Notes from the Road #1

Hello Friends,We're back on the road, currently in some super beautiful area outside of Austin, Texas. We are happy to be back in our natural state: our possessions are crammed into a sweaty storage unit, our podcasts and audio books are downloaded and queued, our hygiene is on an oddly graceful decline, and hopefully everything else is in the trailer.We had a fantastic show in Flagstaff, AZ last week at the Hotel Monte Vista where Jonathan Best and Carlos B. Jones joined us for a great evening of tunes. We want to thank all our friends who dressed up, piled into several cars, drove two hours north to support us (you make us look so good!!), then returned home around 4 AM on a school/work night. You're insane. And we really benefit from that. THANK YOU. We miss you terribly and can't wait to see you again on May 5th back in Preskitt. Let's get together and make some regrettable decisions.The next day we drove to Albuquerque to meet up with our sweet and wonderful friends, Tara and Brooks, whom we know from Bozeman. We had a nice, relaxing evening in perfect weather and company and a fantastic home-cooked dinner to boot. The next day, Jonathan and Carlos drove from Prescott at 5 AM and joined us in Albuquerque to play a swanky speakeasy-themed joint called Vernon's Black Diamond Lounge. Once again, we had a great time with our fabulous band-mates, and staggered into bed quite late that night. Thanks to Jonathan and Carlos for driving all that way, playing their asses off, and driving all the way home the next day. We adore those two.On Saturday, we drove down to Las Cruces, NM for a show at the Las Alturas House Concert series with our host, Lee Herman. We're relatively new to the house concert thing, and we are officially hooked. Lee cooked us a lovely dinner with wine, set us up in a grand guest room, and had about 25 fabulous friends walk through the door for a super fun, intimate show experience. He has the perfect living room complete with stage lights and great sound. As you can imagine, house concerts are all about the personal, intimate concert experience and they provide the perfect situation for back stories. And let's be honest, many of our songs could use an explanation, so that was a good thing. Lee is moving to Chicago and will be doing the Windy City Concert Series at that point so we sure hope to see him again up north.The next morning, Lee filled us with a delicious frittata and a pitcher of coffee and we started our 12 hour drive to Austin, Texas. As the landscape changed from brown to green and the air took on a damp weight, we listened to Steinbeck's "Cannery Row", some new favorite artists, and enough silence to work on some new material. We stopped in Ozona for dinner at "Pepe's" (which, from the outside, reminded us of Quentin Tarantino's "From Dusk Til Dawn", but luckily for us, what you see is what you get at Pepe's, and we got great Mexican food in a room packed full of Ebay plunder).Next up: we visit Austin today, we play in Memphis on Thursday, Knoxville on Saturday for a radio show and then again that night in Asheville, North Carolina. All details under our "Tour Dates" tab.Until next time...