The music business, as we all know, is tougher than it looks. The hours are grinding, the competition fierce, and the money unpredictable. And that’s on a good night. There are tours when I want to tell younger musicians they’re crazy for wanting to get into this game, when I want to shake them and say go to some great big college and get a great big degree, for Crissake. Or how about landscaping. Have you tried landscaping? It’s not so bad. You plant some trees, you eat your lunch . . .
Well, this was not one of those tours.
The shows were great. We nailed some new tunes, braved a mid-show rainstorm in Colorado and Nat even managed to save a few souls at our Sunday set in Utah. (Long story, but let’s just say some fans at the ol’ Roots of the Rocks needed some cleansing at the end of a long weekend.) I love playing with these guys and these shows were no exceptions. What made the tour truly exceptional on my end, though, was the chance to really see some country in between shows.
Those of you who’ve been following our schedule have no doubt noticed that we have stretches where, instead of playing six days a week in every blues bar we can find, we’re do a lil’ more cherry-picking. A long weekend here, a one-off there. Experience has taught us that it’s a good idea sometimes to trade in summer club-dates for either a few days at home, some practice or some whole-hearted goofing off. Last week, Bryan, Aaron and Lucas opted for door number one, leaving myself, Nat and his wife Erin to disappear into the red rocks of southern Utah.
Disappearing didn’t take long. We headed east on highway 153, and I use the term ‘highway’ loosely. At one point, a kid stopping traffic for construction told us we were the only car he’d seen all day. He also told us the pavement ended in about 200 yards. Perfect. We teetered our way through a maze of Utah roads, paved and not-so-paved, until reaching Capitol Reef State Park, where we continued our weaving on foot. We walked and we walked and we walked. That was it. That’s how good the whole walking thing is around there – you don’t need a plan, just a lot of water and a pair of legs. And a pair of eyes to see the rocks. Good Lord, the rocks! They loomed like grounded Empire Starships, served up the world’s highest whiffle ball field, watched over us as we slept and kept the scorpions away. All we had to offer in return was our dumbstruck appreciation, which was abundant. Those rocks got into me, and by the time we reached Moab Tuesday night, I had a hunger for them that was tough to explain.
Jasper, local legend and lead guitarist of Stonefed, understood right away. Fed we were. Having spent his whole life in Moab, he was able to guide us seamlessly from desert paths to swimming holes to Anasazi wall etchings, all before lunch and all within arm’s reach of those red, rounded sentinels. He wrangled up seven duckies to get us and a few of his buds down the Daily section of the Colorado river. A duckie, I learned, is an inflatable kayak, and it’s good for two things: getting down a river and carrying beer. We figured out Wednesday afternoon that these two capabilities complimented one another pretty well, and by the time we were deflating duckies at the put-out barbecue downriver, we’d already planned the next four or five trips we were all going to do together, as well as a number of other important missions on which the fate of the world no doubt depended. (Dirty country band, anyone?) The moon, nearly full, came up hard over the canyon and my head damn near split open from the sight of it all. It felt as though I had nowhere to put all that beauty, those musical bursts of earth coming alive in the desert dusk. So I left it there, all of it, the better to take the next guy’s head off. I just hope he’s ready . . .
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