tour diary

We finished up our tour with Graham Colton on January 3rd at the Work Play Theatre in Birmingham, Alabama. Traveling with the same group of people and hanging out every night for 3 weeks tricked my mind into a routine that was not meant to be permanent. Sometimes you become so close with people, the thought of not seeing them every day seems like an impossible alternate reality rather than an inevitable one. All of them made it safely back home to Oklahoma, and we have been continuing our trek playing shows in Kentucky, Missouri, and Arkansas. As I speak we are on our way to play some unofficial showcases and hangout in the crazy madness that is SXSW.

This is the point where everything blends together. People ask us what city we were in the night before, and I can barely recall. We have been on the road since January 30th, and the always changing scenery and wandering state of being is starting to feel very…normal. It’s starting to feel normal in a way that scares me because I know a week into relaxing at home, I’ll get restless from sitting still. I have a lot of personal goals I am excited to make happen once I get home though, and a lot of great people waiting for me. Home is filling our minds a lot these days.

It sounds so silly, but I really never fully grasped how awesome (and liberal) Washington state was until I found myself spending free evenings in-between Alabama and Arkansas. In Seattle, Sundays mean brunches and all day happy hour. Businesses are open and booming, and the streets are full of people taking full advantage of the weekend up until the very last second. In places like Little Rock, almost all of the business are closed for the day and you can’t even buy a beer from the grocery store until Monday morning. Weekends turn the cities into ghost towns. Even so, our experiences with North Carolina through Texas have showed us even more about the kindness of strangers. Friends of friends, people we have never met, have made sure that we have hot meals and warm places to sleep every night. “Southern hospitality” is a very real thing. Even when there are only 2 people in the audience, they are eager and hungry for new music. They buy records, they give hugs, they send us emails, and I’d like to think they will come back…

Side note:

While hanging out in Huntsville, Alabama we visited the NASA Space & Rocket museum, home of “Space Camp” and every little kid’s dream come true. My cousin who I have not seen in over 10 years happens to work there and gave us a full behind the scenes tour. It was an adventure we will never forget! We also stopped by the City Museum in St. Louis and wandered through hidden caves, slides, and ladders. It is not a museum, so much as a giant, amazing maze. If you have the chance to be a tourist for a day- just do it.

If you ever find yourself driving for 5 hours through Arizona desert, and a tourist sign for a meteor crater creeps closer and closer, you may ask yourself “hmm. Is that meteor crater worth the detour?” The answer is always YES. You may approach the destination and find out that you can’t simply walk up to the crater, but you actually have to go through a museum dedicated to the wonders of space and pay $16 to reach the edge of the abyss. You may ask once again, looking at the few dollars in your pocket- will it be worth it? The answer is definitely YES.

When Lance and I spent $16 on a ticket to see a (very gigantic and mesmerizing) hole in the ground, it represented a shift in both of us. We are both pretty rational, and love to pinch our pennies. The first time we approached the ticket window, we walked right back to the parking lot and glanced at each other, laughing at the “suckers” who would pay that much just to see this tourist site. We sat in the van for a few minutes, and looked up at the giant hill of dirt that was the mouth of the crater, and we could not keep our curiosity contained. We paid, we took pictures with our thumbs up, we dropped our jaws in admiration of the natural beauty in front of us. We even got to touch a piece of the original meteor that crashed over 15,000 years ago in Flagstaff.

The night before, Lance and I found ourselves streaming the debate between Bill Nye and Kenn Hamm about evolution vs. creationism in the science world. Hearing Bill Nye talk about the wonders of our natural universe, the history of our planet shown in every overturned rock and pebble- I had a whole new appreciation for the vastness of that crater in the morning. My mind filled with images of space and the reminder of how tiny our lives really are. I am not frightened at the realization that my life is tiny in the grand scheme of things. In the moments that I am humbled by my size, I am reminded how important it is to allow myself to take the detours every once in a while and pull over the car, just for the heck of it.

That night our show in New Mexico was canceled due to circumstances beyond our control, but it gave us a chance to hang out with our friends and hosts in Santa Fe. The architecture and historical scenery on every street corner was so beautiful. My friends lived in a little bodega house that was over 100 years old. We stayed up all night drinking margaritas, eating delicious food, and catching up on our lives. My friend Marie who hosted us was someone who I worked with in college back in 2010. When looking for places to stay, I sometimes get nervous to contact people from the past. Will we have anything in common anymore? Will we be an inconvenience to their daily routine? Will they think I’m a big weirdo? Every time I find myself pleasantly surprised at the endurance of human connection. Marie and I had not spoken in 4 years but it was as if a day never passed.

(Next week will be more about music and less about sight-seeing. The whole band is back together and we are starting our first round of shows with Graham Colton, a whole new chapter! )