Oct 13th-Oct 16th: Beach Farming, Love Songs, and House Parties

Howdy Friends and Neighbors,

Welcome to another edition of Thrown Under the Love Bus, where even if you're under the bus at least you're smothered in heavy dose of Love.   If you enjoy this please re-post so we can get the word out!
UPCOMING SHOWS
10.20.11 - The Blind Tiger (Greensboro, NC)
10.21.11 - The Bathtub Gin (Mooresville, NC)
10.22.11 - The Whiskey (Wilmington, NC)
SPREAD THE LOVE
We would LOVE for you to help us out with the street team activities. Fun stuff like inviting your friends and spreading e-flyers around... even helping at the merch table. If this is your idea of a good time, please email streetteam@ufomusic.net and we'll hook you up! We also have some great tools you can use to spread the word online! Click here to check them out.


Thursday, October 13th

We headed up to a place called Doc Taylor's in Virginia Beach.  This is a funny little place, since it is only open on Thursday nights!  But it works out great because all the locals know that they will have quality music and come out no matter who is playing.   The show was good, and since this is the Richmond/Va Beach area, you know that we'll be hooking up with our good friends Jackass Flats.  Cory Potrafka came and played some harp with us.  Always a treat!

After the show a guy comes up and starts chatting with us and then asks if we have anywhere to stay yet.   His name is Trevor DeGroat and he offers some space in his house that is just one block from the ocean, so we excitedly accept.  I knew something was very familiar about this guy, and as soon as I took this picture when we stopped to get pizza after the show it hit me.  He's practically a spitting image of my best friend JonJon Davis from Boone NC, who I've played with in Boss Hawg (click to hear us) for over a decade.   And anyone who knows Jon Jon will see it right away in this picture, and not only that, they act alike too, jumping around and saying funny things.  It's amazing!

Friday, October 14th

The next morning I got up early (big surprise there) and walked down the beach to find some coffee and discovered that the town of Va Beach - which, like everyone else, is broke - has decided that they are going to capitalize on the most famous television show ever, Baywatch, and raise and export mini Pamela Andersons and David Hasselhoffs!   I think this is a fantastic idea and I hope that it works well for them.  I could also foresee a fancy flip-flop and fan farm that would be financially feasible for the future farmers.  



Mid-day we headed to Richmond for our next gig and stopped by Travis Reinhart's house for a little downtime.   And this is where the magic happened.  Thank goodness I was able to catch it on my camera!  I don't think I've ever seen Dan and Joey happier than right here singing their favorite songs in the whole entire world.

Whew!  That was a doozy huh?!

Friday night we played the Cary Street Cafe, which holds a special place for both The Wookie and me (one of the few things we agree on!) as it is based around the music of the Grateful Dead.

Saturday Oct 15th

We headed back to Virginia Beach to play a wedding for two special people.  You know a wedding is going to be fun when the couple's first dance song is a Bob Marley tune!  Let me introduce you to this week's BDL Fans of the Week, the newly-married Brad and Becca Ellis.

Sunday Oct 16th

BDL video fund-raiser party.

This was a really great party put together by our very own Tori Steinberg, Jenny Viars, and Claudia Kelly, so we can shoot a real-deal music video! The amount of work they put into this party is just amazing and we can't thank them enough.   Jenny has a few photo albums that you can view here.
BDL and our side-project Breakin' Jimmy's Martin played some fun acoustic sets throughout the day.
 

Dan and Joey at the party photo booth.  

Ashley and I in a rare moment of agreement, maybe we both hit the right chord at the same time. 

And the music never stops....

Brian and BDL
Lonesome Banjo Chronicles



UPCOMING SHOWS
10.20.11 - The Blind Tiger (Greensboro, NC)
10.21.11 - The Bathtub Gin (Mooresville, NC)
10.22.11 - The Whiskey (Wilmington, NC)
SPREAD THE LOVE
We would LOVE for you to help us out with the street team activities. Fun stuff like inviting your friends and spreading e-flyers around... even helping at the merch table. If this is your idea of a good time, please email streetteam@ufomusic.net and we'll hook you up! We also have some great tools you can use to spread the word online! Click here to check them out.

BDL and the Carnival of Follies

Howdy Love Bussers!

I hope everyone is having a beautiful day.  It looks like we will be posting our travel blog every two weeks, and the last two weekends are the perfect example why.  Sometimes we just have short trips to gigs, and there just isn't much to report, and then we have weekends like our Bristol>Boone>OBX, where touring basically turns into a Chevy Chase National Lampoons movie.  Every calamity that can happen does happen.  More on that later.

September 29-October 2


Thursday:   Hickory, NC was great as always.  This is one of our longest-standing gigs and we are able to see some of our very first fans here at the Taproom, as well as our great friend Janell Henry, who designed our album cover for Let It Grow.

Anna Swenk

Friday:  Hillsborough, NC turned out to be a really great gig!  We had no idea what to expect, and between this little town rocking out and our great friends from Raleigh/Durham that made the trip, we had a great time.  The highlight of the show was the Spirit>Easy Goin'>Hokey Pokey>Easy Goin': the kids really rocked out some Hokey Pokey dancin'!    And we were blessed with the presence of one of our very first "super-fans,"  and my cuz, Anna Swenk!

Hardcore BDL Fans!

Saturday: High Point, NC.   We really like this venue a lot and the crowd was probably double from our first time. 

BDL at Blue Bourbon Jack's in High Point, NC

Sunday: Justin Mychal's Cancer Benefit.   This is easily one of the best things we do all year.   Justin picks a family that has a child struggling with cancer and all the money that is raised helps the family, and he raises A LOT of money.   Trust me, you will not attend this thing and maintain dry eyes.  It's a very beautiful and very emotional day, and every single person leaves realizing how lucky we all have it,  because these families go through hell that few of us know.  

Chasper giving a drum lesson to a new friend backstage

October 6-8

Thursday:  The weekend started off on a slightly ominous note as Dan misjudged the leaving time and had to meet us in Boone instead of Winston.  No big deal really, as things like that happen from time to time and we can easily adjust.   The Bristol show was a really good show for a Thursday night.  Sometimes it takes a night to get back into the swing of things, but this one felt really relaxed and comfortable and had some great jams.   Joey was stoked about a vintage Fender Stratocaster that he just had bought, and this was the first show with it.   I also discovered that Cass can sleep for 3 hours while his phone alarm blasts in his face, but if you put on one Nickelback song he wakes right up!  (Great info to have!)  We left Bristol thinking everything was ok...

Friday:   The first thing we had to do was get new tires for the van, since we were about down to the wires on one of them.   Luckily we have a fan in Boone that works for a tire place!  He helped us some, but $600 later (ouch!) we were rolling on new tires.   Ashley wanted to get some "spinner wheels" while we were at it, but we told him he had to wait until next year.

BDL fan Thomas Hand of Boone, NC!!

Then we pulled up to our first gig of the day in Boone, the High Country MusicFest, and started unloading the trailer; which is when we discovered that there was NO STRATOCASTER!  It was left in Bristol.   We've been through this before as someone (who will remain nameless) left a banjo in Atlanta.  I swear it wasn't my fault, though, but that's another story.   We quickly found out that it was still safe at Machiavelli's, so we started working on getting it back.   Meanwhile, we saw one of Joey's old blues friends play some of the best guitar we've seen in a while: Rusty Barkley with the Part Time Blues Band. Joey says that outside of fellow Spartan Dennis Shaw, Rusty has taught him more than anyone else.  Keep your eye out for these guys, they will blow you away.    Enjoy!

We were able to play the fest with our friend Shawn Roberts, who plays the percussion tracks on our new album.  It really takes the Mid-Summers Dream>Dream Walker to a whole new level.   Chasper really loves playing with Shawn, as they have some great drum solo sections together.  Here is the full photo album from our official photographer, Jenny Viars.  

I was able to catch Shawn playing drums with his African Drumming Group on King St. in Boone, NC between our gigs.   This is why Boone is so special.  You never know what you'll find downtown.

Mid-way through our Murphy's set that night Joey got his guitar delivered by Jamie Morrell who was  very quickly made "Fan of the Week" on our Facebook page!

We decided that we should drive through the night to get to the OBX after our Boone gig and around 5:45am both Chasper and I jump up awake from a noise that doesn't sound right.   We had a flat tire on our new trailer, and it was leaving an impressive trail of sparks!   We decided to name the trailer "Sparky," by the way.   So as the sun was coming up we were out changing a tire.   Four brand new tires on the van and we blow a trailer tire!

We finally make it to the beautiful NC Outer Banks and to the Nags Head Fishing Pier that always gives us a house right on the water in return for acoustic sets at the restaurant.  It's a great deal and we definitely come out for the better in it.   We also decided to buy new trailer tires, so 6 new tires in a span of 20 hours.   Maybe we should ask for tire donations next year?

Nags Head Fishing Pier and a single set of footprints in the sand.  I guess I was being carried....

  After 3 acoustic sets at the pier through the day we played Goombay's that night for a really fantastic crowd.  (8 sets of music and 400 miles in a span of 30 hours! wow)   OBX loves some BDL, and we have John Mebane and Robert and Cindy Via to thank for that, as they are also "super-fans" and make sure that the crowd is really strong.    And to cap the weekend follies off, as we were setting up Dan realized that he left his guitar back at the house!   All we could do is shake our heads and laugh.  What a weekend.

See you on the road!  We might need a place to crash so be on the lookout! :)

Brian and BDL
www.lonesomebanjochronicles.com