BDL Winter Tour, Mid-West and Rockies!

Hello All You Big Bus Lovin' Daddios!

We are a little over halfway through our winter tour through the Midwest and Rocky Mountains.  We've driven through 2 blizzards and made some really great friends along the way.   Here's a little glimpse.

We started off by hitting some of our new favorite places in Ohio: Dayton and Columbus.  We've started seeing some familiar faces at these shows and they are bringing friends.

Our first show in Chicago was great as well, as we had some family from Possum Holler show up!  Todd Pettit and Lynn Bryan were in Chi-town visiting friends so they brought a big group to our show.

Possum Holler Rules!!

One of our favorite places to play is in Evansville, Indiana, and it is the perfect example of a passionate venue owner who is able to create a music scene from scratch.  Amy Rivers-Word has done such a great job in building a venue that bands just love to play! 

Any venue that has a skeleton riding a deer head with bras hanging from its knees is going to be awesome!

Lamasco Bar and Grill

As we were heading out west a car pulls up to us at 70mph on the highway and a guy just hands a Grateful Dead CD out the window to Ashley!  We have no idea why this happened!  But in a strange occurrence of synchronicity this album was recorded in 1970 on the exact day as he handed it to us!  Did he know this?  We'll never know. 

Scott gets some great shots from the van

We miss our doggies and families when we travel, so we find some foster doggies to give some lovin' to. 

We had a special guest for part of the trip, the famous Mrs. Karen Moss!   She's super badass and works security for us when we need.  She'll straight knock a sucka out!

A van full of MOSS!

As we were leaving Wichita KS we experienced our first blizzard, as we basically tried to drive out of it all day.  I heard Wichita got as much as 2 feet of snow.  We made it to Aurora CO before we just had to pull over and get a hotel room.   

The next morning the roads were clear and we drove to Nederland CO.  Most people know this cool little mountain town as an early home base for the great jamgrass band Leftover Salmon.  

We love to find local coffee shops to hang out in, and this one was one of the best.   It was 3 caboose cars all connected. 

Nederland, CO

We had a really great show at the Pioneer Inn (the locals refer to it as the "P.I.")  We've always had a feeling that CO people would dig the BDL sound, and we were right.  The crowd was amazing and boogied their tushes off, and a super nice couple invited us back to their house for the evening, which was really great since hotels there were very expensive.


Here's a shot of new BDL family, The Colorado Chapter.  

Nederland has a famous "Carousel of Happiness" run by a guy named "Bigfoot."  Wook had to try it out.  We think it works. 

Happy Wook!

So let me set this scene up for you.  We met some great people, but one of the funniest was a guy named Bud.   He found this kids toy that borders on hilarious and freaky.  Here it is:

So Bud decided that he would take this toy and wear it around his neck to the Further Concert (surviving members of the Grateful Dead) that night in Denver, and only communicate to people with his new toy.  Nederland people rock!

We headed to Keystone and played at a famous venue called The Goat.   Every now and then we get put up in super nice places and this was one of those times!   Here's a view from our hotel. 



We left Keystone for our 7 hour drive to Santa Fe NM.  This has to be one of the most amazing drives we've ever had in the 3.5 years of the band, for the sheer drastic change of the scenery.  We went from snow covered peaks to prairies to desert.  It was unbelievable.  Here's a few shots.

 

As most of you probably read on our FB post, our Santa Fe show was really amazing.  A friend described Santa Fe as "A little pocket of coolness, much like Austin, Boone,and Asheville."  We totally agree.   We also got a taste of the power of radio, as people knew who we were already. 

We left Santa Fe yesterday and drove straight into a blizzard.  I guess you might call us lucky, but Chicago experienced its coldest temps of the year when we were there, and Denver just got its biggest snowfall!   It's how we roll.  

 

After we got the van into a hotel parking lot--barely--we walked about half a mile in the blizzard to a Chili's that was still open and found out they had a two-for-one beer special. Small consolation prize for a rough day.

Thanks for hanging with us.  To all our friends, old and new, we hope to see ya soon!

Brian and BDL.


Upcoming shows (visit our Facebook events page for show details):

2/28      Durango, CO                 The Summit
3/1        Manitou Springs, CO     Ancient Mariner
3/2        Denver, CO                   Quixote's True Blue
3/8        Wilmington, NC             The Whiskey
3/9        Beaufort, NC                 The Backstreet Pub
3/14      Raleigh, NC                    Berkeley Cafe
3/15      High Point, NC               Blue Bourbon Jack's
3/16      Dobson, NC                   The Coffee Bean
3/17      Boone, NC                     Murphy's