September 2009 - Carolinas on My Mind

Thursday, 9/17/09

I’m glad Alex dropped me off early. LAX’s Terminal 6 is usually the SECRET terminal – you breeze through security and can still access 7 and 8. It’s a zoo. Apparently there was a TSA shutdown an hour ago that’s having an accordion effect on the line, like traffic on a highway. Thrilling. But it’s made up for – I have the entire Exit Row to myself!!!! Sadly, it’s just to Houston, where the Durham flight is delayed 45 minutes. And on THAT plane I have so little room I wonder how people as tall as Dan can even bear airplanes. First time I’ve ever seen a guide dog aboard as well – a full size Lab. So well trained, never barks. I know you’re not supposed to pet working dogs, but it’s hard to stifle that! My seatmate and I discuss Indian classical music – apparently there are rules even stricter than the Academie Francaise in this genre.

When Dan answers his phone, I report that I’ve finally landed and will meet him and Matthew at the Northwest baggage claim so that Richard, who rented a car and drove down from Virginia, can get all of us together. He responds, drolly, “Uh, I’m in Seattle.” Codeshare flights, check-in agent stupidity, and security going through his bag with the effects pedals in it a zillion times delayed him so much he missed the noon flight. He’ll be on the redeye through Cincinnati and we’ll pick him up at 10:30am. Poor guy. Red eyes are the worst…

Richard tells Matthew and me of the awful stau he encountered on the way down, lengthening his drive from 4.5 to 6.5 hours. Then, bleary-eyed, he followed the directions to “301 Residence Inn Blvd., Durham” and pulled into the Residence Inn, where the desk clerk said there was no reservation. He re-entered the Priceline number and said, “You’re at the Courtyard. This is 201 Residence Inn Blvd. But the Courtyard is next door. And you're here in two days.” No supermarkets are open by the time we get back there, so I suggest that Matthew try the little market at the front desk of the Courtyard. Failing that, he could try the Residence Inn...

Friday, 9/18/09

The Starbucks dude mistakenly puts an extra $2.00 on my card instead of deducting it, then tells me, “Ah, forget about it… have a nice day!” So things are looking up in North Carolina. Dan had texted at 8:00 a.m. to say he was in Cincinnati on schedule, so we head back to RDU. I ask Richard if it’s RDU that’s only a written language – or is that Sanskrit? (whoop – whoop – deafening geek alarm) Matthew thought it was spelled Erdu, not Urdu. (No, silly, that’s Perdu, the lost language of Mayan chickens.)

Heading for South Carolina, I do not envy Dan all of this scrunched up traveling in a row with no break. The five hour drive is uneventful. We cross the Pee Dee River. I nap through our second sighting of South of the Border in less than a year (how did THAT happen?). We listen to XM Laugh USA, tired of the negative national news. Once in Aiken, we sense a theme… identically sized horse statues of different colors on gorgeous lawns that peek out from behind low fences. There are definitely two sides to this town. And it looks like the hotel is in the other one...

Richard tells Matthew to turn on Corman Road to get to the Holiday Inn Express. We get all of the luggage out and tromp into the lobby only to be turned away. Because the itinerary actually said to turn at Corporate Road to get to the Howard Johnson Express. Richard is officially fired as the READER of the directions for this trip. And we'll wish we'd stayed here.

Dan sacks out. I buzz the Wal-Mart for the Hartz mice Sitka likes (I wouldn’t go there otherwise for political reasons) and the Dollar Store for sunglasses (I won’t pay a lot for things I keep losing), then hit O’Charley's for dinner. While consuming an amazing steak and bleu cheese salad as big as my head, I read ad-packed local papers and an Augusta-based alternative weekly with some interesting stuff. Lee, a gentleman on his way to work at Bridgestone Tires, says hello across the aisle from me. He says he “feels bad” that I am eating alone.” (I don’t.) I really love to meet people on the road but am always wary of giving out too much information to strangers, you know? This sweet guy tells me he’s “always meeting people on the way out of this town,” and his eyes mist over. It makes me realize that I am ALWAYS on my way out of town, from the minute I arrive. Which fills ME with an odd sadness. He tells me "There isn't much culture here, just golf and horses." I am a stranger in a strange land. The cool horse art photo on the right is from here.

Reading the directions to the venue from the itinerary on Richard’s clipboard (remember, he was fired from that job), I accidentally lift three pages of paper instead of two with my thumb, revealing Richard’s To Do List. There are no verbs on it, just phrases, names, etc. But I have to ask about the entry that sends me hurtling into a Giggle Fit, “Dump.” While fruitlessly trying to grab the clipboard back from me and cursing, Richard explains that he has no city services at his Virginia farm, so he has to cart things in his truck to waste sites. Dan and I are still spasming idiotically as I snark that this entry explains why Richard’s been full of it for so long.

At the Etherredge Center on the campus of the University of South Carolina, Tech Dude/God Teddy's all-student crew keeps him hopping - and he does a quite excellent job of running up and down from the sound console in the house to the upstairs booth making adjustments – I think he lost 10 lbs.! He and Dan geek out (shown at L) over Dan's Star Trek shirt. The show is very conservative – no, we don't do any Joe Wilson jokes (although I thought about yelling “You lie!” when Matthew was giving the audience a brief group history) or refer to “hiking the Appalachian Trail.” But oddly enough, no one reacts when we mention Stephen Colbert, or the fact that we're all missing Rosh Hashanah services this evening (I gave up my usual High Holy Days gig in Beverly Hills to be here). Quietness isn't indicative of anything, although most audiences DO warm up eventually - it just means they are polite, or not used to the informality we bring to the table. It’s sometimes challenging for performers like us, but we never let it affect what we do. The proof is in the post-show reception, where our promoter tells us she loved it, and the program sponsors shower us with praise - they can't wait to talk to us about what we do!

Saturday, 9/19/09

“Well, you can cross ‘Dump’ off of my list for TWO reasons,” Richard says as we load the car, re-triggering the Giggle Fits. Although Dan and I slept well, the Howard Johnson’s was indeed a no-star affair at which I kept my socks on, and Matthew, having locked himself out of his own bathroom at 5am, easily broke the door. At least no snakes crawled up from the “pond” next to the parking lot (see the July 2006 Bob Tale, The Great Air Conditioning Tour).

Following a tip from a wise audience member last night (I get these all the time now!), we head for a Yankee oasis in Aiken: Bagels Baking. The Stern family moved down here from Manhattan about 20 years ago and now run an excellent New York themed business with their partner, “the Grumpy Chef.” We laugh, joke, yak and egg with Mark Stern for about 20 minutes about New York and New Jersey, about which his knowledge, particularly of Metuchen, is astounding. As we drive away, Dan remarks that "Bacon is the only possible substitute for good coffee in the morning."

Bursts of storms chase us up Route 85 but Dan Bob is undeterred. We listen to XM’s NPR NOW and “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” and assorted iPod tunage until, finally, we’re back on Residence Inn Blvd. This time at the Residence Inn! (Whose suites feel like castles after the HoSchmoes.)

Matthew and I head to Food Lion (“So I can cook eggs in my underwear again,” he says – a long-running Bobs in-joke.) I buy Italian cold cuts and cheese, then wait for him by the car, where I realize I am actually quite hungry and start to dig in. Then it dawns on me that I’m standing in a parking lot, eating sliced meat from a bag, which is kind of sad. Clouds gray and ungray above and pickups putt past towards the Dollar Tree.

This afternoon we’re recording a short kids project which I’ve dubbed “The Lion King Sleeps Tonight.” Long time Bobs fans know that even mentioning the Wheem-O-Way to us is not only strictly verboten but will elicit the world-weariest of stares from us. But when we’re hired to do a project, we do it with gusto. In this case in The Residence Inn Studio (Room 822), where we move the mike until the hum from the generator outside isn’t overly loud and keep passing one pair of headphones back and forth. We’ve done this before. In fact, parts of Get Your Monkey of My Dog were recorded at the Best Western in Marshalltown, Iowa during the University of Iowa’s SPOT Residency program we did in 2007. Today, “This is the Way We All Can Learn” quickly becomes an earworm that will haunt our individual attempts to sleep for days to come.

Dinner from Sal’s Italian Restaurant is molto yummo. I spend the night learning to navigate Blogger.com, Facebooking, watching lame TV and not sleeping. This “too hot to sleep” thing is getting annoying, especially since I had the AC set at 60 degrees…

Sunday, 9/20/09

Maura and I head down the street to the aptly named Golden Corral, now an industrial sized buffet overflowing with entire stations of pies, desserts, pancakes, and other sugar and corn syrup-filled selections. Luckily they also have unlimited meat and salad, so we sign up. I gotta say, they sure don’t seem to encourage healthy eating here. I sometimes think it should read “all you SHOULD eat” instead of all you CAN eat.” I don’t know. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I might posit that the corn industry makes bad food cheap so the health care industry can treat the problems it causes, and consumers are literally just the in and out venues for food and money. IF I were a conspiracy theorist. (You know, like that song from Fiddler on the Roof - “deedle daidle deedle dum… etc/”) Anyhoo, it’s great to hear about Maura's new job, especially since she doesn’t have to uproot her family, as she was planning to do last summer. Wish I could hang with Maura more. Twice in one year has been a treat (I got to meet her kids last spring when we played in Carrboro).

WKNC’s Glenn Weeks is brimming with enthusiasm. Apparently he plays our CDs all the time on his Sunday morning show! We give away some tickets to the show tonight and he asks great questions about the evolution of the band. Wish we’d known he was here the past few times we’ve come through North Carolina.

Back at the “studio,” Richard has edited the work we did yesterday into a sweet two minute piece including a cool African groove and rainforest-y percussion. We hope they like it. Sometimes clients can’t verbalize what they want, so you have to glean it from what they passionately tell you what they want. So you try to do exactly what they describe, hoping they don't re-categorize, re-phrase it or change it drastically. It’s like someone telling you all about a really great dog, but you, as a breeder, may be picturing a totally different, equally valid dog that their words implied. Meh - we’ll tweak this next month in Seattle if there’s any problem.

Papa Mojo’s Roadhouse is in the Greenwood Commons Mall. You’d never expect that killer Cajun cuisine and great performances await you in Mel and Diane’s sweet suburban hideaway. BUT THEY DO. Our experience here immediately paints a layer of super fun over the weekend. Uber-fan Bob brings a program from The Bobs’ 1994 show at the Carolina Theater with truly funny program copy written by their then-agent Scott O’Malley. Another brings a vinyl LP of Songs for Tomorrow Morning for signage. The crowd is rowdy. I let loose all of the South Carolina jokes we didn't say to uproarious cheers. A woman in the front row starts mirroring Richard’s infamous hand gestures. Dan characterizes them as a drunk muppet. We christen ourselves as a new band: Death Panel featuring Drunk Muppet. The BBQ bleu cheese salad dressing is beyond amazing. I leap onto nearby chairs for the screaming guitar solo in "White Room." Perhaps we’ve found a new home in North Carolina!

Monday, 9/21/09

I don’t sleep well and am wide awake at 4:10 a.m. before the alarm goes off. Yes, 4:10. The cab dude shows up 10 minutes later to take Matthew, Dan and me to RDU. My throat is killing me, but I may not be getting sick – I’ve just been breathing recycled air for hours on end (and am about to breathe more all day).

It’s gonna be a 22-hour day for me – headed to Seattle for tech week and the opening of the first workshop production of CARL SAGAN’S CONTACT (a new musical version of his book, on which the movie was based), for which I was commissioned to write the lyrics.

6:00 a.m. RDU to Charlotte, then we race across the Charlotte airport for the 7:35 a.m. to Seattle. Too nauseous to eat until at least 8:00 a.m. The planes are packed to the lip, way too hot and uncomfortable as always. We will land at 10:15 am Pacific Time, at which point we’ll already have been up for 9 hours.

Confession: I STILL LOVE THIS LIFE.

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This pic was taken in the Nashville airport last month... Bob Malone and I were on the same flight back to Los Angeles, having rocked the Wildhorse Saloon and BB King's together at the 2009 Just Plain Folks Awards. We performed together and with other acts in the showcase and awards shows, but both struck out in our nominated categories - him for Male Singer/Songwriter and Pop Album, me for Best Modern Rock Song and Female Singer/Songwriter for my solo album, and The Bobs for 3 others. Exhausted, Bob and I thought this plush snake was a mirage, but no... it beckoned from the Nashville Zoo store. How could I not buy it? SNAKES ON A PLANE!