The Saga of Asphalt, Green Grass and the Poisoned Mind Part 4...

We performed at gig somewhere near Champagne, Illinois. I say somewhere because I don't know. I'm not trying to be coolly vague, just simply haven't a clue. When we arrived to our location, it was a winery. One would be quick to guess what the evening would be like and you would be most likely wrong.

First, the proprietors set us up with a campfire, with brats, picnic foods, marshmallows, chocolate bars, graham crackers... Wow. I was 12 years old again...which means I aged 4 years, because normally I feel like I'm 8 years old when I'm on tour.

Cooking our food with metal skewers over the fire...I easily get hypnotized staring into the fire. A fire kicks T.V.'s ass. Fire was the first television and in my opinion still is one of the most powerful visuals on Earth. Throw in the ocean, the sun, the moon, trees blowing in wind, a smile, those twinkly eyes we rarely show, birds flying...fuck television. Fuck the internet. We're missing it. We're missing everything.

I'm typing all this on my phone sadly...why am I doing this? Yea...I had a lot more to ramble about, but right now...at this moment...I need to be here. Listening to the frogs and the fire tell me their secrets and sing me songs of love, death, and sex.

Yea...gotta go.

The Saga of Asphalt, Green Grass, and the Poisoned Mind Part 3...

The dreaded empty show. No one's showed up. Five to ten people including the workers at the club. The most important gig you can play. This is the testing point. What you really bring to the show, when nothing is given back. If you can kill this show, ALL shows will be killed. This is the goal. Why drive ten hours to be mediocre? Why sacrifice income, relationships, and sanity to just show up and get by? Hell no. Damn no. Fuck no. Not me.

I had a talk with an artist last night after a gig in Kansas City at Davy's Uptown. She asked me, what do I get from my art. Get? Wrong and dangerous question. Get? There is no "get". It's about GIVE. You give and that's it. Give the truth. The truth of the moment. Anyone using "get" as the impetus for doing art is in for a world of unhappiness with super-special-mind-fuck-sauce.

We give until we die, and even then...even then we keep on giving. Art is to remind us that we are forever connected and bound to each other. The idea that "we are alone" is a sour-faced lie. We are never alone because we are permanently connected in the fabric of life, stars, gingham table cloth, dust, universe, etc. Good art brings us together.

Oh yea...back to my point...the empty nightmare show. Give what you've got and leave nothing left inside. You will be refilled and renewed to give the next day, and if you're not, tough shit and give it all you can anyway. It's what we do.

The Saga of Asphalt, Green Grass and the Poisoned Mind Part 2...

It's a rain day. Heading across Kansas. It's quiet time in the van. Everyone catching up on emails, texts, sleep or quietly typing out tweets and blogs. The homosexual double entendre innuendos have settled down....for now. Yes...we get in touch with our feminine side in the van. I mean...no one's pitching or catching...but we'll talk about it a lot. Pushing our boundaries and laughing every moment of the way. But like I said, it's quiet time. Our six year old kids inside us have taken a nap. No potty humor or farts are wielded in expert fashion. We're all grown up. Driving a fully loaded van through a down pour is serious business.

Out the window in Kansas there seems to be a preoccupation of Fireworks and Porn shops. Perhaps this is where Perry Ferrel named his band Porno for Pyros? Hmmmm...either way porn and fireworks is not what comes to mind when one drives through Kansas on Interstate 70. In fact, nothing comes to mind. Desolate, void of distraction and visual hyperbole. A Zen master's wet dream. When there is nothing, everything appears. That's how my brain works anyway. It's how I've always been. Give me nothing and I'll get everything. Creation out of nothingness. A gift. One everyone is given, but if rarely used it can become forgotten that in our little world, we can become a God. There I said it. A God. Mmmmm...panties in twist. So many scared fragile folks out there willing to kill me to save me.

Oooh look....a break in the clouds...I did wish it so...was it me? Nah...but it does mean a small respite from the storm and a few new texts have been sent my way...it has begun again. Hello blue...I've missed you.

The Saga of Asphalt, Green Grass, and the Poisoned Mind Part 1...

The road. I'm on it. Few can take it for long. The romantic notions of being in a car/van for weeks/months is thought dreamily to many, and to 99.9% the reality is much harsher, disorientating, confusing, even nightmarish. The idea of literally being in a different city everyday with no end in sight is not natural for people. Not knowing what day, time, or place you are when you wake up unnerves the strongest of us. To be floaty. No stability and structure. Days and events blur into what seems like a dream from a long time ago but it was only yesterday.

To the other .1% of the population... it is Heaven. This is me. I am in my "happy place". I was built for this. Ever since I was a small child being in a car driven around by my mom to all the National Parks, my family moving 13 times by the time I was 11 years old due to the Army and then job transfers my father had to say yes to. When we got in our station wagon, it was ADVENTURE! Sights of the country rolling by my window, cars filled with people and their complicated lives bustling to a far off land. When you're on the road, your life isn't complicated anymore. It comes down to this... Where are we going? What do we have to do to get there? And finally the best part... being completely open to whatever the world lays at your feet, or what slaps you in the face. Everything. Everyday awaits a chance to meet new people, new land, new hope, and deeper knowledge about yourself. It is this last attribute the scares the living hell out everyone. Our perception/outlook/philosophy is tested to the breaking point. Life at full speed! Damn I get watery-eyed just thinking about it. Chills. Child-like excitement. With the pre-eminent thought of... what's next _____? (fill in the blank) The word could be World, Universe, God, Fate, Will, the Great OM... whatever you lay yourself open wide to. To submit to. In submission, freedom is found. This is a strong submission, meaning... standing tall, fearless of the fall, full commitment and full knowing. There is no death-spiral, but a life flight!

Oh World/Universe/God/Fate/Will/the Great OM! I give myself the thee!

Crayola Crayons and Kleenex...

Olfactory memory. The strongest of all time warps. One whiff and I transport to another time and place. I have learned to know certain sensory triggers that affect me deeply...and I use it.

When my creative flow has stopped to halt that no industrial strength mental Immodium can cure, I enlist. I entreat the odor d' inspiriti...I bring out the Crayola crayons and Kleenex tissues.

These items work for me. Probably not you. Yours might be Play Dough and Tang Orange Drink. When I smell those crayons I loved and all those coloring books I filled up in my childhood. They smell of magic and fairy tales. So deeply are they in me, I stir still...forever wandering in awe of the Black Forest of my mind.

The Kleenex tissues smell exactly like my first guitar case made of pressed wood, glue and plastic fake fur. Yum!!! My excitement for my new found expression of electricity coupled with wood, steel and blood called a Gibson Flying V...I shiver just remembering. The power and depth of those first mangled chords of truth could lay waste all of my troubled and abused youth. Anything was possible. Escape was my desperate desire, and it was showered upon me in shards of distortion, flange, and delays.

That smell of my guitar case floods my nervous system into overdrive. I am transported to a place of ultimate freedom and safety. For some wonderful strange reason, Brand new Kleenex boxes smell exactly the same to me. And because of this I can submerge at will into the deep aqueous liquid of pure innocent joy. I fucking love you Kleenex and Crayola. I wanna bottle all of my magic scents and keep them in a tackle box for emergency emotional olfactory use.

I'll call it my "Moonbeam Dream Box"...