HessianHunter shares some tales of traveling 6 hours a day in a van to play 11 minute songs about dead elephants to confused strangers. This time, in the desert! The day began in St.
Paul, MN with us trying to perfect our van tetris for tour. Maeth is a 5-piece doom band with 2 drummers, 3 string players, and 5 tone snobs, so we have a mountain of gear to fit on stage and in the van.
We have to pile amps on top of each other and put drums inside larger drums to make it all fit, and most of our personal belongings are under our feet as we broad-chested manly men sit shoulder to shoulder. Thankfully my bandmates are all among the most intelligent, wisecracking, and culturally aware people I know, so we generally always have meaningful and stimulating conversations on the road.
Minnesota to Nebraska is a dull, dull drive. The Great Plains of settler times are long gone, replaced by cornfields and strip malls. We played word games to pass the time, and jammed some sweet mix CDs we made before we left, teenage road trip style. This weirdo Descendents jam was my favorite contribution to the mix. We were a couple hours early to the show, so we struck up some conversation with a pair of Steves at the bar.
The drive out of Omaha was still pretty bland, but as soon as we crossed into Colorado shit got beautiful. Flecks of snow dotted the bushy plains, and as we approached Denverโฆ mountains, bro. We had a fun time poking around an establishment called Cannabis Station, so named because it shares a building with a gas station. The Indian food we ate right after tasted reeeaaaallllyyyy good. The venue was a long-running DIY spot called 7th Circle , a charming dive if ever there was one. We try our hardest to be easy on engineers and tell them what is high-priority to mic and what they can ignore when they inevitably run out of inputs, but Aaron was visibly excited for the challenge of mixing such a complicated band and insisted on getting mics put on every noisemaker on stage, tambourine and jamblock included.
