Do we actually play in venues on tour?

As I'm going through my pictures from tours I realize that I have very few, if any, pictures of me or the band playing on stage in front of people. Most of the pictures and videos are clips of us hanging out in the van or hotels. It's hard to take pictures of yourself while playing onstage. Here are some of my favorite "playing music just for the fun of it while on tour" pics.

That's Travis on the flu tour. We were in Philly and he started playing the guitar in the van while it was parked on the side of the road, waiting for the gig to start. Unfortunately, we were parked near some kind of government building and we were told by a police officer that you can't play music near a government building.

That's Mike on the and band tour practicing in the hotel in Johnson city. Please note the sideways hanging picture in the background. This picture was taken right around the "rock and roll happened" incident (see first post).

That's a picture of me practicing in our hotel in Nashville. I practiced every song I knew. (I actually had to go to my own website to refresh my memory on some of them) It came in handy because the next night I went to see a band but the band canceled and I just happened to have my guitar in the car and I played instead!

glamorous life on the road

Life on the road is glamorous! Full of high class transportation..

And glamorous accommodations!

Not to mentions a greenroom provided for us to get ready for every gig!

This is what I look like when I don't get the bowl of green peanut M&M's I requested in my 30 page rider!

7 things I learned on the road

1. Geography-There is a state between Maine and Massachusetts. That state is New Hampshire and if you don't remember driving through it on your way home maybe you should pull over and take a nap.
2. When you leave New England the states get a lot bigger. Driving from Memphis TN to Johnson City TN in one day for a show is a haul.
3. People in the check out line will be jealous of you when you buy cases of yuengling on a Wednesday morning in West Virginia just because you can.
4. Fast food may be fast but whether or not it is food is debatable. And if you think you are going eat salads on tour you are crazy.
5. Aron can fix anything with a gum wrapper and he likes to be mysterious about it.
6. Ladies-take all the clothes and shoes you are going to bring on tour and cut it in half...then take all those clothes and shoes and cut it in half. Remember, unless you are famous, you will be carrying that stuff.
7. Always have a camera with you because you might just see something like this on the side of the road.

Tribute to Norm's, Nashville TN Part 1

I've been very fortunate to have played at so many music venues over the past decade. So many have come and gone but there is one venue in particular that was just a magical place to play and that's Norm's Roadhouse in Nashville, TN. I love that it is called "roadhouse." I'm pretty sure it is the one and only roadhouse I've ever played at. It was really far of the beaten path in a part of Nashville I never knew existed. It was across the street from a farm with 3 donkeys walking around.  Upstairs there was a small restaurant that had the best pizza ever (you will soon learn I love food, if you didn't know that already) and fried jalepenos and the downstairs was the true music venue. The downstairs was a fieldstone foundation basement with a stage straight ahead and the bar to the side. There was a fireplace and a door leading out to a huge field and beyond the field was avery large stream. The reason so much of this blog is in the past tense is because the second I heard about the flood in Nashville I expected the worst and Norm's is now no more.
There was just something special about the venue. It reminded me of a coffeehouse I went to as a child. Everything about it felt like home. I played a few writer's nights there and met some really great people.  We had a night off and went to see a band called Jeremiah and the Red Eyes. Here's a video of us arriving.

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For some reason I like to take videos of the stairs at venues. I can't believe I haven't fallen down a flight yet!