Migration (Scott Fisher tour post).

In Southeastern Oregon we were witness to a great migration of tumbleweeds, heading south across I-84. Many were caught by the highway barrier and bounced around like guttered bowling balls, while the largest hopped over and the smallest skipped through to continue their journey towards the snowcapped hills. I wonder how far they will get.

A little tour update: I've been on the road now for two weeks as part of Scott Fisher's band, 1 a.m. Approach. We started in Los Angeles, and have played Bend, Portland, Mt. Hood, Sandpoint, Kalispell/Lakeside, and now we head to Boise for two nights to finish up. It's easy to forget how much space there is in this country. Thousands of square miles of nothing but railroad tracks and powerlines snaking across hills and plains, connecting one clump of people to the next. No one fights over this land anymore.

As much as we like to think (or hate to think) that we humans have subjugated the earth, a highway is proof of compromise. The road snakes along valleys, around hills. Cars and trucks still have to struggle up steep climbs, nature's way of making us earn our freedom from local constraint. To get from Sandpoint, Idaho to Boise, Idaho, we have driven through Washington and Oregon. (Those two states share a straight border with Idaho, for those of you who don't care to know things until I tell you.) That is the route that nature lets us pass most quickly.

We have shitty cell phone reception out here. 100 years ago, we wouldn't have noticed. 100? 10. 5. Next year I will bemoan the fact that I can't log onto the internet from this nowhereness. Unless, of course, I will be able to. What will we bemoan then?

The gigs have been good. Even the bad ones have been good. We've played to packed sweaty houses, and tiny but attentive sitters. That sounds like we were playing to mice. You know what I mean. At Mt. Hood Meadows we played to the afternoon crowd of hungry skiers, who surely didn't expect us to be there. In Bend we played to families that were looking a solid out-of-town band bringing a different quality of music than they could find normally. In Sandpoint we played for the twelve people who were friends with the owner of the wine cellar. In Hermosa Beach we played for the twenty-something beach meat-market, as well as the forty-somethings looking for the same thing.