it was a great day off.

here is what i procured while participating in the commerce of the greater south:
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while shopping for a jacket i was accosted by two people in tuxedoes. they asked if i’d like to try a complimentary beverage. i never turn down free stuff. it was an energy drink. i took it from them, drank it and soon thereafter felt very energetic:

this is the jacket i found and purchased. that looks nice dave:

this was also necessarily procured:

“no way!!” i say. i mean if mixing them after the fact is bad, this is like double bad. doubly mixed. they’re mixed before they’re mixed. “insane,” i say! “insane!!!”then i get to thinking about some tests we could run. “hey. pour that pack out. then let’s add something to it and see what happens in an open environment.” think of this. dr pepper poured on top of dr pepper pop rocks. this could lead to something heroic. something that we speak of for years. there was no dr pepper. only diet dr pepper. it will have to do:

we poured a small amount on the top of the pile:

then suddenly something extraordinary happened! it popped and spit and turned to some undeterminable mess of muck in a matter of seconds!!!:

this was not good. i thought of mikey and the close calls i’d had as a child. i wondered why, why do we toy and taunt death so? what causes us to wander so close to the edge? does this make us feel more alive? really? i checked to see if it had eaten through the plate. it hadn’t. then jason grabbed the other bag of dr pepper pop rocks! “don’t” i screamed! “don’t!” it was too late:
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“hey. let me see that. it sounds like it’s really popping pretty good. does it really taste like dr pepper?” “sorta,” he said, kind of muffled while the popping got louder as i leaned in:

then i went back to eating. smoked salmon, potatoes, green beans, and pork tenderloin – my favorite:

then i got mike d hooked on a game that i have played off and on all day. it is called ‘find it’. it is a cylinder filled with dense plastic pieces with the following objects interspersed:

penny, balloon, baseball, block, butterfly, candy cane, car, eraser, top hat, marble, pom pom, rubber band, pony bead, wiggle eye, safety pin, alphabet dice, smiley face, flag, fish, star, eff, ring, and a snowflake.
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you are supposed to find the listed items by shaking and turning and throwing the cylinder about. within a few minutes i had found everything but the penny. hours later, literally hours later, i still had not found the penny. mike d is brilliant and i thought, if anyone can find the penny he can find the penny:

he couldn’t find the penny. i don’t think there is a penny. we would have found it by now. shane and shane are playing on stage right now and we drilled a hole in the ‘find it’ cylinder and dumped all the dense plastic beads out. we didn’t believe that there was a penny. there is a penny. a bright, shiny 2004 penny. who knew?

wow. last night in jackson was really great. the coolest space we have been in so far. i love old churches.
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apparently there were two guys waiting outside our bus for a really long time after the show. they were hoping to spot me. i had been in the back of the bus (in me and toni’s room) reading (i like to do this to ‘wind down’) when i heard the bus food had arrived. it was whataburger. someone mentioned the guys waiting outside and troy our lighting guy pipes up, “do you want me to go all skynard on em?” he said this while chuckling. (troy tours with skynard most of the time apparently) “what would you say,” i asked. “umm…it’s rather secular david.” even more chuckling. i thought this was hilarious and choked on my whataburger. then i went outside to meet these two fabulous people. i’m glad they waited around. it made the night even more pleasant.

this is troy:

he is currently shooting a stop motion movie with g.i. joes.

today we have the day off. this is not so exciting. it should be, but i prefer to be “working” if we’re out and about. it seems wasteful to be far from home and not playing. we drove from jackson to atlanta and have parked near the lenox mall. we will now kill an entire day participating in the commerce of the deep georgian south. i’ll let you know what i procure.
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tonight we drive from atlanta to columbia south carolina. go game cocks. it’s been sold out for quite a while so it should be rather exciting. the bus rolls at midnight.

A Collision Tour 05 part 3

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WARNING. the following contains unnecessary graphic material:

so the phsyllium husks did nothing. i mean i’m as regular as they come and now nothing. i think things may be stuck. is that possible? i put one of the pills in a cup of water to test the 50 times thing and nothing really happened so i slept without fear last night. i felt no bloating or excessive swelling. i guess we’ll still just have to stay tuned. i’m just not so sure what my proper course of action should be. i guess i should have figured something swelling to 50 times its original size while in your intestinal track would result in this.

ok on to bigger (well maybe) and better (surely) things…
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today i give you a tour of the bus. this is how we roll:

home

we call it the pequod (literary reference to moby dick’s whaleship – a microcosmic study of social diversity and interaction.)
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dylan (see first tour entry for proper pronunciation) had an air brushed plate made so there’d be no mistake about the “who” that is rolling in pequod. this saddenly prevents our usual responses issued at truckstops to the oft asked question, “who’s in there?” typically we respond either “skynard” , “whitesnake”, or “warrant”. now the answer appears in compliments of mauve. thanks dylan for your thoughtfulness.

this is what dylan sees when he drives. he is asleep right now. he sleeps during the day. drives during the night. vampires and some doctors keep the same hours.

this is the front lounge. welcome to our episode of cribs. i’ll not be showing you what is in the fridge.

nice tele. it is typically tuned to fuse. it is difficult to tell one song from the next on this channel so you really just don’t notice it that much. it functions for the most part as a really pretty light.

just past the lounge is the shower…

and the toilet, pronounced “crapper”. except you are only permitted the discarding of liquids in it. so really “crapper” is a crude misnomer. it is not a completely pleasant thought to know you carry all of the liquids around with you all the time…

this hangs just above the “crapper’.

this is the hallway. it is full of bunk beds, twelve to be exact. lets look inside one…

this is hogan’s bunk. i picked his because he is the only one that makes his bed everyday. he is a very tidy person. that’s his backpack that he keeps all of his necessary items in such as toothpaste and physllium.

family photos located just to his left as he lies down each night. he stares at his wife and wishes she were there. he misses her and prays his sacrifice of absence is worthwhile. he’s pretty sure it is and so is she but he still stares at her every night while he lays there talking to her on the phone and afterward, after she hangs up, he stares, remembering her smell and how she appreciates that he makes the bed every morning and wonders if she still sleeps on her side of the bed when he’s gone. her name is robin. his first name is mike. mike and robin. (he just told me that she actually sleeps on his side of the bed when he’s gone. sometimes she gets a shirt of his from the closet. apparently he also has a smell. i think olfactory memory is the most terrifically fierce.)

this is what is located at the foot of mike’s (hogan) bed…

this is what is located inches from his face. each bunk has it’s own tv. you can watch either what is on the front lounge or the back room (me and toni’s place) or what is on the dvd player. or you can plug in what is located at the foot of your bed that helps you cope with the passing of time.

my room. at the end of the hallway, just past the 12 bunks.

thanks for dropping by. ya’ll come back now ya hear?
it is now time to go be with the fine folks of jackson. it is a beautiful room tonight. this really old church downtown. it is huge! i just popped my head in. the shane’s were sounding fabulous and the crowd was packed in and lively!! i’m really excited.

sure enough. the rest of yesterday and last night were exciting. very exciting. lots of friends came. shelley and carrie and mike from the sixsteps offices (our label) came out. my best friend kevin came out. i grew up with kevin in texarkana and we both went to baylor. it was great catching up with him a bit. all in all a great day and a superb night. granted being “off” for seven days emptied my head and it was difficult to remember how to play and sing but i don’t think anyone could tell.
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each night after we have finished making music and hanging out with good folks we find ourselves back on the bus. the greatest moment of the day usually happens then. bus food. that’s what we call it. a large amount of take-out from some unknown locale is procured and brought back to the bus for late night consumption. last night it was taco cabana. affectionately called taco c by our collective. it was perfect. we stuffed ourselves with tortillas and cheese while watching The Clash:

as we were gorging ourselves with this bread and cheese hogan made an enthusiastic announcement. “i have a band outing/adventure for us!” this was exciting news. i love band outing/adventures. they are typically filled with fun and some element of danger. we awaited explanation. “so i have this stuff. it’s called phsyllium husk. it’s in pill form. it’s the husk of some plant that is indigestable. you take three pills and drink a lot of water and the pills expand to 50 times their size inside you!! see? get it? ‘band outing’? it cleans you out. 50 times original size i said!!” i understood the deftness of hogan’s wordplay but it sure didn’t sound like a wise thing to ingest something that will soon thereafter expand to 50 times it’s original size. terrible images came immediately to mind. we discussed aloud these images. we laughed alot. this stuff is supposed to be like a colonic without the intrusion. we agreed that tomorrow we would embark together on this phsyllium journey.
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​we drove all night to tulsa. we drove all morning to tulsa. we drove into the early afternoon to tulsa. it seems that tulsa must be a long way from houston. or maybe our bus driver dylan (see yesterday’s entry for pronunciation) pulled over somewhere in the night to gamble or eat or something. i just know when we all were roused from our slumbers by lack of movement it was no longer morning but early afternoon. i was supposed to have been at a radio station (kxoj) at 8am. obviously this wasn’t going to happen since it was 1pm. hm. i went to the front lounge in the bus and everyone was up. we discussed our decided physllium adventure. there was a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. this was in vast contrast to the sentiments last night in the room. i read aloud the information on the bottle of pills. “warning: without drinking enough liquid the product may swell in the throat causing blockage or choking.” this didn’t ease concerns for everyone. i took the pills. it is now only hogan and bwack and i on the adventure. i’ll let you know how it all comes out. (yes. that was a terrible thing to say.)
i walked across the street to walmart. i purchased 1 brush, 1 pair of scissors, 1 comb. toni gave me a hair cut. this was very exciting. toni is the keeper of the hair. i do the maintanance and must say that one of my seminal talents is that i can cut my own hair while looking in the mirror. for most people this seems difficult as everything is flipped and opposite than what is natural. it is second nature for me. i’m pretty sure this is one of my super powers. i have more but this definitely could be one of them. the hair however had exceeded maintanance and needed heavy lifting so toni had to get to chopping. it looks really nice.
it is time for sound check. tulsa will never be the same.

wow. ok. so this week started early. i know. that makes no sense. how can a week start early? i’m just saying it did “for me”. for me it started early. or earlier than usual. to catch you up, i had planned to give an inside look at this week on the road. we’ve been “off” (home) for 7 days. now, we are no longer “off” (home). and i stopped being “off” at 6:15 this morning. well actually we got on the bus at midnight in waco last night and drove to houston. i woke up to toni (my wife) punching me. it was 6:15, as i mentioned, and she is punching me. i am not a morning person. i did not retaliate, however. i was supposed to be picked up to go to a radio station in town (ksbj) so i got up and got dressed in the dark. went to the front of the bus. and then came the first bit of excitement. we were not at the venue. we were supposed to be at the venue. that is where i was to be picked up. we were in a walmart parking lot. our bus driver, dylan, (pronounced die-lon, emphasis on “die”) was nowhere to be found. well i found him. in a bunk on the bus asleep. he is a heavy sleeper. so i punched him. i figured it would work since it had worked on me. it did. dylon (die-lon) got up and drove very quickly. i still made the pickup. at the station i played “open skies” with my guitar and said funny things. this lasted about an hour i think. then back to the venue. the bus wasn’t there. i called. “where is the bus?” “we’re back at the walmart.” i was confused. it was still early. i was no longer “off”. wow. what an exciting morning.
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the guys aren’t driving down until 2pm [it is 3 hours from waco (home) to houston] so i unloaded our gear and boxes of cds from the bays alone. toni stepped off the bus. “are you working?” “yes.” “wow.” she looked genuinely surprised. here look. i unloaded all of this. alone. pretty impressive i realize.

i walked over to the truck that was being unloaded. here’s the truck:
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we have a new driver on this leg. i haven’t met him yet. (oh yeah, it occurs to me that you might not know what a “leg” is. well, i’m sure you know what a leg is but perhaps not in this context. in tour lingo, a string of dates on the road without going home would be referred to as a “leg” or a “run”. so we finished our first “leg” a week ago and now are embarking upon our second “leg”. you are now more informed and can now insert this into conversation with confidence later today or tomorrow. i.e.: “yeah, the crowder band just started the second leg of their tour. oh. what? you don’t know what “leg” means? ha. how uninformed are you? i am much more informed. wow. i had no idea that i was the superior in this relationship.) anyway, i hope the truck driver is nice.
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here are people that i don’t know unloading the truck. one of them said, “hey! get to work! isn’t this your gear!?” i said, “sort of. and thanks for helping.” he didn’t look very impressed while i stood there trying to take the picture. even less so when i walked off.

this is bob. he is one of the volunteers helping unload the truck

here is something pretty exciting: bob told me a story about going to help load in gear at this other church. this really big scary man in a bright green shirt and yellow tie walked briskly up to him and said, “hey! take your hat off in here!” bob had a baseball cap on because he had just come straight from work to help out. bob took his hat off and the big scary man walked off and stood at the back of the room watching. bob went up to the pastor of the church and said, “excuse me. would you mind terribly if i wore my hat in here? my hair is really messed up and i feel kind of dumb without it on.” the pastor said, “bob i wouldn’t care if you walked in here naked! of course you can put it on.” bob put his hat back on and walked directly toward the big scary man in the bright green shirt and yellow tie. “hey. i’m going to wear my hat. the pastor said it would be ok!” bob walked off. then he felt bad. he went back to the big scary man in the bright green shirt and yellow tie. bob said, “man i’m sorry for being a bit quick with you. it’s just that on the way here i was driving past all these trailers and under a couple of bridges and i started thinking about these homeless folks i saw and the poverty and pain they live in and i was praying that maybe one of them would see your cross and wander in here and that god would wrap his arms around them and they’d feel his love, even though they were dirty and undeserving and smelled bad and they’d be sitting here with their backpack and all they owned and then you’d come up to them and say, ‘hey!! take your hat off!’ and they’d pick themselves up, walk right out that door they came in, and say ‘i knew this was all a bunch of crap!’ and maybe they’d see the cross as they walked out and maybe they’d flip it off for good measure and then a truck would hit them and they’d die and go straight to hell.” bob paused for dramatic impact. “all because you don’t like hats!” then bob laughed a sort of coughing, gravel filled laugh . “that’s from the 1st Book of Bob!!” i smiled at bob. bob said, “seriously, i said that.” i said, “i don’t doubt it bob.” bob said, “then the big scary man in the bright green shirt and yellow tie started crying.” i smiled at bob. bob said, “seriously, he did.” i said, “i don’t doubt it bob.”
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this is jason and shane e. they are waving at me from the balcony:

they are trying to get me to go play golf with them. “come play golf,” they say! i can’t. i have work to do. i tell them so. this is not very exciting. i watch them load their clubs and drive away.
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i will end here due to the length of this first entry. it is truly ridiculous. i’m sure the rest of the day and evening will be a very lovely and exciting one. you’ll just have to trust me. tomorrow i am still not “off”. we will be living on tulsa time. cheers.

ok. so sorry for the neglect. i have now recieved enough abusive emails and comments that i repent and will make ammends for the lack of entries. beginning next week when we get back out on the road i will be giving you an inside, pictorial look at what is going on. don’t tell anyone, as it is just for you faithful xanga friends and we wouldn’t want to spoil it with other’s, less faithful, presence. i know this all sounds very exciting but you will soon see life on the road is anything but. ok, so sometimes it is exciting and i’m simply trying to lower your expectations. but seriously. not that exciting. only a little. ok, sometimes it’s really really exciting but you never know. so next week could go either way. we’ll have to just wait and see. wow. i’m so excited!