Song of the day: "We Become Our Own Wolves"

I've been visiting Rae Spoon's myspace lately to let his songs play. I really enjoy them all, and I've connected to one in particular, "we become our own wolves".

The song builds nicely from a muted electric guitar. Throughout the song, a variety of instruments are added, but nothing is over-done. I particularly enjoy the strange little steel guitar sounding string plucks (strings of what, I'm not sure). I'm a fan of the production in general on this song. There's a really nice combination of earthly and heavenly sounds. The lyrics are pretty striking as well, here's how the song begins:

When things get bad, better bet i feel the temperature drop
Might be 10 outside, but it's 40 below in my mind
And i spend all day hunting and circling myself
When i have myself surrounded I never have the heart to finish it off

Baby you know i love you, i just can't leave the house...

Anyhow, I don't have a file of the song but you can listen to this song and others here: www.myspace.com/raespoon

So I didn't exactly keep up with my tour blog

Well. I left Richmond for 6 weeks, played shows all around this beautiful country, and only managed to post two blogs. I guess it's just not my style to document life at the pace of a daily blogger. It was an experience that I'm still sorting out internally, but I will say that it was an amazing trip. I've got a ton of pics, and I will occasionally post them on here with an accompanying story.

Hell, I'll start now. Here are a few photos from an unexpectedly entertaining night in Medford, Oregon. Soon after we checked in to our hotel, we set out to find something to do. After walking around for quite a while, we nearly gave up on finding a comfy place to eat and drink. That changed when happened upon this scene:

As we rounded the corner, we saw several people standing outside of a bar with some very bright lights shining on to these old hot rods. Someone then asked us, "Do you guys wanna be in a movie?"

Yeah, we did.

The guy who seemed to be in charge instructed us to go get some drinks at the bar and wait until we were needed. Perfect. We ordered a couple pitchers and put quarters in the pool table.



At some point, the guy came in and we signed some sort of form about us being in his movie. I chose the name "Tito" for my character. Soon we were called in to the street to be extras in a scene. Alicia and I stood across the street with a Medford native (I forget her name), and pretended to have an interesting conversation while some sort of heated dialogue took place between the real actors. Willis was queued to walk across the street during this scene. It was poetry in motion. Here's what it looked like, from my point of view, as I pretended to talk with Alicia:



While we were standing around between takes, a rockabilly band showed up and began to unload their gear in to the empty bar we'd taken over. Perfect. Back to the bar we went. More beer, more pool, and now a rockabilly band with a crazy Australian singer. Here's a picture of Clyde taking their picture:

We were quite literally the only people in the bar, along with the other "extra" who Alicia and I had recently faked a conversation with. It didn't take very long for the crazy Australian singer to become an offensive crazy Australian singer, so we left soon after they finished playing. I do remember Adam joining them on stage for a whistling solo, which I nearly forgot about. Anyhow, that was our night in Medford. I loved it.

on the oregon coast

I'm in room 263 at the Shilo Inn. Everyone left to get to a radio show in Portland, and I have the room to myself. I think it's time to pick up my guitar for the first time this trip to play for no one. The days and nights have been coming and going quickly, and it's been more difficult to keep up with this than I imagined. I have some really good pics and stories that will find their way here sooner or later though. In the mean time, here are a few pictures I took when we stopped at a beautfiul beach on the coast of Oregon.

West of Albuquerque

I pulled of the highway and found this lovely place. I'm in LA now staying with my friends Matt and Ashley. First show is today in Santa Barbara.

From Tulsa to Santa Rosa

I'm in a hotel in Santa Rosa, New Mexico after my leisurely day of driving became tedious. I was planning to make it to Albuquerque, but maybe next time. Last night I stayed at my grandparents house in Tulsa, OK. I lived there when I was a youngster - some time between the ages of 2 and 6. I became nostalgic as I approached the area, and decided to search out a place my mom used to take me - Egg Roll Express. To my surprise, Egg Roll Express still exists and I tried to find the one in Broken Arrow where we'd have likely gone back then. I got there after it had closed, but I pictured myself sitting in a booth across from my mom while I poured duck sauce all over my eggrolls. Anyhow - I stayed at my grandparents house. They weren't there, and I slept on the couch after eating one of their TV dinners. It was pretty cozy - old family photos and framed cross stiches to keep me company.

A few quick things about today: I came across a place called Pop while on route 66 outside of Oklahoma City. Pop is a gas station, which sells hundreds of different sodas. I got one called Brain Wash, and a molassas root beer from Rhode Island. AMAZING. Later I bought a discontinued Poloroid digital camera for $50 from a Walmart in Texas, which is where these images came from. I deleted some seriously crazy/amazing pictures by accident while learning how to use my camera. I visited the largest cross in the Western Hemisphere, which was right off 40 somewhere in the top of Texas. I might have to try and describe this thing to you tomorrow - but I'll say this, that cross was huge. The place was odd and somewhat beautiful. It was very misty, and I followed a huge circle of sculptures which depicted the stations of the cross.

Tomorrow I gotta drive to LA, where I get to crash with my buddy Matt D! My tour with Thao starts Thursday in Santa Barbara - yes.