see us at The Abbey (in Chicago proper). So, maybe this would be OK. Turns out it was a great night. Our fans were with us in their usual wildly effusive manner (they do tend to take over a joint) and most of the crowd there to hear Geno Delafose's Zydeco music lent us an ear and an enthusiastic - in some cases wild - response, too. We tore it up for 75 minutes or more and walked off dripping.
It was a memorable set and a great way to end the tour. I had too much fun and too many people to hang out with to hijack a phone line and send this in right away. So, it's a bit late. We hung around and listened to Geno and his great band and then got in the Beast and headed for Tucson.
I'm writing the following evening, as we wind through the Panhandle and into New Mexico, more than a thousand miles down the road. I just have to say that Oklahoma roads suck like a bucket of ticks (as they say down there in Texas). They charge you a toll to drive on a road that's not fit to be a roadhouse parking lot. Somebody with some authority should do something about it. There must be some all-powerful Mollys fan out there who could straighten those people out. This van is bad enough already without Oklahoma's four-lane motocross track. My theory is they're punishing us for not stopping. It's true, we do blow through Oklahoma. It's one of the few places we haven't played. Might as well, however, since we drive through there all the time. My venom gauge is obviously on empty if all I can do is bitch about bad roads. I'm going back to listening to some music on the CD player (assuming these damned potholes quit making my cheesy player skip.)
We'll puttering around Arizona doing a couple shows in Tucson and Phoenix until we take off for Australia and New Zealand on the 27th. Later. And thanks again to all of you who showed up to hear us while we wandered around the US this summer.
I'll try to file some updates from Australia and New Zealand, but this laptop is old, old, old and there's the problem of dealing with different phone/modem standards in Australia. So, I don't know if I'll be able to do it. Going to do a little research over the next couple weeks into what's needed to modem stuff in from Australia using his ancient pile.