The last day of any tour is always bittersweet. It’s often difficult to keep up the energy you’ve put out in every other city knowing that you’re so close to rejoining your everyday life. You’ll do anything you can to make sure you don’t deliver a stinker of a show as your last memory of the tour. Drinking a bunch of really good free beer is usually helpful. Thankfully, our last show was at the Schlafly Tap Room, and they gave us a bunch of great beers for free.
Two years ago when we went on tour, we got set up on a last-minute save our asses show in Tulsa at a DIY space called the Monolith (RIP). While we had fun, it was far from an ideal experience. We played with a lot of, um, “sensitive” bands and we discovered the hard way that you can’t buy cold carryout beer due to Oklahoma’s archaic liquor laws. So we weren’t really sure what to expect when we came back, since our initial impression was that Tulsa was lacking in rockin’ fun times.
We were wrong. Way wrong. Way, way wrong.
Pop’s.
The turnaround is the hardest part of any tour; you get to the point where you’re as far away from home as you’re going to get and have to confront the conflict of missing home and wishing the tour would never end. We pointed the freshly dented Silver Fox toward the east and put the pedal down through West Texas. All hail.
It’s easy to lose oneself in the landscape out here, an expanse of bluffs and vistas stretching without human interruption and limited only by the distant horizon. The waypoint towns are unwelcome except for their necessary purpose. Imagine this land before “civilization,” untamed and enchanting, an environment nearly unfit for settlement and inhospitable to travel through it. This is what we conquered. This is what we needed to shed blood for. This is the spoils of manifest destiny. And we build strip malls.
On tour, you end up stopping at a lot of gas stations for pee breaks, snacks, and gas, of course. About a half hour outside of Lubbock, we were at a gas station when a couple came up to our van and the woman asked if we were a band. We said “yes,” to which she asked “Christian or Country?”
Do you know where you are?
The West.
The Salt Lick, Driftwood, TX. Our server’s name was Sean. Kyle saw a snake in the bathroom. We got meat sweats.
Austin. The Live Music Capital of the World. We lined up a great show with lots of friends at a great venue. All we have to do is get there and sing our songs.
What could possibly go wrong?
WTF
The Big Easy is famous/infamous/notorious for great food, colorful characters, and booze. You bet your ass we got all three.
The Kyle Sowashes are four bearded buddies from Columbus, Ohio. We like to rock and eat and drive.
Dan Bandman - drums
Lonn Schubert - bass
Kyle Sowash - vocals, guitar
Justin Hemminger - guitar, vocals
