FXHL+NTRSTS in Lampasas, Texas (Derek absent, as he’s behind the camera)

So we’re finishing Day Six of our eight-day tour de force… Going on the road is a real gamble, as you have to rely on people you’ve never met, in towns you’ve never visited, to set up and promote the shows you’re going to be playing. The show in Houston, for instance, was pretty successful though no one there’d heard of us; the next night in Austin, musical capital of the Southwest, was more or less a flop as far as actual concertgoers and merchandise sales are concerned.

We got done playing here in Abilene, Texas, a couple hours ago (the last band is rockin’ it out right now), and though there was a good size audience, our music didn’t seem to connect with many of them. Mostly high-school and young-college-age kids here… and I wonder if it’s the music or the image: Older guys with beards, who aren’t dressed “cool,” and who don’t do much cool dancing/headbanging/whatever on stage. I was talking to Kyle from Interstates (our touring partners), who has been in the indie rock scene for nearly 15 years now, and we decided performing is a little bit hopeless for us. Not that it’s impossible to find some good shows here or there, but how do we appeal to people like us? WE don’t go to shows.

But driving through parts of the country I’ve never seen… that’s been the fun part. The van has continued to work despite it’s age and abuse; the band has kept up good spirits and had hardly any cross words, despite sleeping on floors and eating very little. It’s also neat, in a bittersweet way, to be away from Shelley and Lewis. It makes me realize how much I do love and appreciate them, and how much they add to my life, and I get a double-shot of pleasure: Thankful to be on tour, able to drive around and play music for a week; and thankful to be nearing the end of it, headed home to reunite with my love and my son.

P.S.: Yes, the above picture is a bit like “The Last Supper,” not only because of the surreal sort of focus but also because Topp looks a lot like Westerners think Jesus did. Texas is a weird place. Wonder what Oklahoma’s like? I’ll find out tomorrow.

Starting this Friday, Foxhole is officially on tour. (It starts Friday in Louisville, and hits Bowling Green on Saturday… CLICK HERE for info on the BG show or any other).

It’s far from the glamorous, drug/booze/sex-filled scenes you’ll see in TV and movies. Who knows… maybe some bands actually do this stuff. But for us, it’s more of a brief road trip, through entirely random places, dotted with performances and sleepovers with people we’ve never met before. Our tour bus is actually a van—a pretty shoddy one, at that, with no AC and just enough seats for people and which gets all of about 10 miles per gallon on the interstate if we’re going downhill. Our venues include a church, an old theatre, a couple clubs, a cafe… it was supposed to include a grocery store, but somehow that prime spot fell through.

Anyway, reflecting on the few brief jaunts we’ve taken—some for days, some for just a weekend, and at least one trip to Michigan and back for a single show—brings a bunch of great memories. There were crappy parts; in fact, when in the middle of it, it almost seems like one continuous journey through irritation and despair. But good memories tend to crowd out bad, and thank God that they do. If not, I’d have had good reason to ditch this whole rock-star idea a long time ago.

Top Five Tour Memories

FIVE: “Your mom’s a nice van!” | It’s hard to fathom that I’ve been in this band, with three of the same people and a rotating cast on drums and in the auxiliary spot, for almost eight years. When we started, we didn’t know how to play our instruments, nor did we have any clear idea of what we were trying to accomplish. That didn’t stop us from recording and self-issuing an EP, and in Summer 2002 we hit the road for two weeks of shows.

It’s worth noting that some of these turned out to be something other than “shows” as I understood that term. One place a freelance “agent” “booked” for us turned out to be open mic night at a bar that usually featured country acts. Having driven all that way, we went ahead and played, and a younger couple that happened to be there did buy a CD from us. So we made $6, gross, on that show.

Anyway, on the first night out we played near Hell, Ohio… in fact, our van broke down in Hell. While waiting for it to get fixed—which took all day—we hung out at a roast-beef restaurant next door, juggling and eating Equal packets and generally bemoaning life. The show that night? In some dude’s garage. Surprisingly, there were a lot of people listening to music in Hell, and so the show wasn’t too bad. It was the beginning for us… the beginning of driving a long way to play music for a few people, of spending our own money in an attempt to share our music with the world.

FOUR: Rockin’ the art museum | On that same tour, we stayed with my friend Taylor’s brother, Wil, and played with his band True Solar Holiday in Roanoke, Va. … Well, that’s not quite right. We actually showed up late; he and the venue had given up on us, and when we walked in everyone else was walking out. Wil (the funniest guy I’ve ever met, period) tried to get the crowd to stay; meanwhile, we went ahead and set up our stuff, then played a show—mostly for Wil, who was one of three of four people left.

The good part of this memory is the camaraderie of staying with he and his girlfriend, Anousheh (a gifted songwriter and singer herself), staying up all night and talking about music, movies, and our general philosophies of life (Nathan, who’s no longer in the band, trying to tell Wil about Jesus, and Wil telling him straight to his face that it was the second-stupidest thing he’d ever heard). The next day we went with Elizabeth (a nice girl who did the art for the band) and Graham (in the most ridiculous metal band I’ve ever heard) to a river-rope jump and then to a posh art museum.

THREE: Signing autographs in Minsk | Outside of Foxhole, I’ve done very little performing. One exception was in 2003, in Minsk, Belarus, where the girl I was courting lived as a missionary. She played too, and so we set up a couple shows—a rare occurrence in Minsk, much less with two Americans. The funny part was that, at the end of one of the shows, literally every girl there wanted my autograph. (If I hadn’t been performing with the girl I’d wind up marrying, I’d probably have ended up in a lot of trouble.) Worth noting, too, is that our trip to the first show was delayed by a opposition protest in the streets, complete with police (militia) in riot gear, after which a few people disappeared. Belarus is still a dictatorship of sorts, but change is coming.

TWO: Naptime’s over — now, some rock! | A show in Owensboro, set up by a friend (to protect his identity, I’ll simply call him Brandon Andrew Miles, and we’ll call his band Stellar Kin)… which was populated mostly by children under the age of 8. How he came up with this idea, I’ll never know… but those kids sure did love the rockin’ anthems of Stellar Kin! Our music, which is a bit more nuanced, didn’t go over quite as well. We radically re-evaluated our sound after this, and are hoping our next album gets some buzz through cross-promotion on Disney Channel.

ONE: To the future! | As with romance, the best part of touring is often the anticipation. Getting amps fixed, guitars restrung, practicing in large concentrated chunks (tomorrow will see me head to Nashville for practice beginning at 10 a.m. and probably lasting until late afternoon)… the fun is in the planning.

[audio http://rjustin.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/murkville_mixed.mp3] “Ooee” (from forthcoming “Murkville” compilation, also included as bonus track on new vinyl version of “We the Wintering Tree”, soon to be available from Burnt Toast Vinyl)