Hey gang.
We’re on tour – currently in Williamstown getting ready to head to the Fresh Grass festival and melt faces and decimate audiences with our shredding, cutting and crushing riffs and furious blast beats… wait. Shit. Sorry. I’m listening to a lot of metal of late. Current playlist on Spotify is the “New Metal Tracks” playlist. It is excellent, and there are plenty of gems to be found.
But let’s be real. We’re a string band. We will will have a jolly good time, get people smiling and dancing, encourage a bit of tomfoolery and beer-drinking, and hang out with our string-band buddies. Not so much crushing or melting or decimating. And that’s OK. It’s fine. I have no problems with that.
This tour has been pretty nutty – and I just wanted to share a bit of what we’ve been up to.
We flew into Nashville (which – by itself – already sounds pretty damn impressive. We flew into NASHVILLE. That’s where music things HAPPEN! And we flew. It conjures up images of Otis Redding touching down in the UK – or Zeppelin stepping off of their private jet to throngs of press and fans on the tarmac. I like that conjured image, so I will do my best not to dispel it. Try not to imagine 5 sleepy dudes in t-shirts and flip-flops on the airport pick-up curb trying to find a Red Roof Inn shuttle by a three person triangulation of smart-phone skills.)
Nashville was in the beginning throws of its American Fest. Super fun. The venue we played was so full of good music it was near ridiculous. Three stages, 8 bands, all of them amazing. We had to bail out super early because these Minivan Jetsetters had to catch an early flight to New York.
Yeah. You heard me. We flew to New York city, and we had some magazine interviews, did some videos, played some music in the subway. We Jet Setted HARD. ( Imagine flashing lights, photographers scrabbling for their chance at a shot; skyscrapers reflected in our stylish sunglasses; the seas of taxi cabs parting as we, instruments in hand, strode boldly across 7th avenue. Do your very best not to imagine hungover, sleepy and unshaven derelicts who – somehow – found guitars, banjos, etc, and – like a circus-clown-act – packed the 5 of themselves and a small mountain of gear and bags into a black Chrysler Pacifica Minivan.)
More importantly, we ate slices of pizza and drank espresso.
We rolled out that night to get a drop on the drive to Fresh Grass up here in Massachusetts.
And here we are. The trees are just starting to turn their autumn colors – it’s a beautiful and bucolic preview of a part of the country we see too seldom.