i wear my sunglasses at night

Ok so I’m wearing my fourth pair of sunglasses for this tour. My tally equates to one pair a week so far. It seems to be my thing. Soph loses stuff (which always seems to find us along the way as we travel), Sam is chasing the perfect soy milk, and I go through sunglasses like water.

Anyway, right now we’re barrelling down the highway headed for Kansas City, via Cracker barrel. Sam is at the wheel and nothing is getting between her good self and the “barrel” this time. We’ve driven past this phenomenon of a store on every road trip so far, without stopping, and this time Sam is holding the wheel in a state of firm insistence that this time, come hell or high water, we’re stopping at the barrel… Time will tell…

Since our last blog we’ve done some enormous journies, criss-crossing the Midwest and the East Coast, doing a couple more shows with our awesome new friends, Coyote Grace. After Chicago we pointed the car towards Duluth and stepped on the gas for 10hours. We saw no Prairie dogs but many gas stations along the road. After an immense journey we showed up at our venue to the eerie silence of an empty café. To say our spirits sank lower than the bed of lake Superior just about covers it. I asked our lovely venue manager how she thought the night might pan out and she said “Oh, it could be ok, there’s nothing much else on in town tonight. Oh, except for Ani Difranco playing just down the road”… Right on! We nearly gave her our instruments then and there and asked her to play the show while we went to see Ani, but instead, we picked ourselves up off the floor and siddled up the stage and gave it a bang. I looked up about half way through the first song to see that a full house of smiling people had somehow crept in the door, and thought, Ani, eat your heart out darlin.

Next morning we shipped out and sat through another 10 hours of America, whizzing past our windows. We broke the journey for the night in a place known to us only as described by our hotel consierge as “the armpit of hell”. After scrambling together a vegan meal in Pizza Hut, only made possible by incredible persaverence and a lot of buttering up of Dawn, our overtired, working two jobs in middle America, single mother of 4 teenages ,3 of whom are triplets, waitress, we fell into bed and awoke the next morning to the sound of the highway. Time to be on our way again.

And so we found ourselves in Ohio, playing with Coyote Grace, to a beautiful crowd. So far, so good. Our gigs have been just awesome. If I were to give us a report, I’d say this tour has by far exceeded expectation of success!

The whole tour I have been waiting for what was to come next. Philadelphia! It’s the only city in America I had already visited, and I knew of at least 6 places I wanted to eat in – meaning we needed to leave early to get there in time. We played at the Tin Angel, a venue I’ve always wanted to play at, with the beautiful Christine Havrilla, and the crowd was just awesome. The next day, leaving the hotel, I felt like a bit of a rockstar. In the lift with my brother and my guitars, a man says to us “So, are you a band?”, to which I said “yes”. Then he said “Are you the ones that were playing in town last night?” My brother looked at the ground, and I said, “yep! That’s us!” and walked out of the lift. I’ve got no idea who he thought we were but for a second, we were them! So, we stocked up on philly food and hit the road, packed to the gills with boxes from Kingdom of Vegetarian and Hari Krishna grill hoagies, to spend three great days in Washington with my family. Sam and Sophie took a drive by on the Whitehouse, which is, as Sam says, just a big white house, and left in a huff when they weren’t invited in to tea with Obama With my heart heavy we then kissed my family good bye and flew off to Kansas City.

Our last two days have been spent at the Legion Arts Festival in Cedar Rapids, where there may not be any rapids, but there’s plenty to Cee… For some reason the festival put all the artists up in the Crowne Plaza, which I have to say, is the poshest hotel ever! It even has good coffee in the room with little coffee maker machines for your individual pleasure. We ate at the same Vietnamese restaurant three times in two days and enjoyed the high life. And now, we are three happy ducks, with our bums on the seats of a big Kia van, heading back to Kansas City for our last two shows of this tour. It’s gone so fast and also so slow, so I guess time has just passed as it normally does, but I feel like I’ve felt every moment so much more intensely than normal, as you do when you’re seeing new things every single day, I guess. So for now, I don my fourth pair of shades and get ready for our last few days of adventure.

First Class Baby!

So we’re back on board. After a fair whack of stuffing around with the hire car we got back on the road and drove without stopping to the closest airport (4hours) to change the broken car for a newbie. I tell you, everytime we get a new car it gets bigger! By the time we finished this tour we’ll be driving a 30 tonne truck.

We missed our Vancouver ferry by ten seconds and ambled around until we found ourselves a little pub by the water to while away the hours and surprise of surprises, we managed to order edamame beans and vegie sticks with humous for our dinner. So, full up and happy, we let ourselves be ferried over the water into the open arms of Vancouver. And oh what a town! It’s pretty and the people are lovely. Soph and I took a ferry (another one – Canada is ferry town!) over to a little Island where we tried on items from every store and got razzed by a man doing a magic show. Lots of lovely people came to see us play and Lyndell Montgomery joined us on stage at the Railway Club for some fanging bass work and firework inducing violin-offs with Soph. We played boggle and stayed up late with our beautiful hosts, Heather and Krista, and had ourselves a banging Good Time! And in the morning we packed up our bags (again), threw them in the back of the van and crossed the border into the land of peanut butter cups.

With a night off in Seattle we found ourselves a great little Asian vegan restaurant and had a bang up meal, went back to M(el) W(atson)’s house and slept for a few hours before making a mad dash to the airport at 4am. Arriving at the airport we were informed that our very good friend Jeff had up graded us to 1^st class! Let me repeat, 1^st class. Not second, or 3^rd, but 1^st! And, we were at the very very very front of 1^st class which basically means we were better than 1^st class! We were practically flying the plane. What a wicked time. We got to skip all the lines and they made us breakfast on the plane while the people in economy starved. We behaved like big rockstars, throwing our weight around on the plane (ok, actually, Soph knocked over the orange juice of the lady next to her who was carrying an illegal dog and her husbands ashes). I didn’t want to sleep because I didn’t want to miss my, most likely, one and only chance to fly 1^st class, but I couldn’t help it – the seats mould to your butt and the head rest lifts your head from your neck like a comforting friend and before you know it you’re drooling with the best of them. First class attendants will even mop that up for you.

Upon arrival in Chicago we tried out ten or so hire cars til Sam felt we’d arrived at the one with the best vibes, and we loaded our gear into another, even bigger car. Well, it’s a bus actually. We need an intercom to chat to each other it’s so spacious!

We hooked up with Coyote Grace last night for our Chicago gig, and played our first of three shows with them. We were totally blown away and we’re all excited to be repeating the experience. These guys are seriously awesome. I’ve been invited to have a little blow on the harmonica with them at our next show and I’m playing it cool but I’m secretly pumped.

This morning we got lost for 2 hours in the loops of Chicago’s system of highways and bumper to bumper traffic, but now we’re burning down the highway, blinged up to the max with our new gas station sunnies, heading for the promise of new adventures tonight in Duluth. Soph is reading a men’s magazine in the back seat, Sam is driving like a ballerina with one leg up on the dash, and I am taking in the sights as central America rolls past my window. It is a happy day.

Signing out,

Ramblin’ Rose

seen from the side of the road...

So. We are sitting on the side of the road in one of the worlds most beautiful places, Tofino, Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. And let’s just say the last few days have brought us quite an adventure!

The reason we’re currently sitting in a line on the side of the road is that we’re waiting for the AAA people to arrive. Our very spunky, enormous American vehicle has decided to bite the dust and now only makes a clicking sound instead of that previously comforting full throttle revhead ignite that signified the beginning of each new days journey. So we’re stuck. Like glue. In the worlds most beautiful town. We’ve got fresh plumbs, chewing gum, chips and a delightful view, so it’s hard to be unhappy in this situation, but we would quite like to get moving again!

The reason we’re here? We had a shitty day on Thursday – everything we touched went wrong wrong wrong. I was supposed to be doing a radio interview and just as we clicked on the telephone went dead, so I rang back on Skype (feeling so technical) which turned out to be absolutely useless, and ended up driving madly around the streets looking for a public phone to get this interview off the ground. I finally found one, which was a cross between a telephone and a bus stop, and I’m so sorry to the people who have to hear the interview because most of it sounds like I was departing on a space shuttle. Let’s just say the day sucked. Sophie and I discovered we had left some of our equipment behind at the last gig, Sam slipped on a pebble, and I actually fell over in a pharmacy into a whole shelving unit of shampoos and deodorants which went flying all over the shop and took a chunk out of my achelies heel! And to top it off, when Sam phoned the venue for our next show on Saturday night to check a few details they had no idea we were planning to play at their venue! Which left us with a couple of nights off…

So we decided to capitalise on our new found weekend and fanged up the coast to have ourselves a little trio adventure. And it has been such a beautiful ride – through mountains and valleys, over rivers and around lakes. We wound up in Tofino last night to eat sushi on the balcony while the sun set like a picture between the silhouettes of island mountains. Today we took a walk on the beach, and strode off the extra American sugar we’ve consumed, and now, here we are, waiting for some one who knows something about cars to get us some how back on the road so we can make it to our gig in Vancouver tomorrow night!

Our spirits are up, and we’re looking forward to getting back on the road. Everyone is driving past us in cars that work, which is a little galling, but Sam has the mandolin out and we are giving ourselves up to the moment we’re in and the tan we’re getting, waiting for AAA. Musician life is certainly an adventure!

Signing off,

Rescue me, Rosie

Riding on the ferry with Sophie and Rosie is an experience I tell ya. We’re on our way over to Vancouver island now to play 4 shows before we head back down the I – 5 to fly to Chicago. We’ve had a dream run so far, playing the amazing shows, making the many U-turns, meeting the fantastic people and eating the…..well, interesting food. Actually the food has been n e r r.f d c jfbjfbwdf 3ebfw.keb.kwjebffb kjbrlfqdc jfbvejbdc q.kjfrjfb. Whoops, ferry is rocking a bit. Where was I?.Yes, the food has actually been pretty amazing as well as incredibly interesting. By interesting I mean mainly the gas station food on the concrete jungle that is the I-5. Rosie being vegan has encountered a few inedible and unidentifiable objects masquerading as food.

However, mostly, what we have found so far is that the people have been so incredibly generous, baking us pies and cooking us pancakes and vegan and vegetarian feasts. We’ve even managed to fit a bbq in in this short time we’ve been here. So now we’re on the ferry having waved goodbye to Seattle and Mel Watson (our booking agent and saviour).

We swapped Mel for an extremely helpful, friendly and positive (even more so than Sophie) GPS device and have dramatically reduced our number of U-turns. We’ve named it Stacy. She tells us when to turn, when to exit and even when we’ve reached our destination, all with a voice of sultry gentility. We like her a lot and all agree that we’d take her out for dinner (if only we knew where she lived).

Signing off. Sea faring Sam.

paradise america

Wow. I'm just going to say it. Wow. There. I said it again.

After a beautiful night in Chico at Cafe Flo, where the cafe proprietors were incredibly generous, the music was fun, and the crowd was so supportive i felt like my feet hardly touched the ground, we woke up in Weezie's house (who I never met, but thanks Weezie!) to a steady stream of beautiful Chicoan visitors, bringing bread, pie, massage tables, orange juice and big big smiles. What a lovely bunch. Let's just say, i dug that place.

So then we packed up the car, which i'm not exactly getting sick of because we'll be doing it every day for 3 more weeks, but I'm not finding it as exciting as the first time we did, used a shoe horn to pop sophie and myself into the back seat and barrelled up the highway with M.W. at the wheel, singing songs like "trickle trickle trickle" when we all needed to go to the bathroom.

We made it to Eugene Oregon some 8 hours later - dusty (that'd be the wrong turn we took down the dirt road), tired (that'd be the feeling of doing nothing for so long), and happy (that'd be due to the most beautiful changing landscape I've seen in a long time). We drove through a mountain range I can't pronounce and Soph was really excited to see snow on the peaks, although initially there was some question as to whether it was snow, or something akin to crop circles.... We crossed rivers and slugged up the sides of hills, flung ourselves down steep slopes and stopped at a gas station where i made the unfortunate decision to have lunch at the "deli". I'll just say: bad. Marinated mushrooms from gas station deli = not so good. They looked for all the world like wrinkled goat scrotum and I'd place a bet they tasted similar.

Back to eugene... Sam and Mel took us to stay with their gorgeous friend Elaine, who has the lushest house and nicest friends ever! We had a big vegan feast with her dinner party, and then, wait for it, chilled out in the backyard spa under the stars until it was time to crawl into bed and wait for the sun to wriggle it's way through the trees into our window and wake us up for today's journey: the trip to M.W.'s yert on Widdby Island (forgive the spelling). And now, it's coffee time.

Signing off in a state of Wowness,

Rollin' Rosie

Berkley, Ah Yeah!!

So here we are, woken up on a beautiful Saturday morning in Berkley. It's 10am, and we're getting ready to hit the road. Hopefully this 3 hour drive to Chico won't include the 13 u-turns we did yesterday. Though perhaps it's mandatory, and with all 4 of us taking turns giving directions, we're bound to succeed in getting that number doubled.

So yesterday, after a lush rice and noodle lunch, we left the beautiful town of Sutter Creek, and drove the expected 2 and a half hour drive to Berkley. Instead we found that due to our minimal 13 u-turns, repeated times losing our way, we found the drive to be 4 hours long. Though i have to admit, it was a beautiful drive. Who can complain when you're driving through such a lush part of the world. Our 20 mile detour, allowed us to see these amazing wind fan things (i'm not one for giving words their actual pronunciation or term).
So we nearly arrived in Berkley. All raring to go, and our last challenge was to figure out whether to go left or right. I said left, Rosie said right. She was right. So we stopped at the stop sign, trying to make a decision. Tho the thing you tend to notice, is that when there's a stop sign, people expect you to go. What's with that?? It's full-on man. And shouting out the window, i'm completely into that.

So, arriving in Berkley, we headed to the hotel, before we went over to the venue for our 2nd show of the tour. We packed all our luggage in, and then headed to the venue. And man, what a cute place. Cafe Trieste is a lush little cafe, that once a month, does a womens' gig, on Friday nights.
We set all our gear up, and settled into the place. It's a great little cafe, where 60 or so peeps packed in. A chick called Kate was the organiser, and what a great night.
Mel Watson started the night. And man, was she on fire. Not literally, but guys if you haven't seen her, you'll have to go see a show of hers. With a run of amazing loops, beat-boxing style, rhythmical twists, she got everyone up and clapping. Seriously, i take my hat off to you, M.W.
After a beautiful show, we had a short break, and then got ready to play. We kicked off with Pirate Song, and then launched into Best Dress. It was such a pleasure to play for all the cafe trieste locals. Was a really fun gig, with so many highlights, i was just blown away, An amazing crowd stuck in there, and they seemed to love it. And there i was, in between the two most amazing chicks you can imagine, and watching on was the inimitable M.W., chillin out, eating her focaccia. :)
Then to top it all off, we all 4 of us, played our final encore, and we wrapped it up.

So here we are, the end of a night, and for some reason, i'm talking to a local about qeueing up for Wimbledon Tennis tickets. The funny things you do hey?
So with the show done and dusted, we headed back to the hotel, for a night of sweet dreams, and ready, rip-roaring ready to go to Chico tomorrow morn.
Signing off University Avenue, Berkley, Sopheets. :)

coffee and bagels - the real america

So we're sitting in this tiny town in the heart of California. It looks a little like an old western film and there are posters around advertising "bluegrassin jams" and "spaghetti western" film nights. It's very cute, and, this cafe has WIFI!

We've all had bagels and coffee and now my heart is bursting out of my chest - the coffee is mega strong here.

Thank jeepers for technology really. Mel (wato) picked us up from our hotel in San Fran on Wednesday night and we squished into the car the next morning for our first road trip of the tour. It really didn't look like we were going to fit into the car, but with some good will and some swift kicks we got the gear stuffed in. All i can say is i have a talent i am only just realising. I'm a fantastic car arranger.

So we got in the car and drove around in circles for a half an hour, trying to decide which way was north and which would, as a result, have been south, and finally ended up on the highway going the right direction. A few exits missed (mel and sam very excited to be catching up), and we were on the way. Mel had printed out the directions to Sutter Creek, our first stop, which was fantastic except half the page was missing. A fact we only realised once we were firmly in the middle of the 20 lane highway with no way to get off and go find a map.... Bring on the mobile phone GPS. I think I am going to have to sell my soul to Optus when i get back to pay my mobile phone bill... i wonder how much it's worth. Maybe Sophie's would be worth more, I might have to sell hers...

Anyways, it was a beautiful, hot, drive and we ate rice snacks and fruit and chatted and got lost twice more and finally ended up in this beautiful tiny town standing outside the Sutter Creek Theatre, where we played that night. It was such a supportive crowd and the theatre had great acoustics so the audience sounded 3 times bigger than it was which was fun for us!

At the end of the night the lovely theatre owners handed us the keys, some beers and went home, leaving us to run amuck in the theatre. We cranked up the PA and jammed for 3 hours, pulling out the grand piano and having a wild old time. Then we went upstairs to our apartment (!) and crawled out the window onto the roof and chatted with a man in a rocking chair on an opposite veranda, until sam felt we were being to loud. So we crawled back in the window, lugged ourselves up the stairs and fell into sleepland. And now, coffee and bagels digested, we're heading to Berkley for show number 2. Ah...

Signing off, Route 66 Rosie