July/Aug Magical Misery Tour recap

From Tom O:

OK so this wrap up of the Magical Misery Tour is a little late, but we have a good excuse for that but I’ll come back to that. This three week tour began in Grass Valley (Sacramento) California and took us up thru Washington state, Alberta and British Columbia, Canada and back to the states via North Dakota and Montana, back down to a very strange night in Las Vegas-thru the desert to Taos and then finishing up in Phoenix. We had more 13+ hour drives in these three weeks than we do in any single year. And of course that had to happen when we had the previously mentioned worst tour bus on the planet. We all consider ourselves very seasoned veterans when it comes to being on the road, but this was pretty much the ultimate test -it definitely could’ve been filmed for a survival show -but at least on this one we all survived. So that bus can now go back to retirement forever. I’m sure it’s the backyard on some farm in…..some state. I will not mention any specific states so as to not offend its residents. Luckily we will have our regular bus back for the Sept/Oct shows and it has all been redone inside -so we are all really looking forward to that. It’ll all end up being a poorhouse to penthouse story. We think.
The great side of MM Tour was that we all thought every single show was excellent and different-70+ different songs played these three week. In the western half of the US (and Canada) is very hard to route a tour because of the long drives. When you go to places that you don’t get to very often, or places you’ve never been before you never know what you’re going to get. Given that, from a fan standpoint this may be one of the most rewarding runs we’ve had in a very long time. There were many places we had never been before and across the board the audiences were absolutely amazing. Lucinda and the band were on fire.There were too many highlights to mention, met great people all along the way. That is truly what got us thru this little adventure. We can’t thank everyone enough for coming out to these shows. We start up again in a couple weeks and these Sept/Oct shows will be the last in the US for quite awhile. To paraphrase the Johnny Cash song “we’ve been everywhere man”.

To get back to why this recap was a bit after the fact – a week or so ago we posted a picture of Lucinda working on the words to a song at dinner in one of our fine neighborhood establishments. Well she finished that song and another and we recorded both of them last night and they will be the last two songs we wanted to record for the next record -one of them most likely will be the title song so it was an important one -and it came out amazing. So yes, we are now all done recording the next record.

And last but not least -drumroll please- as promised several times -here finally are some pictures of Red Fred The Driver with some explanation. To refresh the story for those who haven’t seen these tour dispatches, Red Fred was our driver-his regular nickname was Red, and we quickly noticed a similarity in looks and demeanor to Fred Sanford (from the Sanford & Son tv show) aka Redd Foxx, (obviously his friends have noticed that resemblance also) so we started referring to him as Red Fred -in fact about a week or so into the tour he actually wore a Fred Sanford t-shirt. For some unexplained reason he would not let anyone take a picture of him with it on.
So here they are the pictures of Red Fred:
#1 —This is Red Fred cleaning his watch while doing 75 mph on the freeway -look ma! I can drive with no hands on the wheel!
#2 — This is Red Fred and our asst. tour mgr Matt looking in bewilderment at the bus which had just blown the generator. This was in Billings -it would go out 5 more times, but of course it waited until we were crossing the desert to do so
#3 — This is Red Fred after we had finally arrived home in LA. A picture does sometimes say a thousand words. But god bless him. as we said goodbye, he said “I hope I can all drive you again”. He was really a sweet guy put in a tough situation- we don’t think he had driven in awhile and bus was almost underivable. But let’s put it this way -Red Fred would be a great neighbor -the guy you’d want to invite over for a bbq but I don’t think he needs the stress that this trip gave him.