It’s been one week, six states, and four gigs. It’s me, Adam East and Chet Lyster for this swing through the intermountain west. Our first night was in Missoula at a nice seated black box called the Crystal Theater. It was April 20th, which is apparently a holiday in college towns. The gig went well and we went to some bars after. There was a decent band playing, people dancing, puke dried out on the sidewalk, a couple of meatheads complaining about a two dollar cover and the hippies inside. Didn’t they know what day it was?

TOUR REALITY FACT #1: Don’t eat Chinese food in Kennewick.
Somewhere between Missoula and Salt Lake City…oh yeah, Pendleton. We didn’t have a gig but stopped for dinner and drinks. 2 Live Crew had played the night before at the First National Bar. There was no band tonight, giving Sharon, the bartender, a break. There were also no Motel rooms (a horticulture conference?), so we drove south into the night surveying the hair metal selections on band members ipods. “The Last in Line” had disappeared from mine. We stopped in Mulat, Idaho and Chet snapped the above iconic road photo.

TOUR REALITY FACT #2: Men on tour are prone to bouts of flatulence. See fact 1.
Gig two was Salt Lake City at Monk’s House of Jazz. The last time I was in SLC, the show ended with me telling the assembled kids to fuck off. That was a great show. This one, not so much. The entrance to Monk’s was in a desolate part of downtown on a Sunday night and was under construction. An empty foyer with sheets of plastic drawn over the doorway. Just when we were thinking there was no venue at all, we discovered the whole place is downstairs. There was a local opening band who drew no one, started late and played way over their set time. Lame. And they weren’t good. Our set went well enough and we were followed by Matt the Electrician from Austin, who were great. The openers gave us a copy of their demo CD. We tossed it out the window of the van over the Temple Street bridge on our way home. Satisfying.

TOUR REALITY FACT #3: Laughter is mandatory and is often found in the nastiest corners of ones mind.
Gusty winds and snow storms across Wyoming. Gig three was a beautiful room in the back of a wine bar called the Trilogy. The after show hang was at the Sundowner (or Scumdowner) for pool. Someone had their head in the bushes later that night. Not namin’ names. The next day we find out our show in Crested Butte has been cancelled. Someone at the bar (the Eldo = assholes) had double booked a local “funk” band. They bumped us despite being on tour from Oregon, an article in the local paper about us, and that we had it booked months before hand. So we bid Colorado sayonara and chased the sun to New Mexico. We stayed in Raton just over the state line Townes Van Zandt wrote a great song about these mountains.

TOUR REALITY FACT #4: Make sure someone is your band is one of those people who always has snacks. It helps.
We picked up a last minute show in Santa Fe at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame bar playing on the patio for happy hour. We played that Townes song “Snowin on Raton.” The Cowgirl is well worth a visit. I had played there years ago and they were really nice to us. An email campaign by some local fans brought out a crew, and some old Olympia people were there (I used to live in Oly). We went back to a friends house and took a late night walk out into the moonlit desert. Open countryside in one direction, lights of the city in the other. Our UFO never showed up to take us home, so off to Albuquerque….

Links:
Casey Neil dot org
Casey Neil on the ’space

Photo: Chet Lyster