The first thing to occur was late morning, New Mexico time, when I got a phone call from Eric.
"Hey, could you do us a favor? Our GPS system went down and we've got a six hour drive to Aspen, Colorado. Can you go to traffic.com and at least get us some initial directions? Pick the option that says fastest route."
"Okay," I said, frantically typing in locations. Holy crap. There were fifteen different steps and over 300 miles. I got the brilliant idea, after Eric tried writing all this stuff down, to email the directions to his cell phone.
Everything was going fine until they hit four feet of snow and they learned the main drag supplied to us by the evil traffic.com was only open between Memorial Day and Labor Day due to said copious amounts of snow which naturally traffic.com neglected to mention.
I swear, both Mapquest and Traffic.com are the tools of Satan! The last time I used Mapquest, Gary, who has built in radar in his body and doesn't even usually need directions, ended up with me in some bumfuck town in Connecticut instead of Vermont where we were headed because when Mapquest told us to get off the road at Exit 80, they left out one important detail: they meant Exit 80 in Vermont, not the one which pops up first on the very same road in Connecticut.
But I digress...
Despite the devil that is traffic.com, our heroes prevailed, bought a road atlas, the GPS system was restored, and they were safely on their way albeit not in time for sound check though as fate would have it, sound check appeared to be out of the question, anyway.
Because tour manager Andre Cholmondeley and engineer extraordinaire John Sinks, traveling separately in a cargo van containing all of the band's equipment, were not s fortunate as Ade, Julie and Eric. Nope, Andre and John were involved in a rock slide and while luckily unharmed, they ended up with two flat tires and possible axle damage on a snowy mountain road.
Yes, a rock slide. So far this band has been involved in an earthquake, a typhoon, a blizzard, and while I nervously joked "What's next, an erupting volcano?" a rock slide never even entered my mind.
But then again, why would it. A fucking rock slide. Though I can only guess where my imagination will lead me now.
So anyway, the gear had to be placed on a flatbed truck and towed. I think that's what happened, anyway. My phone call with Eric was brief though hilarious -- Eric was actually in a good head, even telling me that the prior evening's Santa Fe show was a blast despite the fact that he had no drum rug and all of his equipment kept sliding across the stage.
Ah, the life of touring musicians.
There's another piece to this story which I hope turns out okay - I'll have to let you know once I talk to someone, but not only would they have no sound check, the Belly Up in Aspen has a 10:00 p.m. curfew and the room had to be completely cleared out by that time. That totally freaked me out -- isn't Aspen a party town teeming with celebrities? Why the curfew? Was the club in a residential, exclusive neighborhood? Ah...God bless the internet - it took me all of five seconds to find out why. At 10:00 p.m. the club goes disco, with dancing and a d.j. Bleh! I felt immediately bad for the fans in attendance because that had to mean Adrian, Julie and Eric didn't get to do their usual meet and greet after the show where they always hang out a minimum of one hour talking to fans, taking pictures, autographing CDs, posters, and t-shirts...I wonder if they found another place to move the "party" or the band simply headed back to the hotel, where, it's my guess, after a day of driving and what had to be at least a modicum of stress, even for a band as loose and carefree as this one, they either hit the hotel bar hard or went to their respective rooms and were sound sleep by midnight.
I know I'm a bad mom but I hope they got to hang in the bar. I mean, hang with fans. Ha!
Anyway, here's some more fun photos from sound check at Phoenix, Arizona, sent to me by Joel Klein, who is also responsible for the pic of the trio I posted above.
The very last one features Julie, Eric, and promoter Danny Zelisko, who may have something VERY SPECIAL planned for the trio this December...but I'm not allowed to say anything yet.
Anyway, that's it for now. I'm still hoping for some reviews from New Mexico and Aspen and if I find any, I will come in and add them to this post..but in the meantime, if you are in the Boulder, Colorado area, you can catch the trio tonight at the Fox Theatre.
Later,
xo
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