Life in a Van Part 1
(The Shotgun Wedding Quintet head out on tour with Zion I, Grouch, and Blu)
The road is vast and the country is beautiful. Oregon flies by in the windows as green leaves and gray branches with clear cut hills beyond the tree line. Washington is the same with clear rushing rivers that follow along with us and then criss cross around under us and back around again. Cows stand passively chewing their cud as we rush by. They don't know this is our first national tour and don't care. Many bands have driven by these pastures looking for dues paid and glory made and the cows didn't care then either.
It wasn't until we hit Eugene that I realized we were really on our way. After driving out of Arcata the night before we had gone farther than we had ever gone in Blue, the whole band together, the cooler stocked with food and beers, merch and CDs smashed together and cracked in the back with the instruments and the sleeping bags, and all of Blue smelling like hot man breath and ass.
For those confused: Blue is the van. Blue has driven The Shotgun Wedding Quintet all over California for the last few years. She is a Dodge Ram, assembled in 1996, and, obviously, painted Blue. This gets confusing because there's a rapper on tour with us named Blu, and sometimes one of the band will come out of the club and say: "Hey! Where's Blue?!" and someone trying to be helpful will point at the rapper Blu and say; "There he is!" and the Shotgun member will shake his head and the helpful person will be confused and it's all just a stupid misunderstanding.
So, like I said, the Blue I'm referring to is the van (unless I refer to the rapper Blu who is a great guy) and she has driven us around southern California, and up into the Sierras and she has served us well, but now we're pushing her harder then she has ever been pushed. On this tour so far she has driven us up through Oregon, across the border all the way up through Washington, down through Montana and Idaho, and is now transporting us across the frosty valleys of Utah. She has a long way to go but hasn't faltered yet. We love her and admire her and realize this tour wouldn't be possible without her.
The other obvious factor that has allowed us to take the open road: Zion I and The Grouch. It's a big chance they took on us having us play every show with them and then have the guys in the band back up their set. Every show has been sold out pretty much and that hasn't had much to do with us outside California. The Shotgun Wedding Quintet are a complete bunch of unknowns beyond the northern Golden State so that means all those kids and men and women are coming out to see Z&G and of course Blu. They don't need us which makes it a very generous oppertunity they've allowed us.
Beyond that: for all they know we could have been a bunch of drunken, vibe flashing, tar sniffing assholes that would have mucked up the whole trip, and although there is an element of that to our band, we haven't let any of it hang out while we've been on the road. We've been professional, showing up to the clubs on time and setting up and rocking the crowd as hard as we can. There's still three weeks to go so let me knock on a little wood right now.
It took us about four shows to figure out how the set should work. On the fourth night we had it cracking with the hands in the air and the folks at the merch table asking for a copy of the album from that first band. It wasn't really like that the first few nights but I'll get into that in another entry. Right now Zumbie and Grouch are checking their mics and the monitors are feeding back like crazy. More to come later.
-Dublin 03-29-11
