The
"Dancing" Tour, May-June 2001
Most of the entourage left after the second Bottom Line show in late
May, leaving just Keneally, Stacey, myself and Dennis to work a Taylor
clinic tour back across the country. As always, my boyhood home in
Westfield, NJ proves to be a kind launching ground. From left to right:
grandfather Irving Lasky (age 86), mom Laura, me, Stacey, Keneally,
Dennis.
When not on the road with us, our very own MacGuyver--Dennis Hill--restores
classic cars back in Arizona. As such, we accommodated him by stopping
in Ohio at a salvage yard called Hog Heaven, and we all got to soak
in an unfamiliar subculture for twenty minutes. This just happened
to be my favorite car in the lot.
Dennis' automotive knowledge and driving skills eventually paid serious
dividends. We woke up one morning in Kansas City, 210 miles from that
night's destination, Wichita, KS. Since our clinics generally started
at 7:00 PM, that gave us plenty of time to wake up, eat well, and
leave at 2:00 PM to arrive at 6:00 PM. So you can imagine our horror
when Mr. Chatfield called us at 2:00 to remind us that our clinic
that day was at 3:00. It even said so right in our itinerary--Stacey
and I just blew it completely. We had a car and a gear truck that
could only move so fast.or so I thought. Dennis took that truck and
did unspeakable things with it, averaging 95 miles an hour
as we raced down curvy I-35.with me in the passenger seat, holding
on for dear life. We arrived at 4:40, mortified and thankful that
some people were still waiting for us at Senseney Music. This picture
was taken immediately after the clinic, with all of us still shaken
from The Wichita Run--me most of all, which delighted Dennis to no
end.
Just off I-70 near the Kansas-Colorado border lives an establishment
called Prairie Dog Town, which boasted of all sorts of wildlife: goats,
birds, hogs, owls, rattlesnakes.and, of course, prairie dogs. The
entrance was a tribute to the good taste of taxidermists, and if you
look close enough you may notice a similarity in the first picture.
In the second shot, my hand was still wet from feeding the goats.
Kind of icky, kind of cool. Not the kind of thing you do growing up
in Jersey.
Stacey and I, during load-out just after the final full-band show
of the tour, outside the Bottom Line in New York City. I just like
the coincidental appearance of the oddly-lit stop sign.
