Smokey Mountains

After two days even a shoe starts to feel like home. I don't think I'd yet relinquished the wheel to anyone in my dramatic paranoia of minivan collapse and our subsequent arrests and jailing. Onto Asheville and into the legend that pours forth from the belly of that small city. From what I've heard, art grows on trees here and all along the banks of the sweet whisky river fiddlers and banjo players from high up in the Smokey Mountains sit and sing songs with drunken fish. We're anticipating mecca.
Abi's been here before, at a music camp just outside of town, and knows the ropes. An old friend of hers has set us up opening for his band Sirius B at a bar. The details are fuzzy, are we playing outside then? The sky is like a diamond today and we pull into a dirt parking lot where a lone man unloads a keg from the back of a pickup. Is this the place? And we go around back and, holy shit there's a river, train tracks, a grassy field, and so many local microbrews. Crawford Crews emerges from the bush with his dashing good looks and blue hawaiian with the offer to stay the night in his apartment. We realize the bar is a foodless establishment and are put in the decidedly disconcerting spot of ordering delicious delivery to our picnic blanket laid out in the back.
We meet the band, Pancho is like a tooth pulled from Eugene Hutz, everyone is glowing and friends before we meet. The crowd is surprisingly large but doesn't seem so as they are spread out across the acre or so of picnic tables and lawn chairs. I break two strings during the set, something which starts to happen nightly from this show onward. There a wily blood in the air here and dancing is mandatory, the sun is setting as we finish our set. Sirius B plays out the rest of the night, I mean hours and hours of tunes, everyone is mystic and moved some way or other. Torches in the lawn, the riverrun, the melted companionship of ages gathered out on the dewy grass. Or doesn't believe that things like this happen. We stand by the river and discuss for the first time if this tour was a wise idea. Of course it was, if for no other reason than standing by that river, discussing whether we should be there. Barry's deep in philosophy talks and history rehashing with Crawford. Fernelly's giggling with his shirt off. Abi's dancing with a young granola girl. It's a very thick and sweet evening.
We head back to Crawford's and take up residence on his couch and floor, watching a Snoop Dogg movie that never ends until we one by one wink out and say goodnight.      

The Time Spent Waiting

Our first somewhat lazy day. Awoke midmorning, Abi had taken Minivan Morrison to the river with our host, I think Fernelly is jogging somewhere. Eventually we get hungry and walk into town, eating across the street from last night's show and thinking and there's lots of coffee and cigarettes.
Our original plan had been to breeze up to Charlottesville, where we'll be playing at the Garage that night, and count on the good grace of god to find us a big bed to sleep in. But today we'd been offered another night at the house, should we want to drive back after the show. What a sweet deal. So we laze around and eat more coffee. Eventually Abi gets back from the river and we pack our gear and head on up.
Charlottesville is a very historic-feeling town. Driving around our roads kept ending and we're made to backtrack and there's only one way around here and was that the venue? Large open green of the town proper, and is that statue Teddy Hoover? I know Monticello is around here somewhere, that is that venue!
The Garage turns out to be an actual garage, tacked on the back of a church, next door to a funeral parlor, and it opens directly onto the town green. It's perfect. There are couches on the sidewalk for passers by, but the best seats in the house by far are on the grassy knoll directly across the street. We are the only band playing that evening and as we set up Fernelly decides to do a set to open.
"Are we all packed up, does everyone have their belong-g-ings,
strapped across their ever regretful, shooouuulders?"
He kills it, his rolling voice laying smooth on every part of the air around us, and as he plays a crowd gathers on the hillside. People who heard the sound from across town, people who knew we were coming, people coming out of the funeral parlor, all sorts of people. Old and young, meek and ebullient. We play our set just like practicing in the garage and the response is so warm, so kind, how many lives can you absorb in one night? That man who kept yelling at us is the kindest of all, where are we? They don't all know one another but it doesn't matter through the hopscotch of introductions and a blob of about twenty of us head down the road for drinks. How many names can you remember?
It's a late drive back in the rain for an early start tomorrow. We are little like finger mice getting to bed tonight, not making a peep. But sitting cross legged and giggling in a circle as all the guards are let go for the night and what is the science of emergence? And yes we found a huge stash of money on the dresser, but we're not going to take it, that's not who we are... I'll just count it, you know, just so I know.     

The Settling In

Minivan Morrison was a dutiful steed throughout the tour, though the space : luggage ratio was a bit awkward. We figured out early on the best method of packing would involve building a wall of supplies between the driver and the back of the van, which effectively soundproofed the front from the back. There was just enough space between the rows of equipment for three people, but today we will be adding a fourth en route to Richmond, VA.
I don't know how he fit in the back, there just wasn't enough room.
Today Or remarked that this was our last chance to turn around, and it was true. Once we broke through Virginia it would make more sense to keep going. For a fleeting moment with the madness of the last two nights still awake in me, home was all I wanted. But really, our apartment in Brooklyn was a shit hole and we'd just received word that a sewage pipe had broken in the basement, so I wasn't that anxious to return. We bought omelets at ihop.
Arrived in Richmond outside the Sprout and crawl our clustered bodies out from between seats and immediately outside a man stops us and starts rapping and Fernelly starts beatboxing and there's a recording of this somewhere and skinny means what you're bringing to the table. Exeunt and stash equipment on the stage and our host finds us for coffee and leads us down the road on his wobbling bicycle to his big beautiful house where Abi, Barry, Fernelly and he disappear into the basement for impromptu jam session, leaving Or and I on the porch as the sun sets.
Head to the venue early to take advantage of the delicious free food, great setup here, restaurant, bar, back room with stage, beautiful waitresses, menus on old record sleeves that look like heads. We meet the other band and they're from Queens and we're all wearing suspenders. By the time we play we are full and happy and this feels like we're finding a groove. A sudden a crowd materializes and when we play the reticence that usually takes half a set to break down is thrown asunder thanks to one unwieldy dancer who gets it from the first moment and then everyone is stomping and clapping and encouraging that divided man. You Bred Raptors closes the night and blows our minds, moving against light with a motion just as fast and doing it all in masks, such a wonderful meeting.
We return to the house to find a party in full swing taking place. The room with our suitcases is filled with the half clothed wild eyes of dancing girls and we sneak in and out and have a drink and join some people outside. And at the end of the stairs, the very bottom of the stairs, on the earth, someone is in a fully grown body but staid and arrested on their insides. This isn't an argument, it's something sadder that I refused to expect and don't know how to handle. Maybe best if it's dealt with as a bad smell and we wave it away, move to a different area if this will not leave, no?
Or, poised like a nun, balances the scattered equation and becomes brighter to me.
That's all I recall, I don't know where we slept. But we slept well.