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I'm waiting for Telstra to turn up and fix my cable so I have a good amount of  time to blog today :-) So sit back, get a coffee/tea/equivalent and unwind with some pics, observations and then a great clip with Bill Lupkin blowing a waling harp. or skip it all an go straight to the vid. Or whatever.. YOU HAV THE POWAH!

Ahem.

Appromixately Day 7 or so. Around there. Good enough.

By this stage we'd done a few gigs, including Leombruni's Italian village.

Becky and Dee had invited us to relax for a few days by the rock river, which we did. Had done. I think I may have covered this bit in the last blog. 

Right.

Here's some pretty pics.

Mr Wizard has said that any day you get a song is a good day and we got several at rock river, at the Blackhawks Trail Lodge, in the care of Becky and Dee. Thank you guys. Now I know Becky would cuff me for being all sentimental and such so I'll just leave it here. And here www.blackhawkstraillodge.com. Just don't expect to find rooms available when we happen to be in Byron, IL.

Day Next Probably 8 

Last trip I had an itinerary, all nicely printed. Headings, colours. Accurate tab margins. A thing of beauty.

After 1 overseas tour with a band I have pretty much stopped worrying about uniform font sizes. So yes it was the next bit.

A Mexican Fish with Mo

A walk down the streets of Joliet

BLWOUT SAIE!!! ERMAGERDS!

Somehow this signage strikes me as appropriate.

and then on to Fort Wayne for a gig at The Phoenix

Indiana Bound

YOUR AD HERE (seriously, call me up, I know I guy)

Road Food - Where 'Murrica Eats

Roscoe and Bill doing their best reservoir Dogs walk into the Waffle House. You should try it said Roscoe. it's where 'Murrica eats. We did too.

Road Observations

Differences in Simple things, such as how long and straight the roads are. Cities laid out on grids. 

Tall water towers. Cornfields. Even a different tint to the sky, a different rate of descent into darkness at the end of each day.

Too much time on the road, staring out the window, looking at the cloud formations.

Or, In Theo's Case, Cursing out the GPS

'Dit verdomde GPS is !@#$%^& dom , het is volledig verloren , !@#$%^& stuk stront'

Furniture Shopping.

Now to be fair, my little GPS was helpful. To a point.

I am afraid that the clover leaf off ramps confused it and us, and we found ourselves constantly having to backtrack. Until it occurred to us that each time we went off course we wound up turning around at a...Furniture store.

Yep. Our TomTom GPS must be expecting, or getting married, or in the pay of the Lumber Cartel because we sure did spend a lot more time turning that big ass van around in the car parks of Mattress, Bedding, Furniture and Electrical Super Centres than we expected to ...hmm...or did it know where we were staying next....

Bridal Parties

Maybe the GPS thought we had some present shopping to do.

Ok so I'll admit one of the trick I use on tour is trawling the cheap accommodation websites for deals. Yeah it works great sometimes, sometimes it's a bit....curious. 

In this case, we wound up a a swanky downtown Indianapolis hotel filled with wedding parties. We must have counted at least 5 groups of brides and bridesmaids, like a cockatoo in white surrounded by a flock of brightly colored bridesmaids, swarming and schooling around landmarks looking for a photo op.

The lobby overflowed with people in ball gowns, tuxes, Hawaiian shirts, a soccer team, a concierge with a grin as big as fence palings and a twinkle in his eye that seemed to say I can get you anything. anything.

Nice view  but the establishment specialised in fleecing you in teeny tiny cuts to your wallet; WIFI only and extra $7, a $20 bottle of water on your room table (oops). Valet parking for your oversized van.

Nice view.

Foreign Powers

This is how we power up on tour.

Now it;s just dawned on me I skipped our night in Fort Wayne.

That's ok though cos the video covers it.

Right.

Go watch the vid because I think my technician is here. More soon.

Next Episode

- Whatever I left out about Ft Wayne

- Dickey James and The Blue Flames on fire

- Probably some stuff about that toothless dude in Terre Haute

Howdy Folks.

And so the blog continues. I have so much more footage to come I don't know what to do. Some of its frickin amazing.

Anyway, I'll give you a heads up and you can skip, read on, press buttons or whatnot.

Day 6 This episode - we go to Wisconsin

The Mojo of the winds let us know we were welcomed.

Now here's an aside - at the gig on Saturday, a very astute patron asked me about our name. 'is it the power of the winds or the safety from the storm?'

That's a great question.

Ahem. So we were on our way to Wisconsin for a show at Sara's Pub, with weather warnings blaring ahead of us.

And as we arrived, the heavens cleared.

SPOOKY!!!

Dave Potter runs the Monday night jam at Sara's Pub and kindly invited us ot do a set.

I spotted a piece of technology that had no explanation until...

Local Signage

The crowd were unbelievably polite and in favor of purchasing cd's We're in favour of that too! 

I have a bit of footage from Dave  and the house band + special guest Mel Forde, who'd played at the Crossroads festival the day before.

Cheers to Dave and all the folks from the Monday night jam. 

Right that'll do you. I gotta go back to working on Setlists with the boys. I 

In the Next Blog

- Leaving Rock River

- Indy! Indy!

- Mobile T Shirts

No one did, but it felt right to say.

I am listening to the final mix of Push me Away, courtesy of a champion effort from engineer maestro Robert Rebeck of Chuck Chapman Recording and Mastering in Lenexa, KS, and I am feeling entirely smug about it.

Yep. Smug. Smugly smuggins to be precise. Still, I wish I could sing like DC Bellamy. Or Jo for that matter.

Sadly I can't share it with you until we get it mastered. The boys are super fussy and already I stretch their tolerances for Kamikaze Bat Guano Behaviour.

Hurry up Mr Lynch.

On Sunday we recorded Rock River and I am listening to the Desk Mix. To quote Honest Abe, those that like this sort of thing will find it the sort of thing they like.

Our good friend D-Dawg ( I can call him that now, it's both pretentiously cool and partially anonymising) phoned me whilst we were traveling between Indiana and Kansas, navigating traffic, watching cornfield lightning.

I mentioned that we seemed to be writing a lot of songs whilst on tour. Push me away at the airport. Rock river at..err..the rock river. Others beside. 

Even over the phone I could feel D-Dawg nodding. He explained that was just like in the old days, when travelling bluesmen would write about what they saw.

'Are you telling me you're feeling inspired?' he said, with his easy Carolinian drawl holding a gently reproving mirth.

I've been reading various voices in the music intelligentsia, talking about the demise of the album, the music business Up Down, Sideways, yadda yadda. 

We just released an album in May. there's no screaming market demand to release more material. We should wait. We should be patient. We should.

We should make what we can, when we can, and release it when we feel like it. There ya go. I'm not sure of the logic and I reserve the right to deny my previous statements and claim my newly appointed Intern accidentally tweeted that junk shot. Yeah baby.

Where was I?

Oh yeah. I like these two new songs. I think we'll release as soon as I can get'em ready and then we'll press on with the rest of the stuff we wrote whilst we were away.

It's the tour blog, part 3! So where were we? 

Right. the previous night I bailed out and left the guys at the festival whilst I went in search of snoozy time.

I woke up at the Blackhawks Trail Lodge beside the rock river, in Illinois.

Day Something-or-other-I-dunno

I was in need of some Zen, join me.

Ahh so peaceful.

I am a fan of Becky's eclectic decorations.

At the festival, Gary and Gayle from the Original Smokehouse BBQ in Rockford, Illinois, invited us for Soul Food Sunday. That was a must.

See the vid for more on that

Afterwards, we returned to the Blackhawks Trail Lodge and decided to rehearse Push Me Away from you, ahead of the planned recording with Danny Cox in Kansas City in 10 days.

Now I may be combining a couple of days events here so forgive me.

We were close to Byron, Illinois, a sleepy little town with some crazy Art Deco Architecture ( Me Gusta mucho!)

The VFW where we played last year.

Now we can honestly say we've played Byron ;-)

Of course, life on the road does have it's glamourous side.

Such as the local laundromat.

The band doesn't concern themselves with such mundane affairs. They have 'people' for that. They stuck their clothes in the machine and wandered off.

I am that people. Those people. I mean it was me. I folded Rosie's dainties. There. I said it. What goes on tour.

All right here's some vid.

To come:

- bad weather precedes us

- They're so polite in wisconsin!

- Heading for Indy

Howdoo folks!

I have El Buncho of blog stuff from the tour to post, but firstly, the weekends reports.

Cheers to Jack Millar for joining us at the Townie on Saturday. He was great. Get out and see him.

Late show, we didn't start until just after 11pm and went through until 2:30am.

Take that Jetlag!

Of course the two back to back cups of strong cappuccino that I drank before the fist set may have given me a panic attack by song 3,  but what the heck, nothing unusual.

And of course, far be it from us to trade on our recent O/S tour for marketing purposes.

Nope, not us.

We would hardly mention our 2 TOURS OF THE USA, USA, USA!! (cough, choke splutter), that's because Australians never judge local acts by whether people overseas think they're any good. Nope. Not a bit of it.

Did I mention our next O/S tour?

I was a bit shaky to start the set but we warmed up by set two and we were in excellent sonic hands. thanks Sal. Having Jo with us is always a bonus as well. We even got to do the new song we wtoe for Jo, Push me Away, and I can sing it, but I can't sing it like DC Bellamy sings it in the Kansas City recording (sigh)....Oh I forgot you haven't heard it yet, Sorry, Dear Reader, the blog from the recording day with Jo & DC will be out in a few days and the song should be ready for release...err...shortly, so stay tuned.

Anyway, speaking of recording...nope hang on more pics.

2:30am and theyre still dancing, in spite of AFL Grand final, ARL Football Semi Final and a Festival down the street.

Cheers to Sal, and I spotted our Psychedelic Psychonaut in the audience (dude glad to see you're still with us), cheers to Hugo for coming out so late and welcome back Sydney. We missed ya.

Right. So after getting home at 4am, still recovering a little from our recent TRIP INTO SPACE...no hang on, that was Big Bang Theory....err

Ok. we went and recorded again the following day.We're just fools for studio time.

BTW...

WTF is Theo doing here?

We got Rock river in the can. Yep, just to remind ya, here's the guide track:

and here's some stuff from the recording session.

Well done to Jo and the Lads for extra credit effort and big thanks to Ben at the wonderful Everland studios for giving up his Sunday time to record it.

I'm listening to the desk mix and digging it. That's one of the benefits of being on my side of the screen, I get to hear all the stuff before it gets released.

We have two mixes to finish and release, a bunch more video footage from the don't-mention-the-tour thing. Stay tuned for more random fun.