Land Legs

All right. Back in Austin, jumping back into my other life as manager at Red Leaf School of Music. Our summer camp for kids starts next week, and I'm excited to be a part of making them into little rock stars. Take that, Jack Black. Dub is my co-pilot. The last leg of our tour was fun and the last bit of road home was slightly eventful...we had a 10 hour drive from Amarillo back home on Friday, and the van had gotten an oil change the day before we left. Outside of Plainview Susan got a dashboard light that told her the oil was too high...so we stopped at a Jiffy Lube and they had to let a quart and a half out. Ouch. Come on, people. So there we are, happily back on the road, I'm trying to do some writing, and there's a big "BRRRRRAAAAAAPPPPPFFFFFTFFFFFTTTTFFFFFFT" noise under our feet...the power steering goes out...the battery not charging light comes on. Egads. Luckily we are on the outskirts of Lubbock and Susan pilots the van to Joe Jackson's Transmission. All five of their mechanics were on the case immediately and we were on the road in no time. It could have been bad, but ended up being an interesting little sidestep. We left them with a stack of CDs in thanks. Video forthcoming. Ironic how we went about 5000 miles and that happens in the last 400. Chase and Jamie, the fan belt heroes. I sold one koozie in Amarillo. Susan made sure I got my 10% cut. I'll admit the first couple of days back I missed going somewhere all the time and I still do miss the constant 70 degree temperature average of the Rocky Mountain chain. But there are songs to be worked on and an EP to be made this summer. I'll probably head back out to NM and CO in August for a bit and I'll be merch girling around Texas in July. There's a lot to do...I just don't have to be on wheels when I do it. I learned some things. I learned you can still accomplish a lot on the road if you have a bunch of discipline and take advantage of technology. I discovered I enjoy the travel and the people and I really enjoy tour managing. I like making the bottom line work out to everyone's benefit...which is the job. If the bottom line is negative there's no tour and no tour manager. I'm fortunate to be able to work with an artist like Susan who has character and is a character. Witty repartee is our forte. I feel French. Now, about booking gigs in Paris...