Is this the fastest month of all time?

A love note to our crew and an update from out here on the road

We play a lot of concerts. For those of us in the band, this means we get up on stage for around an hour and a half, jump around like crazy people, and leave. For everyone else on our bus, our crew, that show is just the 3/4 point of their day-long shift. Front of house engineer (the sound the crowd hears), monitor engineer (the sound we hear), instrument tech (keeps our strings up and running), lighting tech (makes us look cooler than we really are), tour manager (boss-man of the tour, makes sure we’re where we need to be, sometimes babysits full grown men), merchandise manager (tries to get you to advertise for us), bus driver (keeps us alive through the night). All of these Grecian heroes arise each day well before the band, push a host of heavy cases out of a trailer and onto a stage, and create, from almost nothing, a concert. Miles of cables to run, acres of gear to maintain and repair, so much trouble to shoot. We saunter on over to the stage sometime in the afternoon and do a little wiggle of a sound check, complain about what’s not working correctly, hand our stuff back to the crew, and take off until showtime. All the while they are working tirelessly to make sure that when we do eventually take the stage, it all looks and sounds like it’s supposed to. Last weekend, for instance, we played at the Targhee Bluegrass Festival. Our bus, en route from the previous night’s show in Boise, rolled into this mountain paradise at about 6 o’clock in the morning. The crew were up at this un-rock n’ roll hour to load all of our gear to the stage, dust it off and see what broke the night before, and get it as ready as possible before the doors to the festival opened and the music began. The band, snug as bugs in rugs came yawning out one by one much later and had really nothing to do until our set at 5:30 pm. I finished a book I was reading while sitting in the mountain sunshine, for instance. What a day!

What I’m saying here is THANK YOU to our iron-clad crew. If Chloë didn’t answer the phone, I would call any of them at 3am for bail money. They not only excel at the work I witness, they also excel at the work I never see. They know each of our little anxieties and strengths and weaknesses and cater to them without fail. They not only make the shows possible, they make them the best that they can be. THANK YOU.

Today I’m flying out to the great city of Cincinnati to get ready for three shows this week. I was really excited to go to one of my favorite natural wine bars, Pleasantry, but I just found out they went the way of the Dodo a little while back. If anyone has any similar recommendations in Cinci, let me know! We play near Dayton, OH tomorrow and are joined by Oliver Hazard. Saturday and Sunday we’ll be dusting the stage off before The Avett Brothers in St. Louis and at Alpine Valley, respectively. I am excited to play at all three of these places, but Alpine Valley holds an extra special place in my heart. I saw Phish there in 1998 at the tender age of 18, well before I played a real concert myself. I remember how magical a live show seemed back then. The people on stage were not mere mortals, not even close. The days and nights seemed very long and one show could be the focus of a whole summer. Having been behind the curtain for a couple decades now, it should come as no surprise that my perspective has changed quite a bit. When we got to play Alpine for our first time last year (opening for Willie Nelson) I was surprised at how much of that crazy night so long ago that I remembered. Placing my feet on that stage created a direct connection to what sometimes seems like a whole different version of myself, and the whole night felt nostalgic and warm. I can’t wait to get back.

On the songwriting front, I hit a metaphorical concrete divider last week when I was driving around in my truck and a beautiful old John Prine song came on the radio. About halfway through it I realized the song I had just finished a couple days before was a direct ripoff of Mr. Prine’s melody. God dammit! I was about to throw the whole thing away, but I talked with a songwriter for whom I have a great deal of respect, and he advised me to keep the words for now and the next time a new melody pops up try and use them. After I calmed down I saw that he was right, and I’m happy to report that I was messing with a new chord progression the other day and was able to begin reworking the song, hopefully free of any further copyright infringement.

We have a little break after this weekend’s shows and we’re all looking forward to some (relatively) extended time at home. I hope you’re enjoying yourselves out there and finding some time to create something and to get outside and play in the dirt. As always, thanks for giving a damn.