I See Hawks in L.A.

July 27, 2006

114 IN VEGAS, THEN RAIN, THEN HOME

Morning. Hot. Shades drawn. Where are we? A squinting glance outside reveals a hilltop vista, St. George, Utah; off to the right below, amidst trees is a large and eerily white 19th century temple, first big Mormon edifice in Utah. We are lords of all we survey. Alas, it's not enough. We pack up, drive off without Paul M, come back and get him, make a beeline for the nearby Starbucks, obviously a critical stop.

This Starbucks, tucked into a maxi mini mall, has the innocence and high energy of the first Starbucks openings in California, pardon our indulgence in 1990's nostalgia. The place is packed. The Utahans are excited to be here, and we groggy Angelenos are not. We are here to inject awareness into our spent neurons. The thrill is gone. To go, please. Oh, that's right. It's all to go.

We drive. Utah is perhaps the most beautiful state in the country, if your tastes lean to the desert end of the spectrum. I-15 south disputes the notion that there's nothing to see on the Interstate system. The road plunges through spectacular sedimentary rock formations, some twisted into steep angles, and we watch the Yukon's outdoor temperature gauge climb from 108 to 114 as we hit the lower upper desert floor. We're crossing a vast desert plateau.

Gas in Mesquite, NV, our 30th state of the tour. The plan was to stake Paul M to $100 and set him loose at the poker tables, but home beckons. Maybe we'll stop in Las Vegas.

A while later, we murmur, sighting the hazy distant skyline of Sin City. This is our last chance. Much debate as we approach, pulled by the attraction between the fabricated gravitas of Gomorrah and our own gambling lust. Paul L suggests putting the cash box on red on the roulette table and letting it ride. We could double our money, then double it again. Naturally, objections are raised to this simple plan.

Now we're approaching. Now we're in the city limits. Now we're considering offramps. Rob, perhaps the most deeply conflicted, is at the wheel. Is he going to pull off? Shawn urges no. Tortured ambivalence from the two Pauls. What's going to happen?

Rob lurches off the freeway. This is no surprise to anyone. He proposes a faux sensible plan for breakfast at the Golden Nugget. Then we'll see what happens. The weak willed Hawks assent. We circle downtown. There's no parking. It's blazing hot. We get back on the freeway. Oddly enough, the freeway entrance is not as well marked as the offramp. But we find it.

We've done it. We've resisted Las Vegas, for the first time in the Hawks tour history. It feels okay. Not great. Sober, sensible, not great.

There's a last exit before the open desert heading southward to L.A., and we take it, get adequate breakfast at an adequate restaurant. Paul L loses a nickel in a video poker game. We drive.

This trip has been memorable as always, but we feel we've struggled against a wind of mildly bad luck. Many little incidents have dogged our path across this vast land. Probably wise not to further test the spirits in Las Vegas. But we've prevailed, with our spirits and beings intact. Big thunderheads flank our corridor through the Mojave desert. We're in heavy Sunday afternoon traffic. It's amazing how many people drive to Las Vegas on the weekend. Somewhere before Baker a miraculous rain falls upon us and our fellow travelers.

Traffic opens up. We stop at an apocalyptic gas station just outside Victorville. Mad Max was a prophetic vision. Shawn Nourse threatens Victorvillean Neil Morrow, a '50's oldies singer he works with, with a visit, then lets him off the hook. We drop down the Cajon pass, make it through the Inland Empire on the 210 in record time. L.A. looks balmy, a more muted and soiled green than the mountain and midwest green we've been immersed in for weeks.

Suddenly we're at Chez Nourse. We open the Yukon doors. Surprise. It's very hot and humid, like Chicago was. This is not regular L.A. weather. These are strange times. Strange and good to be home.

July 23, 2006

GAMBLING TO WIN IN MESQUITE

Late night. Darkness on the I-15, our spaceship hurtling southward.

We have a plan. It’s a good one. And it’s based upon a newly coined Hawks philosophy: Gamble to Win. We’re not just driving mindlessly to Las Vegas to be ushered in and out of a money siphoning mega-casino. No, we’re stopping in Mesquite, NV, where Paul M recently spent two weeks playing country music and Texas Hold ‘Em. He knows the town, he knows the tables, he knows Hold ‘Em.

This is not gambling. It’s science. We’re going to stake Paul Marshall, and he is going to multiply our investment by a factor of--?? This is where science yields to fate, spirits, even random chance. But our foundation is science. SCIENCE!

THE MOOSE, THE RED IGUANA, AND HOMEWARD BOUND

The Mangy Moose is a very large bar in the Teton Village complex, with posters in the band room letting you know that Charlie Musselwhite, Burning Spear, Yellowman, and the North Mississippi Allstars play here regularly. We sound check, check into nearby condo rooms, very deluxe, and the Moose witty waitress Casey feeds us out on the deck as the sun goes down. The Hawks make a wager on how soon the sun goes down. Paul L’s the clear winner, until a 13 year old kid at the next table gets in on a last minute wager, makes the winning bet as his mom and dad, in big cowboy hat from Montana, laugh. Rob wins the Hawks pot back by guessing the state the family is from. Montana.

Two sets for a sleepy summer crowd, highlighted by many friends of Paul L’s sister Mary showing up as well as a surprise visit from the Sharborough's of Rochester, MN. It’s great to have a roomful of beautiful women filling the dance floor. Life on the road.

A Maker’s Mark end of tour celebration back at our condo: we make it through most of Dazed and Confused (brilliant movie), crash out, a deep drool filled sleep for the weary Hawks. We’ve been through 28 states on this summer tour, played 37 shows if you include radio appearances. It’s time to go home.

Next day, pack up the faithful Yukon, breakfast at our favorite hipster cafe in Wilson, WY, over the Tetons to green, green Idaho.

We're motivated now. We're on a deadline, far more serious than making soundcheck: dinner at the beloved Red Iguana Cafe in Salt Lake. The Hawks have managed to eat here several times on our way to and from mountain states gigs, and the Cafe even put Paul M's review from this very tour diary on their website.

So we power through beautiful Farm Idaho, honk the horn at the Utah border, and by late afternoon on I-15 we espy that beacon of food and Mormonism, the Wasatch Range. We're on time. The sun sets on our anticipation as we park in the still baking parking lot. Not too bad of a wait. We're in.

Delicious. Words fail us. We stagger out into twilight, back in the Yukon, south towards unknown night lodging.

MANTANA, WOMANOMING

As always, we’re getting to the gig with little time to spare. We motor through steadily rising mountains and see our first forests, our minds elevating with the elevation. A river leads the way. Exit Bozeman, drive down the main drag, stop in at Cactus Records to say hi, race south on the 191 into a narrow canyon dug by a beautiful fly fisherman filled river. Right into Big Sky, a huge ski resort. Look for the white pavilion, Ron Craighead, KGLT pioneer DJ, had told us, and there it was, in a dramatic wide green field in the shadow of a scrub and then pine covered mountain.

Big Sky puts on a weekly outdoor concert, and tonight it’s us, and it’s good to be here. The view from the stage is breathtaking, to the towering mountains, and the sound crew is great, Brian and his boys get the sound dialed in.

Families, hippies, local mountain people, and vacationers with picnic baskets filter in, pay their $10 and find a spot in the grass. We play into sunset, and twilight, and night, two long sets. The crowd at the end gives us a big encore, and it’s a good, good thing. We do an encore that turns into a mini-set and the hard core of the crowd step out of the dark field to the edge of the stage and dance wildly. A cinematic end to an outdoor paradise show.

Besides DJ Ron, the other pillar of support for the Hawks in the Mountains is Jenny, another KGLT DJ and a wild free spirit of music and kindness. Today you find your tribe across interstate lines, and we are grateful for ours.

Next morning we’re back on the 191 south. We find ourselves trapped in a slow moving line towards a $25 entry fee at the Yellowstone Park entrance. Dom, our man at the Mangy Moose in Jackson Hole, next stop, calls us, says abort, abort! Our journey through Yellowstone would have been torturous, slowed by ambulances hauling off tourists mauled by bears they were attempting to photograph or just collapsing in National Park heat. We turn around, take a long loop into Idaho and then back east over a pass in the Tetons into Wilson, WY, then north through meadows and aspens to Teton Village, another massive ski resort carved into a beautiful mountainside.

July 22, 2006

CAN YOU DRIVE US TO CHICAGO?

I SEE HAWKS IN L.A. needs a ride from Lousiville, KY to Chicago, IL on Saturday morning, Sept.30th. We’ll be four guys and some gear. Can you take us in your van? If so, email us and lets know to: rideshare@iseehawks.com

WHY ARE WE ASKING FOR A RIDE TO CHICAGO?

Sure, we could afford the one way rent a car (although rental represents half our guarantee in Louisville). But we want to shatter the alienation that’s keeping hitchhikers off America’s onramps. On our entire 6 week, 10,500 mile tour we’ve seen exactly one hitcher. To a veteran of the glory days, when Santa Barbara would be clogged with 500 long haired adventurers thumbing to San Francisco and Seattle, seeking or offering weed and love, this vanishing is on the scale of the buffalo or passenger pigeon.

Let’s bring back the free ride, America. Let’s spread the love. Help out a brother, a sister, a country rock band. Let’s make this country great again.

BILLINGS IS AS BILLINGS DOES

We’ve just crossed the raging wide Yellowstone River, which flows north under the bridge into Billings. To the right is a massive Conoco refinery with cracking towers and huge tanks, smells just like Long Beach. A cluster of radio towers on the high river bluffs where Indians watched the approaching feds. Does anyone mourn Custer? This town is sprawling, under construction and decay. Every Product Your Horse Needs. Montana Women’s prison. Poker and Keno in a nearby bar. Anti-meth graffiti scrawled on abandoned shacks.

We reach respectable downtown Billings, new five story buildings, with new pedestrian bridges at its showcase intersection. We’re seeking Stella’s, a café featured in Road Food, a thick guide to off the beaten path American eateries, present from the saintly Charles and Gina in NYC. We’ve managed to hit three of these places so far, a minor miracle.

Stella’s is a large and anonymous modern restaurant, with nothing very distinctive except a giant pancake that overflows the banks of its plate. You could make one at home. Stella’s receives a Hawks Adequacy Award. As does Billings.

When we get back to the Yukon, we realize we've taken out quite a few bugs on this tour through (so far) 28 states. That's a lot of karma, in thousands of tiny doses. Perhaps a car wash will unburden us of this cosmic debt.

ESPRESSO DEPRESSO

At the onramp gas station lot in depressed Miles City, Montana, fading town with home made anti-meth posters in store windows, on the high plains between Badlands and Billings--sits a tiny Espresso Hut; and Rob W., our morning driver, comes to life, makes a hard turn into the lot. Four fire fighters in shorts, one of them female, are fueling up, pouring half a jar of sugar into their coffees. They’ve just come off a big fire to the south and are heading north for another blaze.

A very nice lady pours double cappuccinos, chatting cheerily as the espresso drizzles from the machine. She’s not stopping the flow, now clear as a mountain stream. Still our barista chats, as we urban degenerates watch in silent horror. Finally she shuts the machine off. And now for the soy milk. Not bad, nice foam, doh! She stops pouring the steamed milk into the cup before too much of that icky foam can spill in. Here you go!

North Dakota is depressed. Collapsed 19th century houses and rotting barns stand on many farms, and little towns are half boarded up. This is what happens when farm culture is thrust, blinking and bewildered, into the global economy. When the tables turn, we’ll take canning and composting lessons from our barista.

DARKNESS ON A DIRT ROAD, BLUE TWILIGHT

We pull off for a piss stop in near darkness. Paul L runs blindly down the straight dirt road towards a fading blue patch that persists in the dark sky. A brief Indian chant, shout out to the people we wish we could be, or be part of. Back in the Yukon.

Billings or Miles City? It’s ten p.m., we’ve powered 700 miles in a day, and DJ Shawn is keeping us artificially pumped with his pied piper iPod mix. Three hours to Billings, less than an hour to Miles City. Shawn dials up Joni Mitchell. Our pulses slow.

Miles City it is. Eight motels a stone’s throw from the I-94: Best Western, Motel 6, Comfort Inn, and all the rest. All booked up. The Best Western clerk points his steel claw northward. “I’ve booked you two rooms at the Olive Motel. Left on Main, under the bridge about a mile.” Do they have wi-fi? “You’d better take these rooms. They’re holding them for you.” This burly man with the artificial hand is intimidating. He’s implying that if we don’t take the Olive Motel rooms we’ll be sleeping in the Yukon.

Next to us is a young father who is quietly losing his mind. Hook hand doesn’t see any reservation for Best Western on his computer, even though young father made them through OnStar hours ago. Apparently the Onstar radio ads aren’t sharing the dark side of this modern miracle. Hook picks up the phone again, makes reservations for young father and family at the Olive. Young father races out the door, into his Explorer. He wants to get to the Olive before we do, in case there’s another screwup. He guns the motor. Our Yukon is blocking him in. He backs up towards us. Okay, okay. We back up. He backs up, but doesn’t have room to cut right and out of the lot. He cuts left.

We make our move, cutting right behind young father, who indeed tries to back up to block our exit, but he’s not quick enough. We’re on the road to the Olive Motel, young father hot on our tail until a slow moving Falcon cuts in front of him. We drive slowly to display that this is not a race, this is the land of plenty. Although it is strange that all rooms are booked in the middle of the Dakota plains on a Wednesday night.

We arrive at the Olive, a stately and decrepit hotel with wood columns and swastika patterned intricate tile floor, built in the 1880s when Miles City was a boom town, centered around a federal fort and Indian outpost. The whole town moved when the Yellowstone River shifted course.

The Olive Hotel is too funky for young father. He and family flee in their Explorer. Lord save them. We ask about Internet access. The gray-haired night clerk with the injured ear looks down, closes his eyes, and shakes his head despairingly.

Our upstairs rooms smell, and there appears to be some kind of young hooker action going on down the long The Shining type hallways. One of the beds isn’t made up, so downstairs the clerk hands us sheets. But damn it, the TV has better choices than any Hampton or Comfort Inn we’ve stayed in so far, endless channels. The beds are comfy. One of the showers works. A late night Maker’s Mark party, watching an old Pee Wee Herman episode. And so to bed.

July 20, 2006

COUNTRY ROCK TALK

What does a country rock band talk about on a thousand mile trek across North Dakota and Montana?

Well, Cherry Garcia, for example. Shawn is fantasizing about eating a Maple Creamee, but this is not going to happen as we enter the Badlands. But a Cherry Garcia ice cream bar by Ben and Jerry’s (also a Vermont phenomenon) is at least an outside possibility. Cherry Garcia is at the pinnacle of corporate standardization parameters. It’s almost too good. Rich red cherry ice cream with real cherry chunks dipped generously, langourously in dark chocolate, cooling to an irregular and beguiling shape, like the red wax on a bottle of Maker’s Mark.

NPR ENTERS THE DEMENTIA STAGE

We’re powering west through sad and lovely North Dakota on I-94, with rainshadows on the beckoning end of day horizon, and round hay bales, corn, and dirt road villages to the sides of the road. Gray billowing clouds above.

We’re listening to NPR, and Robert Siegal, our plucky and ever-present patrician voice of reason, is interviewing a woman with an electronic scanner in a supermarket. The woman works for a statistics firm and is recording the price of apples, oranges, and grain to track inflation. Are you lulled into a mellow stupor yet? R. Siegal follows the statistician around for what seems like a half hour as she reads the price of apples. Hmm, 3 pounds for a dollar ninety nine. And how about Valencia oranges? $1.22 a pound, offers Robert, a little too eagerly, his grade school role as the kissass nerd racing to the fore.

This goes on and on and on. NPR has truly trivialized itself (and Us the listener) into an ostrich’s hole, where we can muse on the minutiae as the distant thunder arrives.

North Dakota presents miles of open, uncluttered beauty to interstate drivers. Picture the rolling hills of California, 50 years ago, somewhat flattened out by a giant Hand O’ God, and that’s what we’re seeing on this long, long drive. We’re chasing the sun, and sunset and twilight last hours and hours.

RETURN TO MINNESOTA

Why Minneapolis? Why Saint Paul? Well, the Mississippi River, that’s why. On the east bank is St. Paul, on the west the larger Minneapolis, with a more impressive skyline, a graceful and casual flow of new skyscrapers and great looking older stone buildings. On our way to the gig at the western edge of the city, we pass a very eccentric old brewery, with castle type turrets and haphazard brick warehouse add-ons. The city has preserved this industrial age oddity as a library.

We drive through a comfortably fading old neighborhood to Mayslacks, the neighborhood bar, another classic on our tour. Big and dark, and we lug the gear in through a side patio and set up. Paul Metsa, local legend who’s played at Willie Nelson’s Farm Aid, does a solo set, with some burning acoustic guitar and an epic ballad of Jack Ruby, with JFK conspiracy lyrics that warm Paul L’s paranoid heart.

The Hawks hit the stage with a strong set, egged on by Rob’s many friends and relatives who fill the bar. Then a giant of a man, Sherwin Linton, takes the stage in 70’s wraparound deluxe sunglasses and tall black hat, leads his Hawks backup band through Johnny Cash classics. He’s having a great time and so are we, and Sherwin stretches his two song appearance into seven or eight tunes. A big man with a big voice.

Next morning Dennis Pelowski, Rob’s fellow Rochester Minnesotan and our attorney who steered us through our record deal, takes us to a local legend: Al’s Breakfast, in Dinkytown, the university section of Minnesota where Bob Dylan got his start.

Al’s Breakfast, est. 1930’s or 1940’s, is a long and narrow room packed to its edges with a long bar and stools looking across to an oven and stoves, where beautiful young women cook and serve. We’re all in it together, customers and cooks, in a dingy smoke stained low ceiling cocoon. The food is delicious. Delicious. Three of us get the Jose, which is two poached eggs atop hash browns smothered in hot sauce and cheese. Delicious. Blueberry pancakes. Delicious. Paul M. and Shawn order Spike, which is scrambled eggs with mushrooms, onions, garlic, cheese and tomatoes. Outstanding. There is no better breakfast in America. Not since the late and lamented Gutter in Highland Park.

It’s drizzling rain as we say goodbye to Dennis and head east on the 94. A thousand miles to Big Sky. Here we go.

CHICAGO IS

We hit the big shoulders of Chicago at dusk, and el trains, each emblazoned with an iPod ad, greet and escort us to within gawking distance of the skyline. Which we never get any closer to. Our bare bones EconoLodge is on Mannheim Boulevard in a hard times neighborhood to the west. Dump the stuff, head for Fitzgerald’s in Berwyn, also west of downtown.

Fitzgerald’s is housed in a big old house, and booker Andy greets us, and Bill Fitzgerald himself is there, a big time music supporter who puts on a great festival, in addition to booking the best in roots music at the club. Tony Gilkyson and Rob Douglas, fresh off an almost missed plane flight from L.A., greet us. Sound check, pizza, play music. Paddi and Jeff Thomas, who host a Mt. Washington house concert that we play, show up, some Coles fans, and the father of landscape architect Catherine, another Coles family member. Some hometown love far from home. The crowd is modest in size but very enthused, and we do an encore.

Bill hangs to the end, a true music lover, and we’ve made a good connection in the heartland. We pack up, venture outside, and are greeted by a thrillingly hellish wallop of oven heat, tropical humidity, thunder and lightning, and 60 mile per hour winds that knock over outdoor tables and awnings. Then the rain dumps, hard, and we wait it out, hanging out with Bill Fitzgerald and his (very good) sound man. The rain slows, we pack, drive soaked streets back to the EconoLodge. The Yukon is damp, and so are we.

July 18, 2006

OHIO BIRTHPLACE OF EDISON; REST STOP, INDIANA

Corn country. Much higher than the stalks of Vermont, which has a tiny growing season in its forbidding climes. Corn abounds here in the plains, and so do we.

Paul Marshall has a deep and abiding homing instinct for what’s good in America. And that instinct was on the money this noon day in the Heartland. Paul got the inner voice: exit I-90 at Sandusky, Ohio. A toll booth attendant, who Rob surmised is an artist, perhaps a painter, forced into a day job, recommended we drive south one mile for a good meal. “But it won’t be a chain,” he warned. That was okay with us.

A mile south through corn fields and big old Ohio houses brought us to Milan (pronounced “My-lan”), home of Thomas Alva Edison. The record heat wave sun beat down upon us as we walked across a gravel lot to Main Street, Milan, a perfect town square with gazebo and war monument on a rectangular lawn, with old brick and stone mercantile establishments, a barber shop, the Wonder Bar, and our goal: The Invention Café, with a light bulb on the sign in honor of Milan’s most famous citizen.

Inside, Invention Café is 1930’s décor that L.A. eateries strive to recreate from estate sales and eBay auctions. Chrome stools, booths, an American flag cut and painted from corrugated Quonset hut aluminum. Not for sale.

Simple, fresh, delicious, American. This was our meal, served up by a bronzed blonde waitress, with great speed and kindness. Trash Hash is hash browns mixed with eggs, peppers, and anything else your heart desires. Omelet, raisin toast, elderberry pie. Couldn’t be done better. Reality based food thrives in the heartland. Only a mile off the interstate.

An hour down the road, we pulled into a large truck stop rest stop off the I-90 in Indiana, our 17th state of the tour. We all got out, lured by shiny objects and air conditioning inside the glass palaces surrounding the gas station. We all came back to the Yukon, and discovered that no one had actually pumped the gas we’d paid for. Such is the lure of the McDonald’s travel center, where Paul L purchased a 25 cent Indiana Lotto ticket from a vending machine. This is a brilliant marketing scheme. Who’s not going to fish a quarter out of his pocket for a chance to win $50? Which Paul didn’t.

SHAWN NOURSE, NORSEMAN

Shawn Nourse is a Norseman. He comes from a people who run naked in the summer, the endless days when the sun circles the horizon, winking for a moment before rising again, when a Norseman or Norse lassie loses track of time and self in an orgiastic and pagan burst of activity.

Shawn’s forebears wrapped themselves in animal skins in the equally endless winters, huddled around a peat fire playing mind games with each other in semi-darkness, until one, perhaps addled by ergot or spoiled mead, launches himself upon a brother or cousin and strangles the life out of his tormentor, before collapsing outside the tent in a frenzy of Nordic guilt, wandering into the woods, shunned by the huddled community in the black shadows of tree and cliff, and haunted echo of fjord.

This is our drummer. An animal bound by modern morality, Christianity, Americanism, Masonry, stick-to-itiveness, capitalism, decency, weekends, Daylight Savings, algebra, traffic school, the Constitution, no smoking laws, drinking age, diplomas, credit card regulations, internet protocol, tax codes, passport applications, union dues, matrimony, Social Security, unemployment, FICA, NAFTA, ASCAP, Yahoo, cell phone manuals, photoshop, passing lanes, scorecards, report cards, and the white zone.

Beware his moment of berserkery, when the ancient genes override the rules, when highly trained wrists and forearms turn malevolent. Beware the Norseman.

ON THE 90 FOR A LONG LONG TIME

We’re on Interstate 90 west heading west just west of Troy, NY. We’ll be on this road all the way to Chicago. It’s 5 p.m., and we’re trying to make Cleveland tonight. We got a late start this morning, split into two breakfast factions: Rob with familia Waller y Stowell and Mark Follman to an early morning Riverrun restaurant rendezvous, and Shawn and the Pauls to Coffee Corner in downtown Montpelier.

Shawn and Paul have been living a Spartan, boot camp life on the hard floors of the lovely architect Eileen’s empty add-on to her 1850’s wood frame house way out in the woods. Every evening after a show they’ve bid farewell to chez Stowell and driven out to their barracks, driving back in the morning. This morning Paul L took a canoe onto the nearby lake and paddled around a beaver house out in the middle. This is the only beaver loyal PL would ever chase on the road. Idyllic, with surprisingly few bugs, except for a curious dragonfly who landed on the canoe for a staring contest.

Eileen made Shawn and Paul coffee with thick, frothy raw milk from a mason jar, purchased for a dollar down the road--perhaps the most Vermontlike moment of our stay; and then they grabbed Paul M for the drive into Montpelier. As a result, SN and PL can claim to have out-Vermonted the rest of the Hawks.

Coffee Corner gets a rapidly upwardly moving thumbs up for a delicious omelette with garlic scapes (that’s the curling tips of the garlic plant, mostly unknown to Californians) and raisin toast. We raced back north up green Vermontery to Carter’s, loaded up with Rob, and hit the road for sweet home Chicago.

It’s not easy getting out of Vermont. Very beautiful, very green, but a labyrinth of winding roads and tempting roadside treats. We make four to six stops in search of the elusive Maple Softee, but somehow we never make the right choice. Sadly, we leave the state without satisfying this last jones. Only more reason to return soon.

The sun is going down and we’ve just passed the Ithaca, NY exit. This is psychologically bad, because we were just here two days ago. A whole day shot to hell and we’re not even out of New York.

Paul L is filled with self loathing. He’s consumed, so far today: 1 coffee, with raw milk and sugar; an omelette, raisin toast, and home fries; a small chocolate gelato; a veggie wrap and a Red Bull; part of Rob’s inferior coffee; a large raspberry and French coffee ice cream with waffle cone. He wishes he had the courage and freedom from self censorship to make himself throw up in the Sbarro restroom.

BARN PARTY, MONTPELIER ADJACENT

Community lives on in the green forested hills of Vermont, even if it is an uneasy mix of multi-generational rural families in shorts and t-shirts, and newcomers from Boston and Austin in their vintage dresses. Where trustafarians meet ATV riding hunters who ride with their infants on their laps. Everyone waves on the back roads, glad to be among the thick trees and clear waters, a destination determined by the reliable movement of some clear internal compass.

God bless Carter and Chani and little Elvin. They’ve put up with the Hawks and living room jamming (actually, Carter instigated most of these) for five days in their 1840’s wood frame house overlooking a green valley and the hamlet of Worcester and its white steeple, and looking up to Hunger Mountain and clouds above.

Carter is a percussionist and the Hawks webmaster and caretaker of Hawks Headquarters North. He and Chani are world class outdoors people, and could survive on this land of short summers and long winters if global commerce ended. Carter has introduced the Hawks to the natives, and so here we are, playing a Saturday night barn dance in the Vermont hills. As the sun heads into the trees, families drive up the long dirt road and pull off to the side, hike up the hill to the big barn, built in the 1880s as a cow barn but converted 100 years ago into the regional dance hall, where it was host to dances, gunfights, and trysts in the surrounding woods until 1972, when it shut down for the first time. The wood floor boards were pulled from surround land, and the floor hums like a vibrating string as the dancers move and bounce upon it.

It’s 2006 and the barn is back in action. We’re part of a community revivalism, strangers brought together to replicate traditional bonds: dancing on a wood floor to country music. We’ve got all the ingredients: little ones, oldsters, moms and dads, wheelbarrows full of beer, tables of potluck food, Christmas lights strung from the very high and darkened rafters, a spotlight on the wood stage at the far end where the Hawks play Haggard and Lefty along with their own numbers. Carter has called in favors from his vast Vermont network of musical friends and clients alike to cobble together a solid sound system. Add in the natural reverb of the big old barn and the San Francisco night club sound training of Uncle Folz and it all sounds great.

The whole night felt very good. Good to be a dance band in a barn in the fields among the dense woods. Good to watch the children led their parents and grand parents out onto the dance floor. Good to drink the beer, smell the air, and watch the fireflies in the humid summer country night. Perhaps this is our Hawks mission: music for a return to communalism, localism. If the experiment fails, at least we can sing a sweet sad requiem, a waltz at evening’s end.

July 17, 2006

THE LONG ROAD TO ITHACA (AND BACK)

OK, so when you’re back in California it doesn’t seem like Vermont is that far away from Ithaca, New York. But guess what, it’s way damn far. But what do we care? We’ve already driven to Vermont from Los Angeles for the second time in two years. So we make up the morning after our first leg two day off and start driving. 7 hours later we’re in Ithaca. Damn. We pull up to the club. Castaways is a old seaman’s bar along canal that extends from the southern end of one of the finger lakes, we’re not sure which one. The bar population is split into two. There’s a crew of regular drinkers who sit at the bar and on one side of the room, and a hip, musical set on the other side of the room by the stage. Mostly, though, this is a neighborhood bar for drinking, birthday parties, and smoking cigarettes on the dockside patio out back. In short, we’re worried. Was this worth the drive? We bravely and stoically unload our gear and split for the hotel.

The hotel doesn’t lift our spirits. RW and SN’s room smells more like cigarettes and spilt beer than the car. There’s folks hanging around in plastic chairs on the balcony looking like they live there. The heavy air of destitution hangs overhead. Ithaca is not looking good.

We try to salvage the trip by arranging a good dinner. The famous Moosewood Restaurant is here. Many a vegetarian restaurant has borrowed recipes from their well-traveled cook books. We call, get directions, and head their way. The Hawks can justify almost any drive with a fantastic meal.

And so our wishes are fulfilled. We order organic cocktails made with fresh herbs and berries: a basil mint martini, a blackberry margarita. Then come soups, salads, tofu dishes and African groundnut stews. It’s all we hoped for. The Moosewood wraps us in a translucent protective bubble that only we can see. Perhaps the trip to Ithaca was worth it after all.

We get back to the club and our recognize that our luck is clearly changing (or else the bubble is working). There are people there, plenty of them, and besides the folks there for the Buzzie’s 40th birthday party, they seem to be there to see us. We get up and power through a suddenly inspired set fueled by pure vegetarian organic energy.

Afterwards we meet the enlightened DJ Tracey Craig, the host of the Grapevine Music Hour. She's been featuring our record on her show and it's brought out some folks. God bless her. There's also Jim Catalano, the Ithaca Journal writer who had a article about us in the daily paper. There's even a couple dudes from the Red Stick Ramblers who we played with in Houston. They're out in Ithaca to play the Grey Fox festival. We love it when folks come out to support the scene. It all makes sense. If only we didn’t have to drive 7 hours back to Vermont tomorrow.

THE SIZE OF DEMOCRACY

The capitol building in Montpelier is small, with a modest gold painted dome. You could throw a rock over it. This is the size of democracy. Your legislator can’t hide from you here. The Pentagon is the size of something else. Not democracy. God Bless America, and the passing of vastness.

MAPLE CREAMEE, SOFT AND DREAMEE

It’s balmy, dictionary quality balmy on this lovely Vermont afternoon. We’ve just finished playing for the permanent residents of the Rutland State Penitentiary, and are on our way north to Carter and Chani’s house. A green highway, blue hazy mountains behind. We pass an old wood frame highway hamburger house, and Shawn pulls off the road decisively.

We order Maple Creamees from the young girl at the window. They’re as good as we’d hoped for, and we’d had high hopes. Smooth indeed, a sweet mixed race swirling softee tower of cold delight on a cake cone. Vermont is on our tongues, in our lungs, and a green feast for California summer eyes. We are satisfied.

We sit at the edge of a slope overlooking maple trees and a wide grassy meadow. We, creamees, trees.

The Hawks have performed a civic duty and one of the Corporal Acts of Mercy. We have visited the imprisoned, and we have played Humboldt, Branded Man (by Haggard), Long Black Veil, and Drinker’s Hall of Fame, Beautiful Narcotc Place I Reside, Hard Times, and many more, with our acoustic instruments in a small prison rec room. The inmates enjoyed it, and so did we. Our first time at Rutland 2 years ago was a less relaxed time for us. Being ushered through many heavy duty steel doors and bars into a concertina wired prison yard, even one as small and bucolic as Rutland, is intimidating. The prisoners, of all ages, weight classes, tattoo choices, and ethnicities, prowl or hang in the yard, watching us pass. “Hey, Willie Nelson! What’s up?” calls one to cowboy hated grey hippie Paul L, and we all laugh. We’re back, and feeling at home our second time through.

We’re back on the green road, passing covered bridges and tiny hamlets perched on the river valley bank back from the highway.

An American flag flies in a vast corn field down below us. The best looking flag we’ve ever seen. This is the American we know and love so well. It’s the 9th of July. Jimi Hendrix stretches out on the iPod. We are a rich nation.

THE DREAMAWAY LODGE, NEAR BECKET, MASSACHUSETTS

We don’t remember how we got this gig. Sometimes things show up for the Hawks, with no memory of their source. This is one. But we’re here, in a turn of the last century sprawling wood frame road house, a bordello that flourished as a speakeasy in the 1920’s and declined gently into the 1960’s. More recently our host Daniel, a rover from Hollywood by way of San Francisco and New York City, bought the place and restored it to its present funky glory.

Towering trees surround meadows, which ring zen shaped flourishing gardens, which surround the house, which contains dining rooms, kitchen, and elegantly stocked small bar, all on undulating old wood floors. A music room filled with cushions, percussion instruments, and guitars, looks out onto a lawn sloping up to our wood guest house, the Hawks bunk for the night.

A gourmet dinner in one of several dining rooms, with wine and port, with Serena, an old friend whose family runs the Maine International Film Festival, a gathering whose sardonic title reveals its very modest beginnings in a small Maine village. Now it’s a big deal, with a 30 page glossy booklet and rumors of Scorcese.

The sun goes down, and we gather in the music room, no mics, and play an acoustic set for Dreamaway lodgers, a most appreciative crowd. We swap t-shirts for bar tab with the wily Daniel, and a good time is had by all.

PL tries to sleep outdoors in the hammock, but is eaten alive by mosquitos, and retreats to the main house. The band cabin has a wood-fired sauna and naked lodgers wander in and out though the night. But we don’t mind, hang with out friends around lantern light, drink whiskey in crystal glasses from the bar.

The woods are magical, coated in ferns, covered by lush deciduous canopies of maple, birch, and elm. We’ve left the city behind.

THROUGH THE PORTAL

The Berkshires of Western Massachusetts are indeed dreamlike, and not on account of that frosting. We have fled the urban massif, barely escaping its gravitational field, and have flung ourselves into an elliptical orbit that has landed us in a place somewhere between heaven and earth. A snaking narrow highway leads upward into forest and meadow and towns of the Industrial Revolution, with small dark red brick buildings with water wheels on fast moving rivers. We climb, past a last lake, and through a portal into New England past, gracious and remote, shimmering grass and butterflies, up a gravel road to the Dreamaway Lodge, our concert and aboding destination.

THINK LOCALLY, ACT REGIONALLY

NEW YORK, OLD YORK

The sun’s going down and we’re cruising a section of the Bronx that feels almost rural, with neglected fields filling with weeds and tall trees casting long shade, but the streets are so alive, turn a corner and there are young Latinas hanging out in shop fronts, many young New York dudes doing whatever modern dudes are doing, we’re from California and we’re out of touch. New York is heavy with the continuum of something happening, like a higher voltage Paris or Rome. It’s still happening.

We abort an attempt to get to our hotel in Elizabeth, NJ. It’s a Friday and everyone’s trying to get out of town. The 95 Cross Bronx is jammed. We turn around, a series of urban passageways, magic, through warehouses and tall projects, and we’re on the BQE, then we’re off on Atlantic Boulevard, spectacular view of downtown Manhattan and the docks, the ghosts of the Twin Towers looming as they will forever.

We pull up at Hank’s Saloon, another fearless New York attempt to replicate a Texas culture more foreign than Kurdistan, but it’s so fearless that it works. This place is funky, tiny stage, long bar, big window through which the band and Brooklyn can stare at each other.

Tony Gilkyson and Rob Douglas help us dump our non stage gear in the ancient cellar below the street, we set up, and soon enough we’re playing. A good rocking set by the Hawks, seconded by Tony and band. The Plowboys from South Carolina set up, but we’re out of there, Shawn and Paul M to Elizabeth, NJ, Rob and Paul L whisked away by patron saints Charles and Gina to their new and elegant high rise digs in the South Bronx. Charles has just learned to drive, and he handles the late night cruise along the Harlem River like Seinfeld—very relaxed.

Next day the Hawks rendezvous at Joe’s Pub in the Village, in the big and old New York Public Theater building complex, which has been divided into a series of stages and performance halls. We wander the halls through the old, venerable reading rooms. We feel the history of New York theater rising up out of the floor. Literature makes it’s stand against music once again in a competition of the arts. Which is better, more powerful, stronger? How many artists have faced these questions and looked for the grand compromise between the two? Leonard Cohen comes to mind first, if only because “Suzanne” is playing through the iPod. Then, of course, there’s Roger Daltry, Robert Plant, and the rest. The Public Theater tries to bridge the gap, and succeeds. Joe’s Pub is a great room, modernized with black sound baffling, a great sound system, comfy couches and low tables. The Hawks and Tony race through a quick and pro afternoon soundcheck, then scatter across the Village.

Washington Square hosts acrobats, comedians, and impersonators these days though the occasional folkie still struggles to be heard among the hyped-up electrified modern performers. ISHILA is glad to report that a strong cappuccino is still easy to find in the Village. Some artifacts still remain from the lost Beatnik revolution.

Returning to Joe’s Pub that night, we catch the tail end off what seems like a parody of foundation grant performance art: a tap dancing female poet backed up by a fusion bass player, French percussionist, and oud player. Poet recites poetry, tap dances, bares her soul. The audience is rapt. The Hawks are redneck simpletons baffled by this cultural mashup. Is it terrible, or simply pretentious? It’s certainly well executed. Later we find out it’s no joke at all, these articulate hucksters are the beneficiaries of a generous grant from the Guggenheim Foundation. Can someone who knows this game please get us some money?

NYC is like L.A.: you have to play here again and again and again, and you still might not have a following. Which we don’t. Enough friends and country rock fans fill Joe’s Pub to make an audience quorum, and the Hawks do a solid set. Tony’s set is fiery, lighting the dark recesses of the room.

July 08, 2006

NO WHISKY IN THE JAR

The lid to the mason jar was loose. Somewhere between DC and Hartford, CT, the moonshine has slowly leaked out and soaked The Economist magazine. An ironic juxtaposition of cultural artifacts. Farewell, whisky, we love ye well.

HOW HARRY POTTER ENDS

Don’t ask us how we know, but we know the most carefully guarded secret since George Bush met with Osama Bin Laden to plot 9/11: the ending to the Harry Potter series. Promise you won’t tell anyone, because we could get in a lot of trouble for this. Anyway:

As expected, Harry fights a climactic battle with Voldemort, a spectacular duel that plunges the pair into secret caves at the bottom of the Hogwarts lake, sends them soaring into the stratosphere where all is blue violet and twinkling stars, and summons legions of demons and good spirits from ancient millennia, in a pitched battle for the soul of Earth.

Deep in a dark and phantom woods, Harry and Voldemort are thrust into solitary confrontation by unseen forces. Face to face, inches apart in the swirling mists, both strike with equal force, speed, and timing. Their wands, sparking and hissing, lock in a moment of frozen eternity, an eternity so cold that snow falls and birds drop from the sky. Day turns to night, glaciers rise like ghostly steam, crushing the forest, and Harry and Voldemort, locked in kindred hatred, shatter into a million sharp and glittering fragments . . .

Sleep, long and dreamless. Then grogginess, thick and heavy. Slowly Harry wakes to his surroundings: total darkness. The air is close and damp. Harry struggles wildly, lashing out and sending unseen boxes and bags toppling, then calms himself. He reaches out. A doorknob, somehow familiar.

Harry opens the door. Light, afternoon, a hallway. Of course. He’s back with the Dursleys. Harry's heart sinks. He lusts, improbably, for the adrenaline of mortal combat, for his lovely and terrible world of magic. He walks into the kitchen. The Dursleys greet him, coldly, as Harry might expect, but with solemnity. “Harry, we need to talk.”

The Dursleys tell Harry that they're boarding up his closet. He’s too old for these infantile flights of fancy. They’ve confiscated his wand, and they’re enrolling him in a weight loss program in Swindon.

Harry looks down at himself. He’s fat.

“After all, Harry—you are our only son.”

Harry remembers. His potent fantasy, his escape from dreary suburban English life and its numbing school system, evaporates.

That night Harry realized that he was a warrior. He was not destined for this world. And if he was banished from the closet under the stairs, he was going to escape by any means necessary.

At midnight, Harry smothered himself with his own tear-soaked pillow in the silence of his bedroom.

Or at least he tried. His parents found him gasping for air, and pulled him from his downy pillow’s death-grip. Harry returned to school that September, where he passed his exams. He lost 35 pounds and was rewarded with a ferry ride to Southend On Sea, where he consumed bags of french fries with mayonnaise and several butter tarts.

HAWKS HOBBY FARM

Dear readers: The Hawks wish to start a hobby farm and restaurant somewhere in L.A. We’re looking for a one acre lot for high density organic gardening and an oversized Victorian house to convert into a restaurant/café/performance space. Perhaps the Adams or South Central area? We’ll grow the food and prepare gourmet meals, including artisanal goat cheese from the goats grazing on the front lawn. We’ll sponsor a farmer’s market (guaranteed organic produce only) and have acoustic music afternoon weekends and evenings, and host special eco events.

The South Central farmers got the shaft, but their vision must live on. Every fallow open space in Los Angeles should be fair game for food growing. The City of Los Angeles can sponsor a program to set up irrigation and fencing on empty lots all across this vast housing sprawl.

GOODBYE, RUBY TUESDAY’S

The Hawks almost made a big culinary blunder: we’d just played WWUH, big shoutout to Ed McKeon, who did a masterful interview as we played a bunch of acoustic songs. (And just as big shoutout to John Ramsey, station manager and chief engineer, who gave Paul L two slo blo 1 amp fuses for his guitar amp.) We were driving down wide avenues past early 20th century Hartford mansions set back on vast lawns, the vision of the top of the American financial heap, and we were hungry (as of this writing, we still are).

We chanced upon a minor mall, and lo, spied a Ruby Tuesday’s in all its glossy corporate logo glory. To our own shock, we walked in. Luckily, late 80’s overproduced pop blasted us from the foyer back into the afternoon heat before we committed to sitting down. Now we’re driving Interstate 91 south for New York City, where we play in Brooklyn tonight.

NINES ON THE WALL

Café Nine is a real bar, with brick walls and a crudely walled stone basement and brick floor. Upstairs is a small stage and long bar with Bass and Guiness on tap, and posters of the top second tier Ameicana acts: Dave Alvin, The Iguanas, Los Straitjackets, Big Sandy, Robbie Fulks, and even BR549 have played this tiny room. Because it’s got that undefinable American classic barroom vibe. We’ll play there even when we’re turning down Conan O’Brien. As a matter of fact, just to feel empowered, we’re hereby officially turning down Conan O’Brien. Conan, we love you. You are very funny. But we’re going to have to say no.

The Café Nine night began with a good crowd, all a bustle with the anticipation of country rock. At 9:45, something strange happened. An earnest young man took the stage and sang an a capella version of an old slave song. He then brought up a keyboard playing friend and they jammed. The audience watched. The Hawks fled the room. Which was a big mistake, for the noodlers noodled unsupervised with self-empowered fury.for a solid hour.*

By the time Tony did his set and the Hawks set up it was midnight. We played seven songs and the bartender announced last call. Good night, New Haven. We’d love to come back, if you bag the opener.

*A series of comments on the opening act:

Improvising is not for the beginner. The most successful improvisers are arguably the jazzers, who are highly trained and have played complex tunes a million times before they are free to do what their inner voices dictate. When you know one or two scales, you should wank at home. -- Paul L

It sure made me wish that samplers were never invented. – Paul M

Or delay pedals. – Rob

Jon Brion can do this kind of thing. – Paul L

So then he played this bad part that he looped, and I’m hanging with it, and then he plays this part—de deee deet deet deet dee dee dee deet deet—completely unmusical, and that’s when I walked out of the room. -- Paul M

We should have kicked his ass. Paul L and I were on the verge of kicking his ass outside the club. Sort of when the two writers beat the shit out of Dan Rather on the street, as an artistic act. They were wearing masks. – Rob

What do you think about a u-ey here? -- Paul M (we’re lost somewhere in Connecticut near New York)

The two brothers later wrote this book about how they lost their family’s entire fortune gambling on the riverboats in Tunica, Mississippi. – Rob

Brothers? – Shawn

They were white guys. Shawn, you got any ibuprofen . . . bitch? -- Rob

There’s this guy in L.A. who always loops stuff, and I say to him, why don’t you just play it? –- Shawn.

End of conversation. We’re at the Athenian Diner in Milford, Connecticut, and it’s time to eat. Kind of hot outside.

July 07, 2006

THE BEST PIZZA IN AMERICA?

There’s a Little Italy in New Haven, Connecticut. On one side of Wooster street sits Frank Pepe’s Pizzeria. On the other, Sally’s Apizza. For decades the lucky residents of New Haven have debated which pizza is better. Well, we didn’t get the chance to try Pepe’s but I SEE HAWKS IN L.A. is very seriously considering awarding its highest honor to Sally’s Apizza. Final votes are yet to be tallied but it looks likely that Sally’s could be declared the Best Pizza in America by these very Hawks.

What is it that makes this pizza so perfect? you must be thinking. First off, there is only one thing on the menu at Sally’s: pizza. No salad, no garlic bread, no pasta dishes. No parmesan or even red pepper flakes to adulterate their flawless formula. The menu is one page where you choose your size and toppings. That’s it. We ordered three Labatt’s Blue beers to round things off. They arrived and we waited for the pies. We chose a PL vegetarian pizza of mushrooms and black olives and a classic pepperoni, Old paintings of Frank Sinatra and John F. Kennedy looked down at us from their places on the wood paneled walls among framed newspaper articles praising Sally and his fine pizzas. We settle in, arriving just in time to watch the line form outside the door as each booth is now filled.

The pizza arrives. Each pizza comes on it’s own rectangular cookie sheet. The pizzas are not exactly round, they are thrown roughly into the natural near-circles, appearing like flattened stones. There’s nothing fancy going on with these ingredients. There’s no goat cheese or stupid whole wheat crust. It’s just thin traditional crust, sauce, mozzarella cheese, chosen topping, but it’s perfectly executed. The crust is crispy around the edges and on the bottom, but just barely crispy. These pizzas have been cooked in a very hot oven for a short period of time. The pizzas look beautiful. How will they taste?

With the first bite, the pizza is still too hot. How often this happens, a pizza or two arrives, everyone dives in unable to hold back the anticipation, only to find it’s just too hot. Luckily none of us burn our mouths, it’s not that hot. And it still tastes good, don’t get me wrong. But it’s clear in a couple of minutes the pizza will be the perfect temperature for eating, the temperature where all the distinct flavors and textures can be fully appreciated.

And so that time does comes. The Hawks grow quiet and focus on eating this deliciously simple and complex pizza. We feel a artistic kinship with Sally and his apostles. This is what good art is: a complex idea expressed in clear and simple terms with a respect for tradition and genuine culture. No short cuts. High quality ingredients. A deep connection to the land beneath one’s feet. We celebrate regionalism! Thank God for pizza like this.

July 06, 2006

THE EAST COAST VIBE

As North Korea waves its impotent (taepo-)dong at the world, we’re driving boldly northward on I-95, America’s drug running corridor, not running drugs of course but running country rock. Country Rock! Country rock for America! Original country rock in defiance of North Korean missiles! If we stop playing country rock the terrorists are winning. Come to us ye merry Americans! We call out to you in harmony of tone and spirit with wings and arms spread. Our hearts are wide open for you. Do with them what you will, but be gentle, be gentle for we hold a dead man’s hand of Aces and Eights, waiting for a bullet in the back. Two pair, but not just any two pair. What was the fifth card and what will it be?

We’ve got a quarter jar of Wilkes County, NC moonshine sitting in the cupholder, spreading good vibes through our Suburban interior. Moonshine molecules float through our mobile enclosed space, tickling our nostrils and our country rock fancy.

So--we flew in direct from LAX to Washington D..C yesterday in a brand new Boeing 777 leased and operated by United Airlines. Each seat had its own individual television with 50 cable-tvish channels. There was a great shark program on, as there usually is, called “Air Jaws.” Off the coast of Cape Town in South Africa great white sharks sim straight up from the depths at speeds approaching 30 mph. With prey locked in their jaws they shoot into the air, breeching fully above the southern waters. These prehistoric missiles, (not missals – the Catholic prayer book, and unlike the North Korean dongs) thrill and terrify us all.

Will Garrison Keillor address this latest Korean missile crisis in his next radio broadcast? Perhaps, but this hit or miss Robert Altman of the radio waves could just as easily ignore it altogether. He’s gotten bolder in his critique of America’s madness, veering into Martin Luther King territory, that area where the speaker must duck when a car backfires. When will someone stand up and pelt this writer/broadcaster, the soul of highbrow middle America? Perhaps, like the Simpsons, he’s under the radar and over the heads of the vicious beast that got JFK

It’s 4 p.m. in DC adjacent Virginia. Not very Virginia up here. Jassa, our Sihk cabbie, whisks us away from Dulles International but quickly he realizes he’s made a wrong turn due to being distracted while trying to program his new GPS unite. We get back on the right track then lost again. The GPS is a step behind, recalculating as The Sihk gives Paul Lacques his map. The GPS proves to be extraordinarily accurate and even prescient, predicting our arrival in Leesburg and replotting the directions with our brave turbaned warrior abandons a clogged commuter artery. We make it to PL’s brother Gabe’s house in historic Leesburg, Virginia, within two minutes of the GPS prophecy.

We invade Gabe and Deanna’s basement, haul up our amps and drums, reload, sip moonshine, and drive to Vienna, VA, another DC bedroom community framed by trees, canals, and swamps yielding to Suburbia Americana.

Jammin’ Java is in a mini-mall with a generous roadside parking lot. It could be the new roadhouse, as funk vanishes from the roads. Pierced and dyed young women in black smoke cigarettes on the concrete walkway. Some of them work at Jammin Java and direct us around to the back. The mini-mall isn’t so mini, it’s a long drive to the back entrance, and the interior of JJ is huge, brick walled, and mysterious. It doesn’t match its anonymous exterior. Very cool.

Tony Gilkyson and Rob Douglas greet us. (Kip is a newlywed, congrats, and subbed out till we go to UK in August.) Paul L puts new old stock 1950’s GE 6V6GT tubes in his amp, which promptly blows a fuse. You’d think Paul would have learned from past Ebay purchases, but no, he hasn’t. He puts the old tubes back in, and the amp works fine. Rolling the dice, he replaces a smaller 12AX7 tube. This one works, and the amp sounds great, rejuvenated. It was getting tired on the first leg of the tour, and now it’s frisky, even brash.

It’s another small but wiry crowd in the dark halls of Jammin Java, but a good time is had by all. Gabe and Deanna, their cute and bright as a penny near one year old Carlin, Deanna’s mom Bonnie and her man Jake are full of enthusiasm and good cheer, hang for the Hawks and Tony. Jake’s excited, appropriately enough, by Tony’s barn burner instrumental “Late for Jake.” Two fellow Mayo Spartans from Rochester, MN surprise RW. The vibe is alright. The Java sound man and intellectual waitresses are great, and we want to come back.

Load up in the misting humid late night, bye to baby Carlin and keepers, 2 hour drive to Elksburg, MD, arbitrary stopping point discovered by Paul M in his hotel booking stint.
A Hampton Inn bordering a woods and mosquito pond, comfy, with cookies and tea at 2 a.m. But it’s only 11 p.m. west coast time, and we’re not burnt at all. Watch France beat Portugal 1-0, and crash out.

Paul L was hoping for Germany vs. France. Nostalgia.

We’re on east coast country rock time next, day, wake at 11 p.m. and load up. Rob and Paul L sprint the 100 yards to the Waffle House, a country rock exercise regimen that we can probably adhere to. Eggs, hash browns smothered (and capped for Paul M), two orders of cheese and eggs, and we drive north on the 95. Paul L accidentally averts a toll exit, driving blissfully through an EasyPass only lane. Will an expensive east coast traffic violation ticket be arriving in the mail?

The New York City Skyline rises up on the horizon. The first thing you notice is the missing World Trade Center towers. The band debates the Freedom Tower. Should it be built? What, if anything, does “Freedom” mean in this context? Stalin’s freedom, or Townes van Zandt’s?

NYC gets the Hawks jacked every time. We cross the George Washington bridge and our pulses race. It’s so public. There’s the high rise tenements with the homies on the wall, and the elegant old smaller brick co ops where you know the yuppies grind their beans fresh. No anonymity, and thus anomymous. We’re listening to 1980 Mink DeVille, the perfect east coast soundtrack. She’s a mixed up shook up girl.