.BLOG.

Sadly, it’s not interactive, but that is way beyond anything I am capable of on M.S. Paint:

Dammit! I left out sea monsters. Next tour.

Also thank you again to each and every one of you who helped us out / came / let us play / furnished us with discounted P.B.R. / didn’t boo.  It was kind of a ridiculously ambitious undertaking and there’s no way it’s possible without so much help from so, so many people.  Thank you again, so very, very much.

More to come–I am currently replastering a hundred-year-old kitchen wall, and I’m sure you’re anxious to know every inane detail.  This will soon turn into a blog about plaster.  Hope you’re as excited as I am.

(I have no idea who this brown guy is, but you see him often on the Internet)

Hey.  Hello!  It’s been quite a while since you and I laid virtual eyes upon one another, and though very little has actually ‘happened’ since then, a lot has changed.  The New Orleans version of the Mohican Scouts is kind of on indefinite hold while I figure out what in the Sam Hill I want to do with my life (disclaimer: this may take awhile).  This isn’t to say it couldn’t ever happen again, but after a solid year of weirdness (wonderful weirdness, but weirdness all the same) I needed some Kentucky for awhile, and got to see an absolutely beautiful autumn up here, take in quite a few baseball games, and spend some good, good time with family.  Now, of course, it’s something like 12 degrees, everything is covered in ice and last week’s snow (because it hasn’t been above freezing since then for long enough to melt it), and I’m starting to remember just why I was so happy to flee southward after high school. 

Y’all most certainly deserve a post on something more substantial than the weather, and most hopefully one will come soon, but in the meantime I just wanted to let everyone know I was still alive.  I kind of tend to hole up when I’m back home.  But here’s to new communication, a new year, forgetting every old acquaintance you ever had (I never understood why that was necessary), and all the rest.  It’s good to be back.

Love and Carrots and Potatoes on a Frozen, Dark-At-4:30-p.m.-Night,

Parker.

Texans, attacking something

Hello and Goodbye from the Sovereign Republic of Tejas, the only state in our Union (to my knowledge) that can split into five smaller states at any point if it ever wants to (have fun, West Texana!).  After four final shows, Dallas on July 19 (The Pearl Cup), Austin on July 21 (The Carousel Lounge), Denton on July 22 (Dan’s Silverleaf), and Dallas once again on July 24 (The Crooked Tree), this crazy-ass tour has nearly come to an official end.  One more drive to New Orleans awaits the old Minivan (now with 212,500 miles to its name, a surprise to most everyone involved with the vehicle at some point in its life, especially those present when the tire flew off on I-65 outside of Lebanon Junction a few years back or when the axle snapped two weeks later or when the winshield wipers flew off the side of the car during a day of tornadoes in Barren Co., KY or on a number of other occasions when the sanity involved in keeping said vehicle was in serious doubt), and then it shall all be done.  For now, at least.

Jim I am so sorry.

I know I lost my head and went and swore to Jim Nabors that I’d give you West Coast Highlights long before now (It was a moment of extreme emotional duress and I would never in my right mind make a promise to Jim Nabors that I could not keep but nevertheless I am an adult and must accept the consequences of my actions), and I am sorry to have let everyone down.  They shall come, they shall come.  In the meantime, a blurb at the end of a blog post about Gomer Pyle is absolutely no way to come close to the immense debt of gratitude that we owe absolutely everyone that we encountered on this, our first-ever tour, an immense and ridiculous 23-show trip that had us see both coasts, a Glacier (!), hikes both in the Appalachians and the Rockies, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Golden Gate, the Capitol, Minneapolis, an old mill in Rural Massachusetts, the Oregon Trail, and an officer from the Nevada Highway Patrol who made fun of us for not having any marijuana in the van (“you guys are the worst touring band ever.”  that is an exact quote).

But thank you, all of you, so damned much.  We’ll talk soon.

Much Aloha,

Us.

(Neal in Denver in the Early 1940s. Photo by Allen Ginsberg.)

Hello from Denver, Colorado, where we’re about to play a show on Larimer St., keeping a sharp eye out for the rickety, carjumping, forever-wandering poolhall ghost of young Neal Cassady, or the crumpled curbside beerswilling frame of his father.  You’ll be the first to know if they appear; they haven’t yet RSVPd to our Evite (yes, ghosts have their own email host) so it could go either way.  Becca and I have come a long way since you and I last spoke: from Seattle, we played shows in Eugene, OR, Portland, OR, San Francisco, CA, San Jose, CA, and Berkeley, CA.  Sorry the updates haven’t been more frequent, it’s easy to let things get away from you on this sort of Haul that we’re on.  I swear to Jim Nabors that highlights, cleverly constructed and concisely put together, will come soon.  Until then, an excerpt from the New Lyrics Brainstorming Session that took place last night in Boulder:

“The cat looks like an old baseball manager, in orange light”

This band is going places.

We’re in Seattle, which you might gather from Parker’s beautiful blog below. Someone just told us they don’t like air conditioning. I personally find that that strange, although do enjoy a good sweat every now and then. Collectively, the Mohican Scouts have not been sweating as much as usual during the mid-western part of our tour. In fact, we’ve been quite comfortable sleeping in the van, windows closed under sleeping bags. Where, you ask, would we find weather like this in the heat of summer? Glacier National Park in Montana, almost Canada.

A excerpt from journal entry made during our first hours in Glacier National Park:

“I’m sitting outside in the Glacier National park, almost in Canada. Parker just drove off with the van to get firewood. It’s getting dark, and I’m scared of the dark…….Will he ever come back? I’m not sure…………We’ve had an interesting couple of days; driving until 2am last night to sleep in a rest area in Montana was by far the most disorientating. When going to sleep, we had no idea what our surroundings looked like. When we woke up we saw rolling hills covered with grass that looked like the state of Montana employs endless lawnmowers to keep the landscape tamed….or maybe not.  We were also greeted by an area of travelers stopping to pee. Tumbling out of the car with sleep face and brushing our teeth/charging our phones in the bathroom was quite enjoyable. Since then, the landscape around us has changed so drastically it’s hard to keep up or remember where we are – everything is breathtaking and adventure invoking.”

The next day, after viewing a Glacier (the sole purpose of our adventures to the unknown) we took a lovely hike through the woods, yelling out “BANJO MUSIC” every 10-ish minutes to scare off potential bears that might want to eat our faces off. We subsequently decided that if we did encounter a bear, we would name in Banjo Music and bring in on tour with us.

Now, we sit in a coffee shop in Seattle after playing at Café Race last night. Needless to say, Parker did come back with the firewood and we built two friendly fires to keep us warm amongst the glaciers. No marshmellows, but banjo and violin music.

Tour Haikus:

Violin, Guitar

How did the van get like that?

Where are we going?

Thank you GPS

Secretly you have saved us

You are safe with me

Gas has many forms

Varied outlets, volume, stench

We have grown this close