I've been on the road a whole lot lately, two tours with Telegraph Canyon, various trips to Austin and Houston for Walking Tree (my high school study abroad recruiting job), and a couple camping trips - one to Lost Maples, and another more impromptu on Galveston beach.
The most interesting trip was probably the first Telegraph tour. We headed west by way of Lubbock in January. We were originally supposed to head as far west as Arizona, but as fate would have it, we never made it out of Alpine, TX.
The last working show of the tour occurred in Alpine on a Saturday night. We played at Railroad Blues (I opened with Petra on violin). The Blues is a sort of Texas country bar. Big, but divey and cozy. At night when it gets cold, they have a big fire pit out front in which they burn logs. And trash. Some might even call it a trash fire, but I did that once and got a sideways look and a stern reminder that it was a "bonfire."
Alpine is home to only about 2000 people, so if you want to hear some good amplified music by someone who doesn't live in Alpine, this is the place to do it.
Richard, who runs the place is also the sound guy, which might make you go 'hmmmm…' He was good at wearing both hats, though, and a pretty awesome guy all around. He always wore a smile, even as he was climbing around on the weird makeshift walkway above the tables, repositioning the 55 gallon trash can that collected water from the ceiling leak. No big deal.
The show went off without a hitch, and there were many sangria shots flowing. This eventually turned into a 4am photo shoot
There are photos somewhere of the Tongan fellow there with his shirt off and I think a couple people signed his man boobs. Fortunately for you, I can't find them anywhere.
The guy on the left is Richard, the sound guy/owner. Tamara and Petra are in the front there. Living the dream.
So we party, then we go back to the RV and there's a tiny dance party IN the RV, which is impressive, given the size of the interior, shown here:
Then we wake up at 7am and it's time to head out to El Paso and get Tam to the airport on time so she can fly back and go to class.
And that's when it happens. The RV is acting funny. It won't steer correctly. There's a scraping, grinding sound. We pull over, it seems to be an easily remedied issue with a bearing. We need a mechanic. It's Sunday in Alpine, Texas. It's Sunday in the middle of nowhere and we need a quick fix on our RV. But it's just Sunday in the middle of nowhere.
With a little help from the local Sheriff, we manage to make it back to an RV park on the edge of town. It's below freezing and our heater isn't really up to par at this point, so we aren't running it. So we're sort of sitting in a refridgerator in the middle of the desert.
We felt kinda like this:
At some point earlier in the trip, the main cabin door on the RV busted.
We had to do this if we wanted to get in and out or load gear.
This made us a little miffed.
We eventually bundled up and hiked to town. On the way in, a few trucks passed us on the road. We looked a little like out-of-towners, so it was no surprise when we heard someone heckling us from one of those trucks. It was surprising when we turned to see that it wasn't a human doing the heckling, but a goat.
Everything was closed. And not just regular Sunday closed. All the places had weird hours or only open on say, Wednesday and Thursday.
We found a breakfast joint, but it was out of biscuits.
Tamara ended up hitching a ride to El Paso with Glossary, the other band we were touring with. The rest of us slowly settled into the idea that we might be here for awhile.
To be continued…
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