Across A Border

Any tour worth its salt includes these three things: major landmarks, occasional navigational difficulties, and lots of laughter in the van. If you’re really lucky, they happen all at once.

There’s also the pleasure of making friends with new bands, like Judgment Day (from the Bay Area), a kick-ass (and unusual) heavy metal trio with whom we played in Chicago:

And then there are the things that are hard to even put into words. Our bass player has toured through Detroit before and made it a point to bring us all to the Heidelberg Project, an absolutely incredible installation by a local visionary who has been making art out of abandoned homes for years:

In Hamtramck, Michigan, we played at a lovely cafe, where the audience energy was absolutely amazing. We stayed that night in a parsonage (!), thanks to our friend Faith, a pastor of the C.M.E. church. And then we headed to the Canadian border.

They almost didn’t let us in the country (shades of the Red Sea), but in the end we made it in and did two press performances (one mainstream, one college radio), and then drove to the club in Toronto. There, our new friend Lainie filmed us playing “Snow/Scorpions & Spiders.”