Schwagstock

Well. Today just started off with a bang. Not 20 minutes after I typed “goodnight” on the previous entry Tim, our bus driver woke me and told me he needed my help. Tired, I figured he was having problems with the credit card getting gas, or perhaps the GPS had malfunctioned… so I got up, life of a tour manager right?

I walked out into the front lounge to discover a state cop inspecting our registration tag. He asked to see our bill of sale, and proof of insurance… no problem, I had it all, I was prepared. I rule.

What I wasn’t prepared for was for this cop to come back and inform our driver that for some reason his license had been suspended by the state of New Hampshire and he was now under arrest. Nothing starts the day off right like the driver of your bus driver having to post bond at 8 in the morning. Oh did I mention I had to drive the bus? It was almost surreal, I just accepted it as it was at 8am…. No sleep, in this weird state of non-panic at the whole situation…. I just climbed behind the wheel, and drove down the road for a bit until we decided the cop wasn’t going to mess with us again. (P.S. it would appear that it is New Hampshire’s fault, not our guy…his insurance was indeed paid up, and his license should not have been suspended.)

I woke up the next afternoon to our guitarist Jeremy franticly giggling the door handle to the back lounge. We discovered earlier in the week that the knob has a tendency to not work occasionally. Jeremy discovered that he was locked in and for awhile remained calm and just tried to finesse the door open, but when that didn’t work, the pounding and calling for help began…. I’m not gonna lie…I heard it…. I thought it was a pretty humorous situation based on the events of the day thus far, and I chose to continue to sleep and let someone else get the door open. (Thanks Brett!)

The gang and I hightailed it to Missouri and Schwagstock which turns out to be two things. One, it’s a crazy hippie festival with all sorts of vendors, people with glowsticks, and just and overall very cool, very chill environment. Two… its in the middle….of fucking…nowhere. In driving though backwoods Missouri to reach Schwagstock I took note on how the things you see in movies about rednecks and backwoods people that you think are just over-exaggerations are very much NOT over-exaggerations. I’m really not sure we passed one house that wasn’t a trailer that looked like it had been just been missed by a tornado, with two or three cars abandoned on the lawn in disrepair. We actually witness three guys in wife-beaters and cowboy hats lobbing empty beer cans over the top if their trailer home in some sort of hick Olympics. Gold medals all around for that.

In all reality though, the Schwagstock gig was very cool and Jeff and the guys sounded great. We had a great time walking around the festival, and had a very low key laid back night on the bus just chatting about life, and nothing in particular. This has been my favorite night on the road so far…. We have tomorrow off, so hopefully ill find some internet and get to post this thing. Until then though, im looking forward to putting on my headphones, playing my hour and 10 minutes of rain noise on my iPod and falling asleep. Goodnight (hopefully for more than 20 minutes this time.)

States Visited: 3
Times Brett has Slammed Her blackout Curtain on me: 4