I’m writing this blog from Dallas, Texas. I’ve been on the road touring with Hermit Thrushes (I play guitar) since Friday, March 13th. So far so good. We had shows all the way down to Austin from Philadelphia, plus an in-studio radio set with KXUA and a newspaper interview in the Fayetteville Flyer, both in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Also, a highlight for me: a shout-out in Magnet, one of my favorite music magazines.
We’ve been traveling in a big retired retirement home bus that runs on diesel (we’re working on using veggie oil). To offset some of the costs, we took four extra people on the way down — Elizabeth Devlin, an autoharp player; Cheryl Nguyen, a violinist/violist who is doubling as our merchandise seller; Greg Sandler, who is possibly making a video documentary about this trip; and Gater, a guy from West Virginia who was moving to Austin. Elizabeth, Greg, and Cheryl are still with us on the way back. We also just picked up Danielle, on her way to Fayetteville.
The man who made mostly all of this happen is Sam Tremble, a PBQ editor from Philadelphia. He has a gift of finding people who are making things happen and convincing them to let the band do something, anything. He’s also been blogging about this trip in Philadelphia’s Citypaper.
Two bands worth checking out that we’ve played with so far: Invisible Hand and Quiet Hooves. Quiet Hooves, from Athens, Georgia is what I think of when I think of Athens music — bands like Neutral Milk Hotel, Beulah, Circulatory System (who I’ve just been told is coming out with another album August 4th), Olivia Tremor Control, A Hawk and a Hacksaw, and Major Organ and the Adding Machine. Oh, I could go on for a while about Athens bands. Circulatory System is one of my favorite albums.
We still have about one week left in the tour. We’re playing in the same places we hit on the way down. Hopefully the bus will get back to Philadelphia in one piece. I’ll have more hyperlinks next week, I promise.
