Springing the Blues, part 1: getting there

Glen Allen, Virginia, April 2, 2008
We're dying for a good meal. It's been almost 48 hours since our last bite of Real Food, a roast beef sandwich at the famous Rein's Deli in Conncecticut. I violated one of my cardinal rules of restaurants yesterday by driving 10 miles off our route onto a peninsula in southern Maryland for lunch at Captain John's Seafood. Captain John's is not to be confused with Cap'n Jack's or Captain D's, or its neighbor, Captain Billy's, whose weathered billboard on the highway suggests it has either seen better days or it hasn't, ever. I think I can safely add a "No 'Captains'" rule to our restaurant guide.
We made a more pleasant stop in Orange, Virginia, home of Billy Cooper's Music Store. This is the pedal steel guitar capital of the Eastern Seaboard. They have an amazing assortment of steel guitars for sale, and other instruments as well. My favorite item in the store is the pad of post-it notes with a little picture of a pedal steel on each note. The artwork takes up a lot of space on the tiny square, but it's cute and it provides entertainment for us "steel widows."

Questions about Harmonica and Women Players

Ana from Atlanta writes:
Hi Annie, I was at your seminar in Atlanta for the AHE [Atlanta Harmonica Enthusiasts] and I would like to say thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences as well. We are all waiting anxiously for that instructional dvd that you mentioned as one of your projects for the future, and you are always more than welcome to come back and teach us at the AHE.
I am also writing to ask you as a woman and harmonica player and i have some questions that i wish you could share with me about your own experience:
1) Do you think it is possible to live as a musician only? what are your the projects you are involved with: playing with different bands, organizing projects involving harmonica, teaching, all that stuff?
2) have you experienced some sort of prejudice because you were a woman (like any other job)?
3) what are qualities that in your opinion define a good harmonica player?

Dear Ana,
Thank you for getting in touch. I'm glad you enjoyed the seminar.
1) I can tell you from my own experience that it is very difficult to make a living as a musician. First of all, there are only two kinds of financial transactions in the music business: Robbery and Charity. You generally need to have some "seed money" to get a career going and cover all sorts of promotional and travel costs. The pay can sometimes seem good for a 90-minute show or seminar, but it is very low for the total hours put in traveling and preparing for gigs, and if you don't want to live in the back of a van and eat at Burger King every day, it doesn't go very far. That being said, it's so important to follow your passion and your dreams. It takes a lot of hard work and no small amount of good luck as well. People have taken advantage of us from time to time. We have also had a lot of help over the years from family and friends, help that we needed badly even with income from gigs and selling CDs. We had to keep our family as the main focus while our daughter was in school, but now that focus is shifting back to us and our career. However, the club scene has been greatly diminished since we started out in the biz. We're shifting our focus now more to teaching, creating instructional products and a greater body of recorded work. We're trying to forget about fitting into some existing market and we're trying to focus more on enjoying what we're doing so we can make the music better. That's the plan anyway. It's a work in progress.

Thanks for the questions and keep 'em coming!

The Don'ts of Driving

Getting ready for a drive from Boston to Jacksonville, Florida in a few weeks. Time to check out the car, shake out the spring wardrobe, and remember some of the rules of the road:

When you're driving, DON'T...
- Drink wine
- eat with a knife and fork
- wipe hamburger grease off your hands
- examine your hands and clothes for bread crumbs or melted chocolate
- listen in on passengers' arguments
- fish around for your meds
- fish around for someone else's meds
- think about what would happen if you suddenly JERKED the steering wheel
- stare at limos
- play that song that makes you close your eyes
- play Monopoly
- or Sudoku
- assume that there are any good restaurants on a peninsula
- drive down said peninsula looking for said restaurant
- answer your email
- change your pants
- floss
- take off more than one layer of clothing at a time
- watch the movie playing in the car ahead of you

Those are all the printable ones I could think of. Feel free to add your own!

Mailbox Full; Mind Empty

When I was a kid, my mother brought home a book by David Macaulay called "Motel of the Mysteries." It was a takeoff on the excavation of Tut's tomb, but set in the future some years after our present culture was buried alive by the simultaneous collapse of airborne pollution and millions of pieces of junk mail in transit. Macaulay, for all his brilliance as an architectural illustrator, storyteller, and educator, was close but just off the mark in anticipating the worldwide catastrophe that threatens us even now: being buried under mounds and mounds of email. And we're not talking about the printed hard copies here or even the backup discs. Just the invisible, weightless bits and bytes that take over our once-productive lives. There has to be some measurable weight to my Yahoo! home page, though, which swells importantly as it delivers the statistic: "Inbox 12,911 messages." This is not even counting items that were deleted or dumped in my spam folder. Luckily for me, Yahoo stopped limiting message storage space a few years ago. I think it's one of the very few examples of a corporation actually acting out of pity for the consumer.

A couple of weeks ago, as my computer was recovering from a series of crashes, I started looking around for ways to free up memory and drive space. I had been able to keep the Outlook inbox under 2000 messages, but after last year's tours, it had ballooned up to almost 2500. Somehow my eyes locked onto the screen and I sat down and started reading, replying, filing, deleting. My eyes turned red as tabasco. Two little gray cones of my dead brain cells piled up on my shoulders, and a croupier mysteriously showed up to brush them off. I didn't take any notice, I just kept typing. Finally, after 6 hours, I looked up. Way up, as I had shrunk 3 inches when my neck went from vertical to horizontal. The inbox now held only 1605 messages. Wow! Amazing. May as well get it down to an even 1600, or just a few below to make room for the incoming batch. Another hour or two went by, and it was down to 1423. Gee, I should just get it down to 1400 and call it a day. Dinnertime came and went. At last I gave up the chase. But I had gotten the total down to just under 1200 messages. That was the first of several marathons. I've stayed up all night. I've used every color of flag provided by Microsoft Outlook. I've created several dozen folders and subfolders. I've answered emails that were 2 or even 3 years old. I've apologized profusely in at least 5 languages. And these are well-thought-out replies, too, not some all-upper case or all lower case Blackberry cuneiform, like "ok thx". I'm neurotic and picky and I actually think about how I sign an email. "'Sincerely' sounds nice, but on second thought doesn't that seem a little insincere? I'll type 'Best regards' instead. I can back that up. Or maybe 'warm regards.' No, too much. stick with 'Best.'" It's as if I think there's a Nobel Prize out there for email.

As of this writing, there are only 326 emails in my inbox. Oh crap, 330. 339. And almost all of these are awaiting a reply. Paul came upstairs and stood behind me watching the wisps of smoke rising from my ears. He suggested that I set up an automatic reply telling people to try back if they don't hear from us within 3 weeks. How could such a simple, ingenious idea come from someone who can only use our expensive laptop to get boxing news and spyware? Maybe his intelligence has been preserved by his computer illiteracy. I read in the paper that email lowers your I.Q. (okay, it was the comics page, but there's probably more truth there than in the national news section). Could that be true? What about the freedom we were supposed to gain with these labor-saving devices in our paperless officies? And where are those hovercrafts and streaming holograms we were promised in the disco age? They were supposed to have been perfected by now. The way things are going, we won't even have the social security income to buy them if they ever do come out.

I'm convinced that someday people will see us the way we see depictions of people in Victorian times: caught up in email and Google searches just as our forebears were caught up in dusting, washing and feeding chickens. The humans and nonhumans of the future will long for our open spaces, our sense of beauty and history, but they will enjoy conveniences we can only dream of. Of course it follows that their labor-saving devices will probably create inconveniences and demands on their time that we would even never want to imagine.
Feel free to add your comments! Don't be too surprised if I don't write back immediately.
ok thx
ar

Harmonica Q&A

Cliff Wilkie a.k.a. "The Kingfish" writes:

My wife and I heard both of you last weekend at The Outpost in Albuquerque. You rocked the joint !!! I had never heard the two of your before and had only heard Annie on a few cuts on random CD's. I could go on, but really I have a harmonica question.
Annie, during one of your last numbers you did a 3-4 draw trill forever. You just hung on it until I thought you would drop. Do you do some sort of circular breathing or have some kind of special trick to keep your breathe going that long? Would you mind explaining.

That 4-5 draw trill on Lookin' Good is just a long, steady, quiet inhale with my nose closed to keep from taking on excess air. It's not hard to sustain if you breathe in and out a couple of times beforehand to oxygenate your brain, and stay relaxed so the notes don't get pinched or leak air from your lips. I classify it with "party tricks."
There's a version on Youtube now called "Annie Raines blows you away" with our band that came out pretty well. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjQJetx593o

Just in - Road Restaurant Reviews!

As we pull out of the driveway at the beginning of a tour, Paul and I wave goodbye to our home, our family, our pets, and our appetites. Long haulers with little downtime, we frequently gamble on finding a good meal in an unfamiliar town, and when we lose, we lose big. However, we've had a bumper crop of fine dining experiences on this most recent tour of the southeast, thanks to some internet research and a plethora of online customer reviews. After reading so many of these reviews, I was inspired to try my hand at the genre and spread the word to other hungry road warriors. This is a work in progress; I'll keep adding to it until it's done and we're back at our own kitchen table.

Ratings:

5 doggie bags: Excellent! The best of its kind! Book your travel through this city just to eat here! But read the review carefully to determine if this is the dining experience you're looking for.
4 doggie bags: The same as 5, but with room for improvement
3 doggie bags: A good bet for the area
2 doggie bags: It won't kill you.
1 doggie bag: It might.


Rein's Deli - Vernon, CT

A traveling northeasterner's home away from home. Styled as a New York Deli but run by about as Jewish a crew as you'd find at any Mountain Top location in Amish Country. Still, Rein's delivers classic Rubens, Rachels, kreplach soup, fresh bagels and all kinds lox, plus an irresistible array of candies, chips, frozen desserts, and gourmet condiments. Great for families and road musicians on the well-worn trail between Boston and New York. Look for Nancy at the take-out counter and tell her Paul and Annie say Hi! We'll be back soon. Doggie Bags: 5 out of 5!

It's About Thyme - Culpeper, VA

Homestyle Northern Italian food ranging from delectable gourmet salads with roquefort-raspberry dressing to a pan-simmered pot roast bathed in stewed tomatoes that will make you sing Ave Maria, prepared by a certified Cordon Bleu chef. Need I say more? About the best place to eat in the entire state. Doggie Bags: 5 out of 5!

The Family Wash - Nashville, TN

Come for the Shepherd's Pie, stay for the live music. Or the other way around. We stopped by Cole Slivka's Tuesday open mic on our first visit to the Music City. This ain't the Ryman, folks. It's a former laundromat hunkered down by the tracks on the north side of town. A larger version of the Cantab in Cambridge, the Wash is brimming with young daters and musicians enjoying beer, wine, and surprisingly tasty comfort food. The shepherd's pie was freshly prepared and piping hot. Our friend Ted ordered a roast half chicken on garlic mashed, which looked and smelled great. Jamie and the whole staff will treat you like family, only better. Lively, noisy, a great place to make and meet friends. Doggie Bags: 3.5 out of 5

Woodfire Grill - Atlanta, GA

A trip to Atlanta to play Blind Willie's wouldn't be complete without a visit to nearby Cheshire Bridge Road. There the eager tourist can view the Cheshire Bridge Motel where Blind Willie's used to house its visiting bands, and the even more eager tourist can indulge in visiting the large number of sex shops and other seedy enterprises that make up most of the neighborhood's trade. Somehow thriving in the midst of this turpitude, like flowers in a junkyard, two world-class restaurants, Woodfire Grill and Nakato, have sprouted side-by-side atop a small rise. Both restaurants are fronted by two-man crews of energetic young valet parking attendants who must be raiding Johnny Cash's old stash to keep pace with the crush of arriving and departing customers.
Woodfire's reputation rests on its use of fresh, organic and locally produced ingredients and a menu that changes daily. We particularly enjoyed the diverse selection of wines and the high-quality service, including frequent cleaning of the table between courses and immediate replacement of any used or dropped silverware. "Small Plate" appetizers included Kumomoto Oysters, a personal weakness of mine, and smoky roasted little neck clams. I had a pan-roasted fish that was perfect. Paul ordered a ribeye which was just OK and more than a little overpriced. It's hard to justify gourmet labels and prices for grilled steak, which is the football-watching, beer-can-tossing macho guy's haute cuisine. But the sauteed greens, a deceptively simple preparation, were flavorfully complex and as deliciously bitter as anything penned by Dorothy Parker.* Doggie Bags: 4.5 out of 5

*Ms. Parker, responsible for such gems as "Scratch a lover, and find a foe," also generated what could be our own motto: "Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves."

Nakato - Atlanta, GA

Nakato perches just above the neighboring Woodfire Grill, its unassuming facade set back a few yards, like a suddenly tall kid slouching to blend in with his still-short friends. Diners can choose between Hibachi Grill seating or traditional tables, and there are a few seats by the sushi bar as well.
I'd long ago given up asking "What's fresh" at seafood restaurants, only to be reproached with: "Everything's fresh, ma'am," but Nakato highlights the freshest items on their sushi and sashimi menu, something I have never seen at any Japanese restaurant in America. I excitedly ordered several of the highlighted selections, including succulent Maguro tuna, the blander hamachi (Yellowtail), and some fish I'd never heard of, including shima aji (jack fish) and saury (a type of mackerel). I don't consider myself a fan of mackerel or other oily fish, but the saury was incredibly tender and aromatic, not redolent in the least. I also tried a house special oyster maki that was kind of interesting, which is to say not for the timid, and California rolls so fine and good they should have been reviewed by Ernest Hemingway instead of me. Ernest surely would have liked our waitress, a beautiful young kimono-clad woman who made pleasant conversation and checked on us frequently. Paul ordered a lunchbox-style meal with Beef Teriyaki and ate everything except the Edamame beans, which left more for me. There is a full bar with an extensive menu of sake, wine, beer, and cocktails. Desserts are surprisingly Western, but this is Atlanta after all. We polished off a "Tartufata Cake" which seemed more like a classic Napoleon and enjoyed a quiet but convivial atmosphere in the traditional dining room by a window overlooking a Japanese garden. Doggie Bags: 5 out of 5!

Tuscany - Lexington, VA

We had stumbled in here for lunch on a previous road trip, and were so pleased with the simple but fresh Italian cuisine that I routed our tour through Lexington and booked a hotel nearby so we could return for dinner. Yes, it's that hard to find good food on the road. However, dinner was a bit of a letdown. Caesar salad was heavy on the mayo, pasta and potatoes slightly undercooked, and the chicken marsala without any recognizable flavor. The framed articles that adorn the walls tell us that the place is owned by an eccentric world-class chef, Luciano D'Avanzo, who has cooked with and for the greats. My best guess is that it was such a slow night, the chefs were sent home and the skeleton crew that remained did their best to serve us and the two other couples present that night. Perhaps we'll try it again on our next trip through, but we may try a few other places first, or just adjust our routing to land in White Sulphur Springs, WV, home of the Greenbrier (see Tamarack). Doggie bags: 3 out of 5

Bonefish Grill - St. Petersburg, FL

It's hard to find a restaurant in Florida that isn't housed in a concrete mini-mall. Bonefish Grill is no exception to this rule, but once inside, you'll feel like you're in a "real" restaurant - and so you are. The chain's flagship restaurant in St. Pete is decorated on a human scale, not a massive one, with warm lighting over the tables and a cushion of darkness between them, giving diners a sense of privacy when ensconced in a booth. We arrived at 7 PM on a Tuesday night, and tables and booths were filled with lively young corporate types and a few families. Our host ordered so much food that the table started to look like a time-lapse film of cells dividing. Appetizers included Bing Bang Shrimp, which disappeared quickly. Seared Ahi tuna melted in the mouth. Crab cakes were tasty enough, though not sublime. Seafood is obviously the feature here, and most of the piscine entree offerings are prepared one of four ways. In spite of the variety of mix-and-match options on the menu, the preparation and presentation were exquisite. Even though I was so stuffed to the gills I risked being added to the menu, I managed to polish off most of my Flounder served "Virgin Mediterranean" style, a simple preparation of this fresh, tender, flaky....mmmmm...sorry! I got carried away for a minute. Paul ordered Chicken Marsala, part of a worldwide quest for the perfect version of the dish, a quest that unfortunately fell short at this particular location as the grilling created a rather dry product. The wine was excellent, the service efficient and inspiring, the drinks dangerous. Doggie Bags: 4 out of 5. Note: we ate at another Bonefish in Owings Mills, Maryland, which boasted a similar menu and excellent service, though the seafood was not quite on a par with the St. Pete location.

Indian Grill - St. Petersburg, FL

The standard Indian menu plus some interesting and tasty recommendations freshly prepared and served with a touch of audacity by the gregarious proprietor. Try saying THAT three times fast! You won't be able to, you'll be too busy eating the Chicken Do Piaza. Go! Doggie Bags: 4 out of 5.

La Teresita - 3248 W. Columbus Dr., Tampa, FL

Paul and I were tired, cross, and wet when we arrived at this downhome Cuban eatery during a storm, and Paul's malapropistically referring to it as "la Turista" added to my apprehension. However, there was nothing to fear. We enjoyed abundant portions of delicious, home-cooked food at the lowest prices in the entire Tampa Bay area. There is a sit-down restaurant on one side and a cafeteria with dining counters on the other. The restaurant side serves the same food as the cafeteria but with higher prices. The cafeteria is noisy, but it affords the casual diner some of the best people-watching in the state of Florida, which is saying something. Recommended: Roast Pork, Collard Green Soup, fried Plaintains, and the Ensalada, a simple green salad, not too cold, with DIY oil and vinegar available on the counter. Doggie Bags: 4.5 out of 5! Caveat: not a good Valentine's Day date location.

Smokin' Joe's - Darien, GA (exit 49 off I-95)

We passed through Darien a couple of years ago and had lunch here. At the time, an autographed picture of James Brown graced the counter. Apparently he had eaten there many times in the past. I have to admit it was the picture of the Godfather of Soul that brought us back to the large, wood-paneled restaurant. The smell of woodsmoke billowing from a chimney over the kitchen was also a good sign. I have a friend who is not only a professional bbq chef, but an artist with smoke and sauces as well. Out of loyalty to him I try to maintain a minimum standard when on the road that I won't eat in any 'Q joint where I can't see or smell smoke.
We ordered our food and looked for JB. His photo was gone, as were all the other photos and bric-a-brac that had covered the walls. In its place was a signed photograph of Nicholas Cage. It turns out his cousins just bought the place two weeks ago and are managing and cooking some mouth-watering, high quality BBQ. The ribs were meaty and tender, though not quite as falling-off-the bone as I'd like. Cole slaw was fresh and crispy, contrasting well with the richness of the ribs. Best of all, none of the food was oversalted. The entire staff was solicitous and friendly, and we'll be back next time for more of their homey southern hospitality. Doggie Bags: 4 out of 5

Marchand's Bar & Grill - St. Petersburg, FL

The Renaissance at the Vinoy is St. Pete's swankiest hotel. Also its pinkest. From the outside it looks like a stucco model made entirely of Hostess Sno-balls. We haven't stayed there (yet!) but we did stop by their restaurant for some breakfast and it was one of the best meals of the entire tour. Service was impeccable, orange juice was fresh if a little navel-ly, and we were seated in high-backed, comfortable chairs next to a tall window that looked out on the tree-lined drive. Paul had the Eggs Benedict, prepared in the local style over crab cakes with a citrus sabayon. I had one of the signature dishes, Lobster Hash, which consisted of delicious chunks of fresh claw meat over a lovely saute of julienned peppers and onions, all topped with two poached eggs. Dreamy. Doggie bags: 5 out of 5!

Tamarack - Beckley, WV

We had only been to Beckley once before, in a muddled attempt to find an elegant lunch that ended up with us glaring at each other across the table at a Captain D's. At the time, it seemed like the lesser of two evils as we steered away from a Pacific-themed grille with the portentous-sounding name of "Rimfire." In any case, I was determined to get it right the second time around.
Friends in Charleston told us about Tamarack, a highwayside tourism center perched above a rest area off of I-79. Before I get to the food, I have to recommend that anyone driving through West Virginia stop by Tamarack. It's part arts foundation, part craft gallery, part gift shop, part traveler's oasis, a unique cottage industry that benefits state tourism and is aided in turn by the state. A circular building houses regional crafts such as quilts, wood carvings, furniture, ceramics, and glassware, as well as locally produced comestibles like honey, pickles, preserves, and barbecue sauce. Resident artisans demonstrate their techniques at various locations throughout the complex, and lecture halls and theatres provide a setting for regularly scheduled films and concerts, and a conference center is available for private parties or business meetings.
Tamarack's food court is catered by the Greenbrier, whose home base is White Sulphur Springs on the Virginia border. This is a cafeteria in name and appearance only. The food is well-prepared, fresh, and flavorful. Green beans were actually green, a pork loin slightly tougher than hoped for but edible nevertheless, and pulled pork barbecue was tangy and not oversalted. We also enjoyed the roasted new potatoes, which were a tiny bit al dente, but I think this was intentional as the lunch hour had just begun and the potatoes would have time to finish cooking in the steam table. Service was friendly, something it's hard to take for granted coming from the frozen Northeast. Doggie bags: 4 out of 5.

The Bayou - 212 Morehead Plaza, Morehead, KY

A piece of modern political and cultural history tucked away in a mini-mall not far from the MSU campus. The owners were lifelong residents of Louisiana until, displaced by Hurricane Katrina, they came up to coal country and started an authentic Cajun restaurant with a homey menu of po'boys, jambalaya, gumbo, and other traditional New Orleans dishes. Food is made to order, so it takes a while but is well worth the wait. Louisiana beer and hazmat-laced, color-saturated sodas fill the fridge, and there's lots of clatter in the kitchen as the young chefs whip up each roux the way they learned to from their parents and grandparents. Doggie bags: 3 out of 5.

Culinary high point of the tour: first bite of lobster and poached eggs at Marchand's

Runner-up: wicked good sushi served by an incredibly cute waitress in a kimono at Nakato in Atlanta

Runner-down: Single-handedly (literally!) eating a large bag of Smartfood while driving, yet somehow ending up with both hands completely plastered with that quick-dry cement they refer to as "white cheddar." The popcorn is highly addictive, no doubt due to a proprietary blend of barely legal chemicals, but the gooey residue reminds me of those blob toys I used to get out of gumball machines at the supermarket as a child. Don't forget, kids, "non-toxic" doesn't mean you're supposed to eat it.

Low point: BBQ sandwich purchased from a gas station in Brentwood, Tennessee. This actually is toxic. And it made me cry. As I spit out the first bite of acrid mystery meat, I sobbed, "Is there anything in this state that isn't made entirely of SALT?"

(reviews coming soon):

Portofino - Lexington, KY

Dudley's - Lexington, KY

City's Cafe and Market - St. Petersburg, FL

Pearl's Saltwater Grille - Savannah, GA

Oily in the Morning

I got my driver's license when I was 18, but my real driver's education came from using a stick shift. My father had an old 1981 Toyota Celica hatchback that was all falling apart except for the engine. I careened all over Massachusetts at record-breaking speeds, zooming from work to gigs, from home to rehearsals, and giving rides to other musicians when their cars were impounded for overdue parking fines.

The Celica ran hot. The only way to keep it cool was to run the heater full blast, even in summertime. I remember bouncing from pothole to pothole down a simmering, bubbling L Street in South Boston in July to rehearse with my friend Pete, a great guitarist and songwriter who lives in Nashville now. I adjusted the vents to blow all the hot air at my feet, which was not as uncomfortable as it sounds. I'd rather be too hot than too cold anyway. But I did a lot of stupid things like that when I was younger. Not like now, of course.

When I first started driving, I had to be "schooled" at the gas pump. One time I was giving a ride home to my old music partner, the late Butch McClendon. I was running on empty, so I pulled into a filling station and got five dollars worth of regular unleaded. At the time this was about 3 gallons. Butch shook his head and said,"Little girl, you don't know nothing. You can't go around putting five dollars in all the time." He took a ten out of his coat pocket and handed it to me. "Here. Put some more gas in your car." Butch hardly ever paid me for gigs as the band drank up the tab and usually ended up owing the bar money, but he believed in the value of a good education. I think of those days fondly now as we drive from state to state spending 50 bucks a pop at the pumps.

Before Paul and I became music partners, I would drive him out to his Wednesday night gig at the Sit 'n Bull Pub in Maynard, MA, where he opened for Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters. I was always late in picking him up, but felt confident I could make up the time en route. One winter there was a snowstorm every Wednesday night. I took a rural road for most of the 17 miles, navigating the sharp curves and slippery conditions with my left foot hovering over the clutch, my right pressing accelerator and brake simultaneously, as I palpated the horn every few seconds. I had become a topnotch Boston Driver.

Eventually my father traded me a red Acura for his beloved Celica, and from there I graduated to a Dodge and then a Plymouth minivan, better suited to larger bands and longer hauls. Paul and I had a gig at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, New York, followed by a gig the next night in Burlington, Vermont. It turned out to be a longer drive than I had anticipated, and we would need to hurry to get there in time. We examined the map and made the mistake of believing that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. The straight line in this case was a road called 9N that branched off from the New York Thruway and angled towards the Hudson River south of Burlington. 9N may have looked perfectly straight from above, but on the ground it was the world's longest, bumpiest Evel Kneivel stunt prop. We dipped in and out of the asphalt waves, surfacing among Adirondack Lake cabins. I can never forget the grinding sound as I gunned the engine to speed over those winding hills. The next day we had to drive over the Green Mountains on the way home. Finally, on Interstate 93 in southern New Hampshire, the car made a final growl and stopped responding. This is when I learned what a transmission was and why I needed a new one.

Of course, I eventually forgot all about it, until we got to Livingston, Montana last July. Livingston is a really cute town outside of Bozeman. We had a gig at the local Elks Lodge. I was worried we wouldn't have any people, as the entire town was plastered with posters for an upcoming show by "Sean Reefer and the Resin Valley Boys" which sounded like some kind of code for something. But we had a wonderful night after all, with a great crowd, and we want to thank John Taillie for putting it together. He and his girlfriend treated us to a delicious dinner and put us up at the best hotel in town, the Murray. The only odd thing about the Murray was that it had a century-old elevator that could only be operated by a member of the desk staff. The desk didn't open until 7:30, so the next morning we had to wait to load out, though we would ordinarily be on the road by 6:30 AM.

The Murray Hotel, Livingston, Montana. Across the street is a restored old railroad depot. You can't see the detail in this photo, but the circular rosette between the depot's second floor windows contains a red and black plaster yin-yang, an feature designed and installed by the original Chinese builders.

I thought that since we would still be in town when the local businesses opened, we might as well get the oil changed and the car looked over. John sent us over to a place called "Special Lube." You laugh, but it's the best damn place to take your car in the entire Mountain Time Zone. It's owned and operated by a group of idealistic, polite young people who aren't out to fleece anybody; they just really like cars. The guy at the desk wore giant tortiseshell glasses that were too big to fit on his nose and had slid down to just above the tip, giving him an owlish, baby-faced look like Al Wilson from Canned Heat. As he wrote up the bill for the oil change he informed us that the transmission fluid was brown and full of little burned-up pieces of the transmission. Apparently this is a bad thing. However, it would take them almost an hour to do a "Tranny flush" - stop laughing, it's auto mechanic's jargon - so we decided to take our chances as we had a long drive over the Rockies to get to Spokane by evening. Paul and I got in the car and had driven about a block and a half when we looked at each other with the same thought: "Take our chances? In the ROCKY MOUNTAINS?" What's an hour in Livingston, I realized, compared with the time we'd spend waiting for a tow truck to find us at the Continental Divide, or the incredible hassle of renting a car or looking for a new one for the remaining 6,000 miles of our tour?

Neither of us had said anything. I just turned the car around and drove it right back into the bay at Special Lube. We took our instruments out and sat at a picnic table across the street, playing for a couple of foraging prairie dogs as the freight trains rolled by behind us. I should have taken a picture. It was our only non-ludicrous "Americana Moment" on the tour. I'll get to the ludicrous ones eventually.

The Special Lube guy wrote up the final bill ($122 well spent!) and, with an air of sincere interest in the subject and no trace of sarcasm, gave me a few pointers about gear shifting in a car with automatic transmission. I really noticed the difference in the feel of the engine after the transmission flush. And I suddenly felt guilty about those hundred-mile-an-hour joyrides through the trooperless High Plains. I paid much closer attention to the tachometer after that and patted the dashboard with apologies and comforting words for the next several thousand miles.

Looking back on the trip now, I wish we had taken as good care of ourselves as we took of that car. But that's another story.

Paul in downtown Livingston





Inside the Elks Lodge with two of Livingston's finest. Everybody we met there was great, but these two made it happen.

Come on, Big Boy, Ten Cents a Mile

photo by Annie Raines

On Sunday we drove west from Cleveland to Janesville, Wisconsin, 450 miles down the road.
We faced an important decision in Janesville: whether to stay on I-90 West through southern Minnesota and South Dakota, traveling through the Badlands and part of Wyoming, then north to Billings, or to follow I-94 northwest into Minneapolis and across North Dakota before cutting southwest to Billings. The northern route was 30 miles shorter, and perhaps flatter, but took us through Minneapolis and St. Paul, which would mean heavier traffic. The southern route avoided any big cities in Minnesota, but we would need to drive 473 miles to Sioux Falls in order to stay at a major chain hotel and find good food. I was also concerned about the view from the driver's seat. The southern route, I imagined, would be more interesting, with scenic mountains and historical sites, though we wouldn't have time to tour Mt. Rushmore. On the other hand, we would have to go through Sturgis, SD, which was under two weeks away from its annual Harley Davidson Rally and possibly already crowded with motorcycles. The northern route was by most accounts flat and featureless, and I pictured myself being bored and depressed as we drove across a stark plain. I took the Greyhound cross-country when I was a kid visiting the Grand Canyon with my parents, and I will never forget the soul-killing ride through central Nebraska, which bore a striking resemblance to eastern Nebraska and western Nebraska. I would lean against the window with the air conditioning blowing against my head, my nostrils dilating from the disinfectant aroma wafting out of the bus toilet a few rows behind me, and fall asleep staring out at browned fields so vast and unbroken I thought we had stopped moving altogether. There wasn’t a tree, shrub, cow or calf to jut out from the land and provide the merest sense of scale. I would fall asleep staring at this leathery landscape and awaken hours later to the same view. How would we ever make it to the Rockies this way?
My fear of encountering a grayer, northern version of the same thing in North Dakota was pushing me more to the southern route. I tried to find advice on the internet, typing in search terms like “cross country drive” “fastest route” “I-90” or “is better.” I found a very funny travel blog on eopinions.com about both routes that had us howling with laughter even as our worst fears were confirmed.
But in the end it came down to where there were still hotel rooms available. Like most northeasterners, I labor under the misapprehension that the farther west you go, the fewer people there are in any given place. However, this isn't true in the cities. There are lots of people in Sioux Falls, Bismarck, Butte and Billings, because there's nowhere else to go for hundreds of miles.
I was too tired to contemplate it further and slept on it until the next morning, delaying the decision until the car was packed and ready to go. One blind panic and a flurry of phone calls later, we were headed to Minneapolis and what we thought was the bleak landscape of North Dakota. We were surprised to see gold and green rolling hills, cows, horses, cornfields and hay bales, natural beauty that was at once both domesticated and far ranging. West of Bismarck, the farms gave way to grassy canyons and wind-worn pyramids of colorfully striped sandstone. It was one of the most beautiful drives we’ve ever taken, because there were no billboards, no mile-high signs for gas stations, no factories, no Bob's Big Boy, no tacky industrial buildings plunked down on the highwayside; just the harmony of the landscape as we whizzed through at over 90 miles per hour. (I shouldn’t have mentioned this as I know my mother will be reading it). We did burn a lot of gas at that speed, though, so I’ll probably take it slower for the rest of the drive.

3500 miles into our trip, we stopped in Medora, North Dakota. It sits an hour east of the Montana Line, nestled into the northern Badlands and Theodore Roosevelt State Park. It is also the home of the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame. Whatever the town’s original purpose, it had been refurbished into a cute Old West tourist attraction at the State Park entrance. We found a fantastic bookstore there, full of history books about settlement and strife in the American West, framed prints by local artists and country music CDs by regional stars like the Larsen Brothers. We bought some books and postcards, then went around the corner to buy some stamps at the local post office. Across the street from the post office was a table flanked by two benches, and we sat there under a lovely old tree and wrote out several postcards. We hated to leave Medora.

The ride through eastern Montana was, admittedly, a little less breathtaking. Even though we were going fast enough to become airborne, the wait for the next mile marker seemed to go on forever. We finally made it to Billings, land of civilization and commerce, land of scary fast drivers, and The Only Game in Town.

Schlepping Across America

Brooklyn, Ohio, an airport suburb west of Cleveland, shares a name with the brassy borough in New York, but the similarity ends there. We're staying at a hotel at a flat, open highway crossroads with every kind of shopping mall restaurant clustered at the corners. Two weeks into our road trip, we've already left pieces of ourselves and our possessions scattered across the midatlantic states. We left our schlepper (pet name for a wheeled cart) in Virginia, when a well-meaning fan brought it to the stage to help with our amps, which we instead hand carried to the car. We were so intent on getting through the mountains before dark, we drove off, leaving the lonesome schlepper (the cart, not the guy) by the stage, still waiting to serve us.
The handtruck has special significance in the jumble of non-musical equipment carried by the traveling musician. We have to do most of our own booking, managing, driving, loading and unloading - usually four times a day, sometimes more, setting up, playing, booking hotels, and finding restaurants on the road, so a cart with wheels is like a little helper who travels with us and doesn't ask for its own room or to turn on the air conditioning in the car.
It seemed to us that we were destined to leave the schlep (for short) behind. It wasn't our usual schlepper. Paul got the original schlepper over 10 years ago, as a Christmas gift from his wife, and he has rolled it in and out of hotels and clubs all over the U.S. and Canada since then, stacking the amps on it and giving it an affectionate pat now and then. But he wanted something different for our big road trip, something wider, perhaps lighter, something more manageable. We ran through Staples on our last-minute errand run before leaving, and found the new, sleek black schlepper. Paul was pretty happy with it, but he had no time to bond. So it was no surprise that we forgot to account for it only a few gigs later. We hadn't registered the imprint. We didn't mourn for long, though, as it had been a very short relationship without memorable moments.
Today in Brooklyn we drove by a Staples on our way to the gig at the Winchester Tavern in Lakewood. On the way back from the sound check, I swung the car into the parking lot and went in to find a new schlepper. Success! This one is even better than the last. The last one consisted of open gridwork, which is lighter, but you worry about catching your fingers in the overlapping grids, a thought that makes me queasy. The new one has a solid base and tubular construction. It's heavy, but it has personality. This is a schlepper whose praises you can sing, a schlepper you could maybe even - dare I say? - Love.
However, my heart still belongs to the old, silvery, experienced one resting up at home this summer. You never forget your first schlepper.

Getting Ready, part 2

Before we left on Paul and Annie's Excellent Cross-Country Tour, we measured the car and all of our boxes and bags. Paul had the idea to use some of those ubiquitous purple plastic bins for our clothes, food, and other supplies. It solves the problem of fitting oddly-shaped pieces of luggage into the car, and we can easily cart them into our hotel room because we'll be staying in places with carts and elevators (see the previous entry for my mini-tirade about motels). In the meantime, our pared-down to-do list magically doubled in size, to include "haircut," "shower caddy," and "buy plastic bins."
Our cargo can be broken down into three categories:
1) Things that Make Noise (Musical Equipment)
2) Things That Stack (clothing bins, food bin, wine bin, other supplies)
3) Things That Hang (garment bags, shower caddies, Bag O'Pillows)

If it does anything else, we don't need it.