And what a tour it was! A tour of firsts. Little firsts and big firsts. And a dearth of big fists, excepting those that pumped the air in jubilation. I think there were a lot of those type of fists.

Before I get into the little things that made me smile and all the happy events that took place I have to first give you some idea of the bigger picture. I was in a special position, i.e., I got to open the show with my longtime pal Ben Belcher who I had hardly played with at all in the past two years and just any time I get to play with him it’s so so good. And then after opening I got to play part of the headline set with Thomas Dolby and his excellent band, Kevin Armstrong on guitar and Mat Hector on drums. Musically, this was very exciting and beneficial for me, especially since the two sets I played on were so different from each other. And personally, these are all just super great guys who I love to spend time with and I’m so glad I was trapped on a bus with them for four weeks. Really, really good times.

It was my first time on a ‘luxury liner’ tour bus, and you may recall I have a thing with buses (just scroll down a ways) but this is a whole nother story. I could write a whole story just about the bus but the main point is that you don’t have to get off the bus to pee or to walk around/stretch your legs or to take a nap. There’s a fridge full of food and drinks and a microwave on the bus, too. And a card table! So we basically never had to get off the bus except to play shows and to go poo, and sometimes we did both of those things at the same time, and that was great.

Other highlights (I wrote this list in the Chicago airport while on four-hour layover after having stayed up all night in LA to catch the 4:40am shuttle to LAX to be sure not to miss my 8am flight…) include but are not limited to:

– Playing lots of frisbee in all kinds of places. Surprisingly enough, Brits can handle a bee!

– So many belly dancers, ranging from the adorable to the comical to the sublime.

– Ben’s dance. (Sorry folks, if you weren’t there I can’t explain it. But you might be able to see it somewhere on the Time Capsule channel eventually…) This was the singular phenomenon that made me laugh harder than anything else.

– Being around so much steampunk. I was never around so much steampunk before and I learned that it’s kind of like goth but more expensive to create/maintain and without any particular style of music associated with it. And it’s kind of whimsical and very harmless.

– Our tour of pre-post-apocalyptic Detroit

– Making so many new friends!

– Seeing lots of family and old friends in many of the tour stops (e.g. Jason in Seattle, Shamsher in SF, Kellen in LA, Jason in San Diego, Tom and Mozell and Miriam and Dov and lots of old friends in NYC, Effie and Molly in Toronto, Sam in Annapolis, Matt and Laura in Chicago, and I guess I knew some folks in Detroit too…)

– Seeing parts of the US I’d never seen before, like Montana, Idaho, Washington and California.

– So much sushi. Ohhhmmm that was good. Lots of good food. Let’s not forget the Seattle dog.

– Last show of the tour with fake moustaches, Kevin’s parody set list. I hope someone got pictures!

– The dinosaur museum in Glendive, Montana with it’s not-so-hidden agenda

– Having a box of EXCELLENT fireworks given to us in Greenville and then setting them off in CT right before we head for the Canadian border.

– Sitting in with Chester River Runoff in Annapolis

– Sitting in with Brain Cloud in Brooklyn

– Being joined on stage by wonderful surprise guest musicians (Larry Treadwell in LA, Jeffrey Wash in San Francisco and of course Graham on drums for a bunch of shows, that was great!)

– Meeting people with connections to Devo who saw us playing a Devo song

– Breaking down in Idaho and spending a day playing in a big parking lot

– Watching Idiocracy together and quoting it throughout the tour

– A lot of other funny and wonderful stuff that happened that I promise I didn’t forget about, I just haven’t remembered it yet. Don’t be insulted if I didn’t mention you, it’s because those deeper memories are so much better they’re harder to access.

– And that’s all for now.

– The End.