Adventure #88: Caldwell, ID and Sacramento, CA

“No, Nathan, we don't have time to stop at every abandoned building and take pictures.”

“But I wanna...”

“No! We're already running late and we've already stopped at 3 abandoned farm houses today.”

“But it's what I do! It's my thing. It's mine. It's...my precious...”

“Don't care. We don't have time.”

“Fine. [gollum] Asshole.”

This conversation was had out loud. After a few weeks on the road by yourself you start to turn into Gollum. This is Pen Pen stopping anyway.

 Driving alone without anyone to talk to through the mountains for 6 hours, 8 hours, 10 hours a day, and you start to understand that woman on the street who talks to herself. Just loudly enough so you know she knows you hear her. Just quietly enough that you're pretty sure it might be about you. I've often wondered what happened to get someone to that place. It turns out they were touring singer songwriters. All of them. Next time you see someone talking to themselves on the street, ask for a copy of their EP. The piano ballad; track 4? It's actually pretty solid. This is Pen Pen and another abandoned farm house.

New York Nathan barely tolerates whatever it is about him that makes people on the subway think “This guy! This guy with the headphones on, who is clearly focused on writing something in his notebook. This is the guy I should talk to!” But Touring Nathan? He revels in it. Oh? I remind you of your son? Your grandson? Your great grandson? Tell me more! Do you have pictures? You have a dog, too? Do you have pictures of your dog? (I kind of hate dogs, but I love listening to people talk about their dogs. They get so excited about the most mundane things and it's just great.) This is Pen Pen, this time at an abandoned stable!

The show in Caldwell is fun, but definitely small. But the conversation all night is great. And honestly, at this point in the tour, I'm more interested in having some human interaction than performing. Both is the sweet spot, obviously. But 3 weeks in and having driven some 5000 miles by myself? I'll gladly take a night of talking comparative religion and anarchism with some friends I don't get to see often. This is Pen Pen also liking abandoned cars!

Driving south through the mountains the next day to Sacramento is beautiful, but dull. A meaner person would make a joke about some of the people they've dated. I'm not that person. Neither is Pen Pen. He's a penguin, not a person. This is Pen Pen and his ex.

It's amazing the way trees appear almost the second I cross the Nevada-California border. After 8 hours staring at desert brush, trees are a welcome sight. It's as if they're adhering to some ancient treaty.

“OK, fine, California. You guys get all the trees, but we get all the casinos and whores.”

“That sounds like a fair trade, Nevada.”

“Then we declare these borders official!”

“Ha! I tricked you, Nevada, for we have Los Angeles, where young artists gamble their futures and whore themselves out to entertainment companies instead of making that super personal short film about their grandfather they've been talking about since they were kids! AND WE HAVE TREES.”

Nevada shakes it's fist angrily at the sky, for it knows it has been duped. This is Pen Pen and Nevada's famed tree (just kidding, this picture was taken in California; Nevada doesn't have trees, jackass)...

This is a song David Bowie wrote one time. I like this song.

Adventure #46 - 48: Summer Tour 2012 Salt Lake City, Boise, and Richland

After a few days of (not always positive) excitement, it was kind of nice to have a string of unspectacular but certainly good shows. We left Rock Springs, Wyoming with a layover at the Community College which is interspersed with a dinosaur museum. How could you get any work done in school when there's always a T-Rex like 10 feet away? It just seems irresponsible. Dinosaurs are too awesome to just be hanging around. If going to the Natural History Museum didn't involve putting on pants and going outside and then paying for it wouldn't we all just be there all the time? Or is that just me? Nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd. This the most dangerous flightless bird in history, and a T-Rex.

Our show in Salt Lake City was small, but fun. I played Tin Angel last year and had a great time, so it seemed like a good idea to hit it up again. It was big gear shift from previous shows, going from being the raucous center of attention at punk houses to being pleasant background music while rich people eat expensive (and delicious) food. But everyone was super nice, especially Laura the manager (who is a fantastic jewelry artist), and I finally got a chance to see the Great Salt Lake. Which was, you know, big and salty. This is Pen Pen pretty annoyed that Brigham Young brought him all the way out here and the water's not even drinkable.

Boise (Caldwell, technically) was a house show, and one of the bigger bands in the area (my new nemesis Tartufi) was doing a last minute show and basically sapped the audience. So we played to 6 people, but at least they were 6 people who sang along and heckled in all the right ways. The people who live there are in the first year of growing an organic garden, and most of the food they had was homegrown. So the show may not have been all that but the food definitely was. This is Pen Pen and what I can only assume are watermelons.

We hit the road and headed up to the appropriately named Richland, Washington to play a vineyard. Monday shows are pretty universally terrible wherever you play them. A Monday at a good venue is pretty much a waste of an evening, unless it's a place where you already have a big audience. So I took a cue from a friend and decided to try booking a vineyard show. Because if you're going to play to no-one, you might as well get well paid, well fed, and well boozed. And we did. So what if basically the only people who watched was a waitress and her parents? Though there was an epic moment when two 8 year old boys got up to dance around while I played “Oh! What a Captain of Industry” that made the whole thing worth it. Actually, just the food made the whole thing worth it. So the past 3 days have been filled with unspectacular shows, but pretty damn spectacular (and all organic!) food. And after 2 weeks of eating Subway and gas station egg salad sandwiches (no word yet on whether I've been infested with brain-enhancing parasites. But I wont know for sure until I can get a holophoner.) that was a trade off I could live with. This is Pen Pen totally selling out.

This is a song I wrote one time. You should download it and share with your friends.