Today, we took to the road. Last night at The Legion Bar in Williamsburg was an excellent way to close off a merry week in New York. A receptive crowd, a crowd of friends of the various acts, was there to do what concert goers want to do—have fun, bop to music, drink, laugh, let lyrics conjure up musings worth entertaining, river dance, etc.

Listening to Dane Terry for the first time restores a certain faith in the melodic hilariousness of humanity. I’ve come to the conclusion that Dane Terry should be on the radio in every voting district in America. Once a week, for an hour, they should broadcast him across every airway channel. That’s all it would take, an hour of Dane Terry’s music broadcast to the nation once a week. I believe it would cause every person in America still opposed to same sex marriage to shift gears and decide that people of all orientations can marry their hearts out. It’s not that Dane’s music is gay, but that it is hilariously musical, and his songs along the theme of his orientation, are SO hilarious, so—I’ll use the words—endearingly lovable and musically hilarious, that these songs would make Scrooge write Dane Terry into his will.

Ryan Pearson and Cassie Naaktgeboren (Two of Us) made a man’s night at the show. William Burger was celebrating his 30^th anniversary in New York when a cover he had been waiting “42 years to hear” was busted out. Will felt like this about that: “I have waited literally 42 years to hear that, and it took two people who were born WAY later to make it happen. Massive RESPECT to Ryan Pearson and his beautiful wife (Cassie Naaktgeboren) for making that happein (I totally sang along)”

Another tinsel of  sparkling night was a Viking arrived again in New York. I’m enthralled to be on tour with him, and so excited that he’ll be coming through my hometown of Bismarck, ND where I suspect the townspeople will declare him king. Haukur Emil Kaaber, Hek as everyone knows him, said today when our van was just outside of Chicago that his fourteen-year-old self, the one who idolized the journey and philosophy of Kerouac, would be proud of him today. He’s seeing the road from the eyes of the book On The Road, and it’s magical to be around when a friend’s lifelong dream is being fulfilled.

Last winter in Reykjavik, I met Hek once, then a second time, but he only remembered me the third time. He was in a rut in then, and the pubs are where ruts go to sort themselves out. I often invite people I meet on the road to come join me in Guatemala or New York. Few show up. Hek did last March, and now he’s here again. The first time came to play a six-gig tour in New York City. Then he went back to Iceland and from the sounds of it, worked his ass off in a fourteen-hour workday. Recalling the last few months, he said that his landscaping job “Made me go crazy.” But he put in his time, saved and booked a one-way ticket to the US where he is now, smoking his cigars out of the van, and on a the road in the US for the first time.

With fast-food chain stops along the way, we followed the highway from New York towards Iowa and right now it’s just shy of midnight.

Julianne Mason and Tom Hoy’s set at The Legion was in line with why when I tell people about their music, it seems most apt to say it sounds like crystal thunder. Julianne and Tom’s set at The Legion was an hour of accumulated crystal thunder that rose straight to the full moon.

Gertrude Stein used to describe certain works of art as “having something being coming out of them.” That’s what it felt like there music had when I heard Tom and Julianne play for the first time at The Goodbye Blue Monday in Bushwick—it had something being coming out of it. In conversation both Tom and Julianne have pointed out that there music is not for everyone. I’d counter that with saying I think it’s for the good ones—the ones who seek the things with the something being coming out of them.

On a 20-hour drive, you think about everything. But you can only think about and Google dinosaurs for so long. When there is little left to think about, you stare at the cornfields of Ohio. Eventually, I reflected upon this strange synthesis of how many wonderful people have entered my life in the past few years. Being on tour with three of them in many ways it affirms that this strange path I am on, even though that path is sometimes lined with raccoons that jump out of the jungle to maul, is the right one.

One good thing about a twenty-hour van ride is that It lets you think about those most recent periods spent avoiding the questioning face in the mirror. What are you doing?—that face asks. In a cigarette burned voice, doubt asks, “What is the deal with this playing out music at your age?” There is always that doubt. . .

Doubt is not always a dick. If as kids my brother and I hadn’t doubted our plan to run away and live in the sewers like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it is possible that we would still be living like that today.

But if doubt were canine, he would be a nipping street dog feeding on gutter scraps and occasionally sniffing out a dirty diaper. So when doubt visits and doesn’t make a valid point quickly, I tend to try to discount it like the diaper-sniffing dog it usually is. Gross doubt, gross. Get away. 

Today we have a stretch of highway, heartburn from too many fast food tacos, spilled coffee on our pants, atrophied asses, but I don’t think any of us have doubts about how much we love to be doing this tour together.