We finally leave Chicago today, after something like 10 days in the Illinois area. We’d actually just started to go stir crazy the night before leaving, so the timing was just right.
We’d encountered a few road tolls coming into Chicago and had been getting frustrated, but it was nothing like today! In one days drive from Chicago to Bowling Green, Ohio…we paid over $17US in road tolls. Stink.
Did you catch the name of that town? Yip…we were playing in a town called Bowling Green! Stoked.
We were playing another house party, this one at a place called castle Sunshine. We turn up late afternoon to another student town, reminiscent of Macomb. The house next door to Castle Sunshine had a beer bong lying on its roof. We knew that was a good sign.
The room we were playing in was probably the smallest venue I’ve ever seen, even smaller then Al’s place in Wanganui. Even for a lounge, this was small. Looked like you could squeeze in around 30-40 people…so we were amped, as it looked like it was gonna be heaps of fun. I have some photos, but still need to upload them…check back in a coupla days.
Before the show we head out into town and discover Rally’s. Our favourite fast food joint to date. Their $1 burgers rule.
The show was as awesome as we expected with the whole house being packed, those who couldn’t fit in the room were lined up the stairway and crammed in the kitchen. We were playing with a band called Self Evident who have done quite a bit of touring, so a good crowd turned up. Funnily enough a bloke came to the show who had bought the Over the Atlantic album a few months earlier but had no idea they were playing tonight. Quite surreal running into a fan in Bowling Green, Ohio.
Most rockstar moment of the tour tonight as at the end of the set, Rhys went to thank everyone for coming and then forgot the name of the town we were in!! A moment straight out of Spinal Tap, “Thank you so much……uh….um….what was the name of this town again?”
How could you forget the name “Bowling Green?!”
After the show we hung out at the house and set up to sleep on the rancid floor that we’d just finished partying on.
Sweet sweet accom
Before heading to sleep we hang out in one of the flatmates room with some people left over from the show, he plays us “Raging Sharks”,http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi815661337/ perhaps the worst film ever made, I thought he was exaggerating, as, well I have seen some bad movies…but yeah, this was frankly terrible. So much stock footage was used, you saw the same shots repeated over and over, it was so budget, and the acting so awful..you gotta check out the trailer. Something you can’t see from the trailer is the aliens! The premise of the film is amazing…two alien craft collide in space and they release some alien material which falls into the ocean and makes the sharks go crazy…then at the end of the movie in what is simply the greatest scene known to man, the Aliens return to earth to collect the alien substance again.
The film is awful (aside from the opening and finishing sequences). Beware to all those who attempt to watch it.
We had a show lined up at a House party venue called “The Echo Collective” in Milwaukee, but three days before we were scheduled to play they got raided by the cops and they found one kid with a can of beer in his bag, and then issued a whole bunch of fines totalling a couple of thousand dollars and got their landlord to kick them out, giving them only ONE days notice to vacate, all 7 people who lived their and their 3 dogs.
One of the guys at the house managed to find a venue that was free that night in town, booked us in, and we were stoked, ‘cause it would start a chain of events leading to some crazy goodtimes.
We got to Milwaukee and decided to get some Greek food for dinner. Greek food is massive around Illinois/Michigan. We’d only seen a few restaurants over the west coast, but it was everywhere here, Chicago even has a Greektown. There was a “Johnsonville Brat” on the menu at the place we went too, not believing they had a meal named after me, I bought it, it was disappointing…..just like me
The show tonight was a crazy lineup of genre madness, playing with us was a folk singer, a rockabilly folk band (played by crusty punks) and a post-rock band… but we all got on really well, especially with Christopher Bell the folk singer who after seeing the band and hearing we had a few days off coming up, he offered to put on some shows in his hometown of Jamestown (New York). The show had a reasonable little turnout and people really dug it, so we left feeling pretty awesome.
We decided to drive back to Chicago after the show (only 90mins away) since we had sweet accom there, and on the way I got pulled over by a cop for the 4th time!! This time was ridiculous. The cop had pulled somebody over and was on the side of the road, so I slowed down while passing him. Seconds later he switches on his lights and starts chasing us down. We pull over and he asks me why I didn’t change lanes, saying that slowing down wasn’t good enough. He noticed we had Canadian plates and thank goodness cause he didn’t actually know what the law was in Canada, as in most states in the US you have to change lanes to give at least a lane between you and a pulled over cop. I pleaded ignorance and then told the officer that in New Zealand where we come from that we don’t even have any two lane highways and there are only a few cops so we don’t have such a law. Love how ignorant some people are here.
It happens every now and then while on tour. You’ll do a show which simply blows you away and was nothing like you expected. As we load into the car and get ready to leave Chicago, we enter in the co-ordinates of Macomb (a City NOBODY we talked to in Chicago had heard of) into the GPS unit and discover that it’s going to take 5+ hours just to drive there. Since we had to come back to Chicago after the show, we were kinda a bit nervous…worried if driving 10+ hours out of the way just to play a house party would make sense (and the giant fuel cost). We fretted for a while, decided in the end that drive, schmive we just wanted to party, we left on our way…and it ended up being the best decision of the tour.
Again, like on the west coast, I instructed our GPS to stay off the highways and instead take the shortest route (through the small towns), doing this way, you save a little on petrol costs, get to see a much more awesome part of the country, but add on another 20-30 mins to a days travel.
We drove through some incredible towns today, classic white picket fence, flag waving, “go troops!” little townships with names like Good Hope, Prairie City etc…
We get to Macomb around 7pm to discover a student town STRAIGHT out of the movies. We head down West Adams street towards the venue. Now, you have GOT to see this street to believe it. I am not exaggerating when I say that every single house on the street was full of students and every single one was partying. There were classic frat houses proudly adorned with their greek letters, there were students sitting on couches on their roofs, there were people playing table tennis on their lawns, dozens of BBQs. I was totally rapt, I’d stepped into a scene from Revenge of the Nerds/Animal House and I was lovin’ it.
I was too nervous too take a photo with all the jocks outside, but took this after the party finished.
The guys start freaking out thinking that we were playing some sort of jock ridden keg party. I laugh and tell them not to worry as we stumble upon tonights destination, an awesome house with a basement that hosts partys every weekend. The venue is called the Day Old Basement and it’s a kick ass place.
Before the show we take a cruise around this amazing street and decide to crash a couple of frat parties. Nervously we head out, haha, man, American students are so cliché, I swear this was straight out of a movie, there is no need for me to describe it…just go and rent out National Lampoon’s Animal House.
The party we crashed
We get back to the venue and find it crankin’ with the 2 dozen or so people who are there dancing to locals “Meat Burger”. Over the Atlantic leap on stage following them and go off! This show was absolutely killer and people were going crazy, when they finished people were going nuts and demanding that we stay around for another day, some quick decisions are made, a venue was found and since our brakes pads were wearing down and we had some repairs to get done in Macomb anyway…we hing around.
After the show we actually go to the loft we get asked to play the next night to crash out, but not without stopping at the supermarket on the way to pick up 5 large pizzas for $10 (read previous post about cheap junk food). Our host Adam has a two Pizza Pizzazz’s, gotta be the coolest machine out. A video below shows how it works, but basically you shove the pizza in, which twirls around and cooks it to perfection in around 12 mins..
Video of a Pizza Pizzazz in action
Need to get one of these into NZ somehow.
We crash out Marae styles on the loft floor.
DAY TWO
I take the car to a mechanic to have the brakes looked at…this is turning out to be the one thing we hear about America that is turning out to be false, as again the repair is made quickly and only cost $100 (in my experience of van repairs….this is depressingly what I consider cheap).
We spend the day checking out Macomb, which really there isn’t much to see, its basically a main town square and that’s all. We check out a few record shops and over the course of the day run into several people who were at the show the night before (love small towns), we spend most of the day driving around laughing at the ridiculous students who start partying at around 3pm in the afternoon.
Adam our host getting ready for his graduation ceremony
Over the Atlantic follow a band of wild Mexicans called Los Cos Corones, these guys were mental, sorta At the Drive in meets QOTSA, but with tons of metal licks and crazy screaming. By the time this 8 piece band, which had a bass player running through (I kid you not) 3 bass amps stacked on top of each other…ridiculous, they had pretty much burnt out the PA. The mic was giving Nik electric shocks and you could barely hear anything. Bummed out bigtime since the audience was like 4 times the size of the previous night, and pretty much everyone from the night before was there (and brought their friends) and we didn’t want to disappoint. After about 2-3 songs OTA realise that the PA ain’t gonna get any better and just start singing only a few lines in each song, and just jamming out the songs, its one of those situations where you think its gonna be the worst ever, but due to the crowd being awesome and up for it, the gig basically cranked and people went nuts with members of the crowd leaping up and hugging the band after they finished.
I got some sweet video from this show that I’ll try and upload when i can…
Very ironic, that technically the worst show on the tour where there were no vocals and none of the band could hear each other so were making heaps of mistakes turns out to be our favourite show so far! Mental house partys in small towns, you just can’t beat ‘em.
Macomb totally know how to bring the party. I am informed that Macomb were voted the 27th best party town in all of the US. I can see why.
After the party fades we crash out again on the floor of the loft, however this time are joined by half a dozen randoms from the party. Will from Thought Creature came along to the party as well, and crashed out with us:
In the morning, Adam our hosts partner makes everyone a classic American breakfast of “Biscuits and Gravy”, probably the most hideous looking breakfast I’ve ever seen. The taste was pretty interesting too, I think It’s gonna take some getting used to.
We ended up killing a few days in Chicago and using it as a base for various shows around Illinois…so I won’t bother with a day by day breakdown…but basically…our time in Chicago rolled like dis:
In Chicago we got the chance of being bigtime music geeks. It started off with heading to downtown Chicago and checking out the buildings made famous (in our world) by being on the cover of Wilco’s classic “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”. The Marina City buildings are truly stunning, a must see if coming to Chicago.
Our host Melanie had a friend who worked at Electrical Audio, Steve Albini’s famous recording studio, so when she found out that we were all Albini fanboys she made a few calls and lined us up a tour. Haha, Nik was photographing close-ups of all the outboard gear and microphones and Rhys was photographing anything that had anything to do with Steve.
Its an incredible studio, the most amazing mic collection I could have ever dreamed of, and really, really cheap to work in. For a full day of lock out in Studio B, which is still really awesome, including an engineer is only like $500 a day, what you get for that is silly good.
PIC – 1 of the maybe 40 odd draws of awesome ol’school mics.
After checking out the studio we headed back into the City to check out the water fountain made famous from the beginning credits of Married with Children.
Crusing around Chicago we discovered a beautiful example of the type of rusty cars you see everywhere in the US. There is no “warrant” type system here. Your car can be as rusty as you like.
The car gets us discussing how we are pretty much positive that the US government is doing EVERYTHING they can to kill US citizens…for example. You can drive around as crap and as rusty a vehicle as you want, if you ride a motorcycle you do not need to wear a helmet, you can buy dodgy as fireworks or guns easy as…Anything “bad” for you is CHEAP as, you can get a pouch of Tobacco and papers for $1, less then the cost of 1 orange, you can buy a dozen beer pretty much anywhere for like $4-5, the cost of 3-4 apples, even in pubs you can buy a beer for $1-1.50. Fast food is crazy cheap, there are literally dozens of different chains and they all have a “cheap” menu with heaps of items you can buy for less then $1. Its very expensive to eat healthily here.
Basically, everything that can make you sick or kill you is cheap and freely available, but then the healthcare system is so retarded, if you get sick you’re stuffed. I’ve talked to several people who pay in the region of $5-10k a year just in healthcare and home/car insurance.
For me to get the cheapest possible insurance that makes it legal for me to drive it costs $450 for 3 months. if i had bought a years worth, it would have worked out to more then the cost of the car. basically, only the well-off can afford any sort of insurance.
On a less depressing note, we went to “Millenium Park” and were all touristy and stuff. The “Millenium Bean” as people call it is truly awesome, especially standing underneath it looking up… you’d be a fool to not check it out if you come to Chicago.
Warning…tourist pics below
Melanie who works at Second City (Basically the coolest comedy club in Chicago) scored us free tickets to a show “Champaign SuperNova – How many democrats does it take to lose an election” which was damn awesome, and we then cruised into (couldn’t believe our lucky timing) a free show of Jeff Garland (Larry’s agent/friend off “Curb Your Enthusiasm”) who was doing a free stand-up show testing our various material for a paid show that was big show the next night that was being taped for a DVD. He was AWESOME.
Melanie found some kittens that had been dumped close to her house, so we hung out with these guys for a day or two.
While in Chicago, we went and saw our mates Die! Die! Die! who were in town playing the first stop of their US tour with The Von Bondies. It was funny, I arrived in LA on March 6th on the same flight into the US as those guys…but by the time I ran into them in Chicago they had been around the US, to the UK, to NZ, to Aussie and were back in the US again..respect.
We found out the next day that Liam Finn was playing that night as well! nuts.
It was Melanie our hosts birthday on the last day we were in Chicago and her Second City workmates were having a party, so we went to that, the most awesome thing about it was it was in an area of Chicago famous for being overrun with rabbits…they were everywhere! On a walk of like 100 metres from our park to the house we saw at least a dozen rabbits just cruising. During the night me, Nik and Ash headed out to get a snack and on the way back we saw a FOX! A fox like in the middle of Chicago, chasing one of the rabbits. We tried to find the fox again but gave up and went back to the party, just as we were about to leap out of the car, the same Fox just meandered past our car sniffing around… coolest thing yet.
Photo at the party…thats Melanie throwing up a “westside” on the right of the shot.
While in Chicago we also watched this movie called Frank and Cindy. Its awesome (and depressing) about a bloke – Frank, who had a hit with his band OXO in the 80’s and its a doco about his relationship with his wife and son, shot by his son. It’s really awesome. There are some clips and stuff you can view here:
Got foiled again today by bloody timezones. What I don’t understand is that a GPS unit, which, well the very point of a GPS machine is that it knows exactly where you are at any given time… yet, it won’t automatically update when you cross timezones, so you just kinda have to keep checking the clocks everytime you stop. (I wasn’t organised enough to have it sorted in advance). We had to get to Chicago by 5pm to load in today, so when we realised that we wouldn’t have enough time for any stops today we just had to have our breakfast in the carpark of the supermarket where we bought our milk.
We were really looking forward to the show tonight, especially after a distinctly average show in Des Moine. We’d heard from quite a few people that Monday nights at the Empty Bottle go off. It’s kinda like the old Tuesday nights at Indigo in Wellington, where good bands played for free every week and it becomes a local institution, and tonight was an even better line-up then normal with Her Space Holiday, who have released like 4-5 really good albums and Lymbyc System, who are simply awesome, playing with Over the Atlantic.
Totally awesome show tonight. The venue was pretty chocka by the time they went on and packed almost to capacity by the end of the set. I realised I had been totally forgetting to actually get any live shots of the band, so took a few tonight. It had been over a week since we’d been in a big city, so it was awesome to play a great show in an awesome city.
Lymbyc system blew me away. Their recordings don’t really do their live show justice, but their recordings are still sweet, so check them out fo’ sho.
PIC – The Empty Bottle’s resident cat
We managed to continue our sweet run of finding great accom and met Melanie who is totally awesome, used to do tour management for bands like The Album Leaf and currently manages Second City which is basically the coolest comedy joint in Chicago. She takes us out for some taco’s after the show, Ash orders Beef Brain Tacos.
Parking and traffic in Chicago are a total nightmare, many had warned me, but, gees. Once we’d dropped off our gear I had to circle the block for at least 30 minutes trying to find a parking spot. I even got pulled over by the cops because they thought I was casing out houses. I can’t believe I’ve been pulled over now three times since being in the US, though this time was the scariest. I freaked out because we’d emptied all our gear into Melanies house before I went looking for a park, including my wallet and bag! Was so classic! The cop asks me for my license and I tell him I’ve not got it, he shakes his head and sighs and prepares to start giving me grief when I suddenly remember that I’d been id’d by the venue a few hours previous and I’d pulled my license out and stuck it in my back pocket, thankfully tonight, my being useless and not remembering to put it back in my wallet saved my ass bigtime. After some explanations of my Canadian number plate and why I was here…they let me off…and I then found a park straight away!
Day 19 – Casper to De Moine (The longest day of our lives)
We head into town to hear the bad news about the muffler. The first place we go to was a local dude, he couldn’t fit us in for another 4 days, took a look at the damage and shook his head and gave the impression things weren’t looking to good. We then hobble down the road to Midas who fit us in straight away, 20 mins and $60 later, we’re welded up and on our way…perhaps the very first time I’ve EVER come out of a mechanic’s smiling.
During our drive east we switch from Wyoming into Nebraska, Nebraska is incredible, it’s just all green fields with livestock. Basically Nebraska is New Zealand. The best part of Nebraska is the first coupla hours where you are driving on red roads with rich green pastures and deep blue skies….sweet.
This IS middle America. You pass through ghost town after ghost town. We decide to stop in one – Sand Hills, after taking a few photos of the depressing main street, we leave pretty fast.
PICS ABOVE – Sandhills Main Street
PIC – Strange cattle identification sign opposite the town Post Office
We pass through the tiny cowboy town of Du Bouis, While at the local op-shop (I bought a cowboy shirt so I could start fitting in) one of the women behind the counter strikes up a conversation (as EVERYBODY does in the US) and we explain while we are passing through. She gets really excited and asks us if we can play a show in town tonight. Intrigued, we say we’re interested and she leaves to go talk to the various bars to see if we can play. One bar gets really excited about it and really wants us to play, but we get there and find there is no PA of any description, so frustratingly had to turn down playing a show to a bunch of cowboys.
PIC – DU BOISE
we pass through some tiny town that had been totally covered in snow the day or two before, we drive through massive piles of snow everywhere, it was very strange.
After more driving through cowboys towns, we come to the town of valentine and decide that it could be good to spend the night in. I pick up a flier for the Wacky Wild West travel park at a service station. We head to it and discover that the only thing “Wild west” about the park is a badly drawn picture of a cowboy on a brick wall. If you could imagine the ultimate rundown trailer park camping ground, this is it. We get on well with the owner of the park and even though we decide not to stay, she invites us to have our dinner there…which we do.
We decide to drive through the night. Even though the camping ground was cheap – $13 for the 4 of us, the snow storm is still floating around and we were a little paranoid of waking up buried under 3 feet of snow, we decide just to drive through the night.
We keep driving and just pull over at the occasional rest stop and sleep for an hour or two before moving on. In the US on the main interstates they have these amazing rest stops every 40 or so minutes. They really are incredible. Usually have shelters, toilets, food/beverage dispensers and even free wireless internet.
We arrive in Des Moines around 8am and just drift around aimlessly. We hang out in a “Dollar Store” for ages and it dawns on us how we should have visited one earlier. The cereal we have been sharing is $4 for 2 packets here as opposed to $4.30 in the supermarkets. Heaps of other cheap stuff as well (PS. Americans don’t understand it when you say “heaps”). It’s Sunday and everything is closed, we are broke from driving all the way across the States and even though we aren’t meant to load-in for another 13 hours we head to check out the venue. When we arrive at the venue we discover its being used for some hip-young church service, where all the parishioners have like tattoos and are all aged 25-35. They had just finished some sort of pot-luck breakfast which we manage to get invited to join in…nice. They hear that we had no accom and drive through the night so they gave us $20 to go the local YMCA to have some showers, we give them a couple of CDs in return.
With 12 more hours to kill we head to a local park and just sleep.
We get woken up by some sort of BMX rally happening just over the hill, we go to Check it out. Two redneck kids ask us if we are fags, I say yes and they run away from us screaming. Quite funny.
It was like a local BMX club meeting and it was really cute, one of the few races we saw was between 2 young kids, one of whom couldn’t make it over the a small bump in the track and fell over. Some teenager dude who was there (we find out later doing community service) ran over to help him get back up.
We go to a local café and play some crappy game for about 5 minutes before getting bored and just sit around for about 2 hours eating their complimentary crackers. The music they were playing was awesome so it was easy to hang there for a while, its been really great going to cafes in America and not hearing NZ dub music or bad acid-jazz like every NZ café.
We make it through till 5pm and decide to check out the earlier show that’s happening at the same venue we are playing afterwards. It’s some ridiculously cheesy rapper called “Maxx G Flip”, and it was the most incredible show ever. The venue was like a small pub and they were rocking this show like a stadium. Around a dozen people were walking around with official ‘laminates” hanging around their necks, there was an entourage for Maxx G that numbered more then the people in the audience. They were staging a competition after the show to find the hottest chick in the audience, of which there were only 3-4 girls anyway. The show was amazing. Think of the worst Prince song ever and then cheese it X1000 and you’re getting close to this guy. (PS. Prince is awesome, but we all know he’s done some stuff we’d rather forget). He even had a dude who would stand on stage holding his guitar, then when it was time for a solo, that guy would give Maxx G the guitar and Maxx G would let rip with the cheesiest guitar solo you can imagine. There were around a dozen people on stage, aside from 2 dancers we couldn’t work out what the others were doing. Everynow and then Maxx G would grab one of the 3 (obviously placed – given free comps) girls in the audience and do some sort of dodgy dance on stage with.
Check out the photo of Maxx G below and then weep cause you missed it. Picture Snoop Dogg’s Sensual Seduction Video in real life with not a hint of irony.
The rap show managed to kill a bit more time, straight after it we load in for our show and meet the other band we are playing with Blake/e/e, of whom half the band are based in Italy, half in the US. They are actually really choice, remind me a bit of Amina, with a little bit of MBV and Pixies in places. A fairly underwhelming show (Maxx G obviously must have stole our audience, I mean..who would have thought playing a late night show on a Sunday night in Des Moine, Iowa wouldn’t be awesome?), but we still manage to sell a decent amount of merch and meet (who we find out later is the “coolest chick in Des Moine”) Angela who puts us up at her place after the show. We watch some sweet skateboarding DVDs of hers and while she’s flicking through my ipod checking out what we are listening to she remarks “You would LOVE my friends band Lymbyc System”, we laugh and tell her that we are infact playing with them the very next night in Chicago.
Never thought I would say America is a “small place”.
Sometime during the night we are hanging outside the venue and this random dude comes up to us and asks us to take a photo of him. we oblige.
We left Jackson very begrudgingly and headed on our way through the mid west. Montana has stunning big red mountains towering all over the place and is littered with little “wild-west” style towns with cowboy hat wearing ute driving old men. We were hoping to get to Denver to stay the night with a friend of Ash’s, but the road was closed because of the snow storm so we had to backtrack a little and headed towards Casper. A token tour snowfight is had somewhere on the road there.
It’s the most bizarre landscape, as I described earlier…you keep flipping from driving through snow to driving through the desert, it gets really confusing. We had our closest encounter with Deer today as we had to brake suddenly on the interstate when 5 deer ran right across the road infront of us…I managed to snap a photo as they run off…
We get to Casper and decide to head as far east as we can that night, but just 2 mins after leaving Casper our muffler starts chugging like a boy racers and we lose engine compression and start slowly creeping along. Getting flashbacks of the 1000’s of dollars of repairs my old Low Hum tour van cost I instantly prepared myself for the worst. Typically it happened at 6:05pm and everywhere had just closed so we had to find some accom and settle in for the night. I am consoled by telling myself over and over again that at least we didn’t pull a ruby suns and have our van catch fire and burn everything. We go to 5 motels to find the cheapest one which was a really awesomely tacky 80s place designed to look like a Missisippi Steamboat, called The Show Boat. Being cheap we book just 2 beds for the four of us, a dude waiting in the lobby comes up to Ash and says “We could tell you were from New Zealand cause you guys look funny. How do you get into those pants? Does everyone in New Zealand wear pants that tight? Only people in San Fran wear pants that tight. You’re not fags are ya?”
They had free hot drinks so we forgave them.
We entered the room to the most overwhelming bleach fumes and almost fainted. We had to open the windows and leave for 30 minutes.
After getting back and flipping through cable channels for about 3 hours and not actually watching a single thing for more then 3 minutes we go to sleep. After we had all been asleep for around 30 minutes I talk in my sleep and ask Nik for the TV remote, the guys laugh at me for ages.
We had no accommodation or shows lined up between Missoula (Montana) and De Moine (Iowa) and basically the whole of central America to cross with no accommodation, so we decide to route our way via seeing one of Nik’s cousins who moved from NZ to live in Jackson (Wyoming). The drive from Missoula to Jackson was easily the most spectacular of the tour. I have no idea what the scenery is normally like, but a massive snow storm was hitting up the central US as we were passing through it, so everything was simply beautiful.
We all had no idea how many mountain ranges you needed to drive over to get across the states, I’d always figured it was just plains and valleys you drive through, but the bulk of the time you’re really elevated quite high. I’d driven a few icy roads in Canada before getting to the US, but this little roadtrip today definitely takes the cake. Some parts of the drive we were going through a total white out, where the road was totally covered and all you could see were the faintest of tire tracks. When the road wasn’t totally covered, you’d get what we nicknamed “Road Eels”, these amazing little road drifts of snow which, well, funnily enough, resemble dry ice skating over the road.
Driving on snow is always scary, but I find it funny at the same time, it always makes me feel like a tourist as we are creeping along at 10mph while the locals are hooning past with reckless abandon in their Dodge Utes at 65mph.Do not try to drive around America without a 4WD, that’s all I’m saying.
We get about 20 minutes away from Jackson and a gigantic mountain pass and it’s getting dark and snowing. To get to Jackson we have to go over a mountain with a 10% downhill grade over 10 miles, it’s a really famous pass and several locals had already warned us about it, even in dry conditions. We decided we weren’t going to take it on…and even though we’d been driving all day, had no money and were only 20 minutes from our destination that we’d fork out for a motel. After visiting every motel in town to find the cheapest deal, I pay and sort out our keys…in that time Rhys (of course) had found some locals to talk to, who made fun of us piking out and told us to get hard and that the road was easy, we decided we were up the challenge and the steady stream of cars towards the pass gave us confidence, so I get our money back and we set off.
Again we crawled over at some ridiculously slow pace as the locals overtook us over and over again, these locals have balls of steel, going over this mountain was like driving on an iceblock. The road got so steep and we were going so slow that we were actually more paranoid that the van would not make it over then the state of the slippery roads, but we managed to get to the top and inch our way down the bottom, and how glad were we to make it to Jackson! Nik’s cousin Mark and his partner basically treated us like kings (seriously) for the next few days.
(PS..I know my parents and girlfriend won’t like to hear about me driving sketchy roads…but don’t worry, I always play it safe, I was even overtaken by an 18 wheeler truck going up the pass)
We stay at Mark’s partners cozy house the first night after they take us out for drinks at the local pub, from here on in basically Mark paid for everything we did over the next couple of days, we kept “trying” to pay our own way, but we’re not too proud to accept charity, so accepted his awesomenessWe decided that since we’d found such a sweet town to stay in (Jackson Hole is basically the Queenstown of the US – beautiful snow resort and expensive as). After Mark takes us out for breakfast to a classic American diner we head back to his place and spend all day napping and watching DVD’s.
Mark had been telling us that he’d lined up some sweet accom for us that night, staying with a friend of his who was looking after his bosses house. We arrive at this “house” to discover it’s an 8 million dollar mansion!! and absolutely stunning. Surrounded by snow and as flash as we’d ever seen we just walked all around the house(s) with our mouths gaping open, we’re such hicks. Multiple bedrooms, games rooms, outhouses, stunning views…just wow. We spend all night in the “Media Room” hanging out after making an awesome dinner. The excitement of staying in such amazing accommodation made it hard to get to sleep as we wanted to stay up as long as possible to sample everything the house had to offer (such kids), but eventually we had to get some sleep.
Our West Coast party was over. Time to start heading east, through the trailer park wilderness of Middle America. We were understandably nervous and made sure we had an extra tank of gas in the car in case of running out of petrol in the middle of nowhere. No matter what you have heard about American flags, you have no idea. They are everywhere. Almost everytown in Middle America has a giant one, we’ve even seen several flying from the tops of trees and the peaks of hills in the middle of nowhere.
Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to visit the Hotel as used in The Shining, but our first stop was just 30 or so minutes out of Seattle and the SnoqualmieValley, where they filmed Twin Peaks in the 90’s.we only discovered this amazing website afterwards, but check out this guy who has done a hardcore blog finding the locations in 2008 from the 1989 Pilot: http://www.intwinpeaks.com/
PIC – Twin Peaks
Really nice drive today, we were absoultely stoked to see a dozen or more “dust devils” – some mini-twisters.
PIC – Crappy shot of a dust devil (guess you had to be there)
One is particular was actually really decent and was throwing up heaps of grass and crap….it got really close to the other side of the highway (check out my pic…you can’t make out the twister, but can see the carnage).
PIC – Shrapnel from the decent twister
After you pass through the very crappy town of Spokane, the drive from there to Missoula is incredible. Half the time it feels you’re driving through Switzerland, in particular, the area around Coeur D’Alene is amazing. We passed this incredible big block of ice just in the middle of a field, it didn’t make any sense, we haven’t seen anything else remotely like it the whole time. Check out the pic…and how big it is compared to the house.
We were pretty paranoid about the show tonight, a Tuesday night in Missoula, but luckily it was a show presented by the local radio station KGBA and they got a great crowd along. We played at a place called The Badlander, its actually part-owned by a real big fan of Bevan Smith’s work so we stayed with him after the show. The venue is amazing, its sorta 4 venues in one, upstairs, downstairs, all over the place…the are hallways like catacombs leading you throughout the rooms. The show was in the room called The Palace. We panicked a wee bit cause we were unfamiliar with the venue and after the local support act Apples of Dischord played the room emptied out completely and we thought everyone had gone home..this is how we discovered that everybody just goes to all the other bars…as soon as the opening notes of the band start, everybody just appears from the different rooms and comes together, awesome.
Rapt as with the show tonight. A band from Portland Musee Mechanique http://www.myspace.com/museemecanique jumped on the bill last minute as they were passing through town and played at the end of the show. They were great and anyone who is a fan of The Phoenix Foundation/Ghostplane etc should check em out.
I slept in the van tonight to keep the gear safe, i saw this fullah looking at me in the middle of the night. Coulda just been a deer, but who knows.
We spent the morning in Seattle, after dropping Sally off at the depressing Greyhound terminal (travelling Greyhound should be the last resort in the US) we then went on the mission to find Kurt Cobain’s house. Not as easy as it seems, even with 3 addresses, even when you are close by it’s still tricky for out of towners. We eventually found it, and much to the amusement of the locals, we sat on the fence opposite and ate breakfast. Some oldish bloke (in his late 50’s) even drove past slowed down, threw some “goats” out the windown and yelled “Kurt Lives man!”, even better then the bum who cycled past us in Seattle city the day before, again threw some goats and yelled “Sepultura!” while cycling past very past. Bogan Doppler rules.
PIC – Breakfast at Kurt’s
PIC – Kurt’s
Next to the house is a park bench that has been nicknamed the “Kurt Cobain Memorial Bench” and has a whole bunch of signatures and weird stuff written all over it, including strangely, some nazi propaganda. It was quite surreal to be hanging outside his house eating cocopops, we thought that would be the closest we’d “get” to Kurt, we were wrong. (Read on)
PICS – Memorial Bench + House
After stalking a dead man we met up with Kaz, again squeezed 6 into the little MPV and headed back to Olympia. We picked up the PA we were borrowing from Collen’s place. She lives in a community called “Hall of the Woods”, Colleen along with some friends just stumbled upon this old schoolhouse/community hall in the middle of the woods on the outskirts of Olympia. All they found inside was a PA and 30 pairs of rollerskates.They moved in, 6 of them live there and they managed to find the details of the landlord…once moved in they just sent him a letter and told him they would pay $600 a month total, he was sweet. What a score! You have to see this place to believe it. Its huge, they have their own gardens/compost set up, inside its amazing, several lounges, a beautiful rustic kitchen, and they throw rollerskating parties all the time.
Anyway, so we grab the PA and head to Black Front Gallery, where the show is tonight. Onyx of Polka Dot Dot organised and promoted the show tonight and did an amazing job as it was jam packed. Locals Sunshine Kids kicked off the night and totally set a sweet vibe. PWRFL power played next and had everyone in the room eating out of his hand, it was quite amazing to watch, everybody sat down and were hanging off every lyric. Over the Atlantic cranked it up several notches and had an awesome time. Some guy who already owned the CD bought the Vinyl and paid twice the asking price. Awesome town! Looking really forward to coming back very fast.
After the show we went out to this amazing Burrito place (name coming) that opens late and does the most spectacular burrito’s ever.
PIC – OTA with Heather, Kaz (PWRFL Power) and Onyx getting Burrito’s
We head back to Onyx’s and we hear the deepest darkest secrets of Scientology from an ex-scientologist and whilst mentioning to Onyx’s flatmates that we had been on a Seattle wide search for Kurt’s house, they inform us of some ridiculously incredible news!! Even though the house we were currently staying in was called the “The Alamingo”, it was named as such because it used to be a famous Olympian house called “The Alamo”, a house where Kurt used to practise with one of his bands before Nirvana in the basement…the very basement I had been sleeping in the last couple of nights! Wow. “The Alamo” is talked in Kurt’s book of published letters.
PIC – THE Basement
So yeah, that’s right…I’m sleeping in Kurt Cobain’s old practise room. What are you doing? Watching Shortland Street?
After playing a game of Hearthrob, we hit the hay.
