Headed East, Day 1 – “Pretty Bag, Head Case & The Nook” – July 14, 2000
“You Guys wanna eat here or wait til Lincoln?” Kenny yells from the driver’s seat over Jimmy Smith’s Chicken Shack. We look out the tinted windows at Nebraska. “Arby’s, McDonald’s, Wendy’s” Soucy reads aloud from the available billboards.
“I can wait,” says Kyle lifting his head momentarily from his miniature Saga golf game.
“Yeah, Let’s wait ’til Lincon,” chimed in Delucchi who up til that point had been passed out on the floor under the back seat next to the CDs. I haven’t attempted to sleep in “The Nook” yet but the guys tell me it’s quite comfortable. Kyle discovered “The Nook” midway through our last West Coast tour. I thought we’d accidentally left him back at some gas station and was freaking out when I looked back and only counted 3 heads. But in fact, Kyle had crawled under the back seat to chase his headphones and, finding it comfortable, stayed down there for a nap. I can’t imagine it’s very relaxing to be wedged next to the wheel well, in between boxes of CDs, bags, shoes, stickers, and empty fast food bags but I’ll give “The Nook” a shot next time I get tired enough. Why not?
“Lincoln it is.” Replied Kenny as we rolled past exit 353
“Wasn’t The Sod Museum around here somewhere?” asked Soucy. The House of Sod was a Museum we’d stumbled across last year around this time. Like “The Nook,” we’d stumbled upon it by accident tucked into the back parking lot of some gas station. The museum was in a building made of dried dirt and grass and showcased random artifacts like a mammoth’s tooth and a buffalo statue made out of a mile’s worth of barbed wire. We looked for signs for the museum for a while with no luck.
“Probably got mowed down,” I said.
“Or got smoked” Said Delucchi at which point we all laughed and stopped looking.
Dinner in Lincoln was hot. It was a scorching 98 degrees at night. We stopped at The Main Street Café and got some grub: French onion soup which was really just warm, brown, oily water with some slabs of unmelted cheese. We watched The World’s Strongest Man competition on a TV over the jukebox playing “Dyslexic Heart.” My favorite! No kidding. I love to watch those huge guys lift Flintstone-like objects over their heads or walk with cars slung over their shoulders.
The sunset was remarkable on the road and Kyle video taped it like it wasn’t an everyday occurrence. Orange crush and crimson saturated the sky, reaching, but not touching, the cool blue pool the stars were straggling toward for their nightly skinny dip. I was tangled in the black ink of the last pages of my book “Memoirs of a Geisha” which I unfortunately had to finish just as we pulled up to the hotel lobby in Iowa at 1:00 am.
“You need ‘Pretty Bag’ Sal?” Asked Kenny grabbing bags out of the back. (Coincidentally it’s Kenny’s birthday tomorrow).
“Sure I do,” I said. “Pretty Bag” has all my shampoos and nail polishes and lotions and I take it on every tour except the short ones for which I only need “Pretty Bags” little sister: “Handsome bag,” a Soucy term, which is black and white and shiny and striped and charmingly cheesy. With so much extra time in the van, we get around to naming almost everything!
Kyle’s Hardware case is “The Coffin of Death.”
My guitar amenity case is “Head Case.”
And the Van is obviously “Moby.” We’ve got more names for inanimate objects but I can’t think of them right now. I can’t think of much of anything right now. I’m too exhausted. Tour De France is on the TV and the electric alarm clock red reads 2:00. Here’s to the first night at our series of “Home-tels” across the East Coast of America.
Good night.
For anyone interested in what our tour itinerary looks like, this is it. After advancing all our gigs, Delluchi makes these cute little books and hands them out at the start of a tour. Here you’ll see notes on our distances between gigs, where we’re staying the night, if a meal is provided and how long we’re expected to play, along with other fin little notes. I dog-ear each day completed. It gives me a sense of pride and relief to do so. Here’s what you can look forward to, though I doubt I will write about every show. Sometimes there’s not a lot worth writing about after all.
A Typical Tour Itinerary
