The Galt Line Beer and Sausages Tour Day 17

The Indianapolis 500 (minutes of torture)

In the night, the plains slide by without you noticing them. One might blow by miles of highway without noticing. Only Chicago broke the monotony while we drove through the night to Indianapolis. Stars speckled the sky, and near dawn, a series of red lights rotated against the sky, showing the outline of giant rotors slowly turning on a wind farm.

Blythe took over the driving at a truck stop, and pulled us into a shady and green campsite. After some quick business in the office, we were in our site, pitching the tent, then crashing for several hours. The heat woke us around noon, and we fixed a quick lunch on the picnic table while we figured out the details of the night’s show.

Indianapolis, as far as I could tell, is a collection of closed, two story shops, and torn streets. The Melody Inn, our venue for the evening, is in a strip of empty stores on an otherwise abandoned street. We waited outside, meeting the members of Jeff Randall and The Sunday Best, until someone arrived to open the place. Melody Inn is awesome inside. The walls are covered with all sorts of crazy bits of punky Americana. There was a low stage just inside the door, and a long bar on the opposite wall. Also there was a lounge in the back, and through a door, a large garden.

Dave, owner and the evening’s bartender, gave us a few beers while we watched Cootie Crabtree set up. Cootie is the guy who set up the evening. He put together an impromptu band, and did a hot set of country originals, and rootsy covers. Everyone sat in very well, and the music was good. Cootie very kindly announced us before handing over the stage.

We set up fast and launched into our tunes. There wasn’t really anyone there, so we didn’t get much of a reaction. The guys in Sunday Best had mostly stepped out, and the 2 people at the bar were talking together about something else.  Cootie clapped loud for us and tried to get the small crowd to be engaged a bit. Still, we went through our set just the same, and came to a close. Dave, owner, and Mike, sound guy, seemed to like us alright. As did a friend of Cootie’s and the girlfriend of the bass player in Sunday Best.

Jeff Randall and The Sunday Best got up next, and played a classic rock styled, southern flavored set. The night was over in no time. Cootie kept apologizing about the small turnout, but we explained that we were tired from the overnight drive, and that it was a Sunday anyway, and that it was our first time in Indy.

On our way back, we hit Wal-Mart for some breakfast for the next day, as well as some $3 wine. In no time we were laying in the tent, reading a copy of The Onion that Blythe picked up in Chicago.

Tomorrow… Pancakes, bacon, coffee, wine, laundry, and work.

The Galt Line Beer and Sausages Tour Day 16

Bring em in to the Bremen Café

We found some showers at our campsite. After scrubbing ourselves, we were ready to hit the town. A short drive brought us into Milwaukee. We still had all day though. We couldn’t just wait outside of the venue all day. Instead we found a little coffee shop called Rochambo. They had strong coffee, as well as some beer, wine, and coffee based cocktails.

With coffee mugs in front of us, we answered emails and posted blogs for several hours. Next we walk through the streets, seeing sidewalk cafes and restaurants, marinas on the lakefront, and high rise condos. This was a side of Milwaukee that we hadn’t seen before. This was a nice afternoon.

When the time came, we jumped into the van and motored across town to the River West neighborhood. Bremen Café is nestled in the ground floor of a boarding house style building. Inside is a curved bar behind which sits a pretty good sized beer selection. The interior is wood walled, covered in neon beer signs and posters advertising local art openings and concerts. There’s a large chalkboard suspended over the bar communicating the specials for the evening.

We were greeted by Phil and Ryan of 4th Street Elevator. They were opening for us in this evening with some Gypsy Jazz. They introduced us to the bartender, Meghan, and the owner David. Everyone was sitting out on the street, drinking beers. This seemed like our sort of place. Soon we were loaded in, beers in hand, and were meeting everyone around. People were very nice, and everyone seemed to be involved in a band or some studio doing visual art. This was clearly a pretty hip crowd.

Phil and Ryan stepped up and slid through a bunch of jazz standards, a Dave Grisman tune, and some originals. They were very slick. While they were playing, our friends Rick and Sarah popped up. They had seen us the first time we played in Milwaukee, gave us a spot to play for our second, and were now here to see us on our third. They kindly brought some friends along, and before long, the bar was packed.

We stepped up, and played for 2 ½ hours. It was awesome, though exhausting. Unfortunately, the bartender kept telling us to turn it down. The crowd understood however, and stuck with us right to the end. Ryan passed a jar around for tips for us. We also sold some shirts, and so made a good bit of cash. We stuck around for 2 hours, talking to everyone in the place, basking in compliments and finding out what everyone’s been up to for a year. There were many offers of places to stay, but we declined in favor of driving through the night toward Indianapolis, where we were playing the next day. We talked while we drove, about Milwaukee, and how the place has grown on us since that first, terrible show at Linneman's.

Tomorrow… Melody Inn, Cootie Crabtree, and a perfect place to spend a day.

The Galt Line Beer and Sausages Tour Day 15

Which way does the Horseshoe go again?

After a short breakfast with Austin, we sat down at The House Café to watch CMKT4 back up a very odd act. A man named Gary Mullis lives in DeKalb. He writes songs. Lots of them. He’s an older man, as tall as I am, with white hair, apparent energy, and a distant stare. When he greeted me that morning, he asked me if I was with the newspaper. He was wearing a loose fitting cowboy shirt, old jeans, and a leather fanny pack filled with scraps of paper on which were written the lyrics to his tunes.

He sang, sort of, while CMKT4 clung to his rhythms with authentic sounding country music. Gary likes country a lot. One of his tunes consisted of him telling the story of Hank Williams' life while Zach bent country lead lines, and Jeff and Austin held down a country shuffle. Gary doesn’t exactly sing, or exactly recite. He rolls through his tunes like a loose cannon on a tilting ship. Between songs he talked to the audience candidly about receiving awards for his songwriting, and invited any members of the press to come up and look at his awards. It was a crazy show.

Afterwards we departed, somewhat reluctantly for Chicago. Much to Neha’s chagrin, I’m sure, I don’t really like Chicago. At least I don’t like playing there very much… so far. Maybe we just haven’t found our spot. Well, we headed in anyway, knowing that this might be a strange night. We pulled up to the curb outside the venue about 2 hours early. We popped in to check out the place and say hi to whoever was running the night.

A woman was leaning on the wooden bar, checking her email. She looked surprised when we walked in. “You guys want food or something?”

“Um, no thank you,” Blythe said. “We’re actually playing here tonight. We wanted to check in and look around.”

“Ah” said the woman.

“Are you Eva?” I asked. We had discussed the details of the show on the ride in, and Blythe recalled that it was Eva who had booked the show with us.

“Yes” said Eva.

“Oh, then we’ve been talking to you on email.” Blythe said cheerfully.

Eva only nodded. We introduced ourselves, and ducked out of the dim bar room and onto the sunny street. With some time to kill, we thought we might walk the neighborhood and find a more comfortable place to hide out. Walking the streets, we found a diner with some cheap food. After some hefty chicken salad sandwiches and potato soup served by and ancient and slow Russian woman, we hoofed it back to the bar.

The sound guy, Chris, had arrived. We loaded in and told Chris how we wanted to do our sound. Pretty soon, Root Hog began showing up. I tried to greet some of them at the door, but they walked right past me without looking at me. After they had set up a little Blythe and I approached them together. Now that we had gotten their attention, we decided on set order and some set up details, and got to talking about the band. I had asked them on the bill because of some tracks I heard on the internet. Apparently the guy responsible for them had to leave the band.

They didn’t seem too interested in what we were doing, but were nice enough and set up quickly. Sound guy Chris did a quick and efficient sound check for us, and we were off. We played a very tight 45 minute set to a crowd of about 12 completely apathetic people. Most of Root Hog left during our set. We were treated to silence at the end of all of our tunes. Chris liked us alright. We loaded out as fast as we could, grabbed a beer and strapped in for Root Hog’s set.

Once we sat down, a number of people came up to us and said they enjoyed our set. Root Hog laid into some classic rock based, but jazzy jams. We stayed until our beer was done, but felt a little too bitter to hang out much longer. We said our goodbyes to Eva and Chris, and started the journey toward Milwaukee to find a campsite.

During the ride we talked over our future in the great city of Chicago. None of the places we had played so far were worth going back to for us. Austin, from CMKT4 had mentioned a few spots we might try. I think we’ll exhaust the list of spots we can play and then never go in to Chicago again. Its sort of like our experience with NYC.

The Long straight highway cooled our brains, and in a short 90 minutes, we were at our campsite. It was a quiet, family oriented county park, with watchful rangers. We passed out fast, ready to cleanse our palettes with a show in Milwaukee the next day.

Tomorrow… A draw in a far away town, a real live Gypsy, I think, and Milwaukee surprises us again.

Our new merch set up in the dark

The Galt Line Beer and Sausages Tour Day 13 and 14

At home in the House Café

Day 13 was a day off. What does a day off look like for The Galt Line. Well, there was a lot of microwave food and $3 bottles of wine. There was plenty of work on the computer, and lots of cable TV. We worked and napped and drank. I pounded through some blogs while Blythe changed the strings on the uke. I also pounded through too much wine, and found my head pounding when the sun came stomping across our room in the morning.

We gathered our things, checked out, and pointed the van out of town toward DeKalb. Some friends of ours, CMKT4, set up a show for us at their hometown spot, The House Café. This venue serves coffee, tea and sandwiches, along with some good beers. They have shows nearly every night. Being right on the main drag, and near Northern Illinois University, it has a nice built-in crowd of music appreciators.

CMKT4 had set us up on a night with local songwriter Bill Leighly, Songstress Aura Weaver, and country madness group King of the Demons. We felt pretty good about this night, and were eager for a good show after our two recent, more awkward shows.

When we rolled in to town, we met Austin, Jeff, and Zach at House Café, loaded some stuff in, and greeted some familiar faces. With some time to kill, we rolled over to Zach’s house, met his wife Heather, and his two energetic young boys Seth and Miles. We hung out in the kitchen and bullshitted for a while before going on back to The House for a beer, some food, and music.

Bill Leighly started the night off with some cool band arrangements of his tunes, with some truly badass fiddle and guitar. Next up, Aura fascinated us with her strange songs and wild delivery. We jumped up to play a very hot and short set. The drummer from Bill’s band sat in on djembe for a tune. The crowd was good to us. We loaded off as fast as we could to make room for CMKT4, who delivered a tight set of earthy-but-electronic acid rock. Last up was King of the Demons, who totally crushed it with very amped up country music.

It was a pretty nice night over all, easy and efficient. We went over to Austin’s to celebrate. Blythe, Zach, Austin, and I cracked beers and discussed taking bands on the road, the obstacles and advantages. Soon after Zach ducked out for the night, Austin capped off the night by showing us how he had trained his giant cat, Yoda, to play the piano. It was totally golden. Then we slept.

Tomorrow… Gary Mullis, Chicago again, getting brushed off by Root Hog, and camping in Milwaukee.

The Galt Line Beer and Sausages Tour Day 12

 Attack of the Lake Villains from Lake Villa

When we woke, there was a breakfast to be had. Climbing out of the tent, we found the sky pearly white with thin, rolling clouds. On the picnic table in our site, neatly tied in a shopping bag, was left-overs from last night, along with some eggs we bought. We woke, stretched, and began preparing a breakfast of scrambled eggs, peppers, onions, mushrooms, biscuits, turkey bacon and sausage.

 Coffee was percolating, and turkey bacon was sizzling when they sky grew suddenly dark. “Cook faster” we both said, and frantically prepared our food so we could throw it in one our enamel pots and carry it off to the car before it began raining. When we had rolled up our tent and slammed the door of the van shut, it poured.

We ate breakfast in the front seat of the van while watching the thunder and lightning, and listening to an obscure jazz channel low down on the dial. “I guess we’ll head toward Lake Villa. You know, because of the rain” Blythe said in understatement. We put aside our pot of biscuits, bacon, sausage, peppers, onions, mushrooms, and eggs, and hit the road.

The news on the radio said storms were sweeping across all of Northern Illinois, which meant no comfortable camping for the coming night. Also, in a stroke of bad luck, the windshield wipers began beating against each other violently, before finally stopping altogether. At a truck stop, we downed some $1 juice and pondered our options, the rain still sheeting across the windows. AAA? Well, that kills our day. We’d have to crawl through a phone maze, then wait for a tow truck. Are there nearby auto repair places? Well, in Central Illinois, there are certainly repair shops, but the great spaces of the plains places them far apart.

The GPS showed one 7 miles down the highway. Keeping to the right of the yellow line, and watching intently for brake lights, we carefully navigated through a drenched windshield to the next town, where we found the repair shop closed for business. Fortunately, the news said that the storm was fast moving, and could be expected to blow on in an hour or so. Fine, we nodded to each other, we’ll wait it out. Parked behind a lonely gas station, we fished out our computer, and watched a James Bond movie for about 45 minutes until the rain had mostly subsided.

In another town over, we found a repair shop that was still operating. An energetic, young mechanic hopped right into our van and pulled it into the shop. A short time later, he told us that a bolt that attached the windshield wipers to their motor had come loose, and all he did was tighten it. We asked him what we could give him. “Five bucks?”  We gave him $20 in our gratitude, and zipped away down the highway, happily wiping our windshield with ease.

Lake Villa is suburb of Chicago, containing mostly large commercial complexes and a Six Flags amusement park. In a place like this, it’s easy to find a cheap room. We found a spot that was cheaper than our apartment in New York, and quickly made ourselves at home. We had a little time to do some work on the computer before we had to make our way to Swing State for our show.

Swing State is primarily a tobacco outlet. It is a long, low, smoky room on the bottom floor of an old house. They don’t serve any booze, so its populated by mostly younger types. They sell coffee, tea, hookah, cigars, and the like. When we entered, an older man with a lot of energy came at us. “I’m Pops Behind The Beard!” he exclaimed. He did indeed have a great big bushy beard. He was also sporting an old rock t-shirt, and a utili-kilt. He was to be our Sound man for the evening, and gave us both big hugs in celebration.

There were about 5 other people populating a long bar, drinking exotic tea and sipping on enormous hookahs. We loaded in through a side door, and set up fast. The stage was roomy for such a small room, and the sound system seemed pretty current. They clearly appreciate being a music venue. Setting up with Pops was a breeze, so we sat at the bar and chatted with him for a while, with time to spare.

In our time at the bar, we met the owner, Ian, who gave us a wave and a grunt, obviously busy with assembling a number of new Ikea bar stools. Since the crowd didn’t seem to be growing at all, we started playing. We played a tight, clean set. The sound was good. No one cared much. One guy, who we later identified as Pops' son, Max, hooted and shouted, and came up to the stage to listen to a tune or two.

After our set, as we were breaking down, a few people came up to tell us how much they enjoyed the music, including John of John & The Jitters. Thank You. The next act popped up just as we were packing away.  He shook our hands and apologized for missing our set. He then disappeared. We loaded out, and sat down with a pot of exotic tea (we would have had some hookah, but we were still chasing off that persistent cough).  

When the next act took the stage, a few things became clear. First, this was a crowd of his old friends. He named off a number of people in the crowd, dedicated songs to people in the room, and generally felt like he could do anything he wanted. Second, he was VERY stoned. He forgot words, messed up guitar parts, and lost his stool… the one he was sitting on. Perhaps he should have waited until after his set. But hell, the room was enraptured, so what do I know? And he had some interesting tunes.

We snuck out right at the end of his set, eager to return to our comfortable room for some dinner (now familiar bacon, biscuits, peppers, onions, mushrooms, sausage… no eggs left though) and some showers. In mere minutes we were clean, eating, and watching TV while we did computer work and lounged. The perfect end to a very long and strange day.

 Tomorrow... Day Off, $3 wine