We’re back in the van, this time heading to LeMars, Iowa for two shows at the National Old Time Music Festival.

Hopefully there will be no speeding tickets, no impassable traffic jams, and no one will lock the keys in the van (all of which happened within the span of a few hours in West Virginia two weeks ago). Also, shortly after passing into Maryland, we ran over a beaver.

The banjo player isn’t riding with us — he’s already in Iowa for his wife’s family reunion. Instead, we have Paul’s wife riding along.

For more about the festival, read on:

LeMars, Iowa…..LeMars, Iowa, is the home of Blue Bunny Ice Cream, the largest manufacturer of ice cream in the world. It’s also a north-east Iowa rural area surrounded by corn fields. According to Sheila Everhart, Director of the upcoming 33rd Annual old-time rural roots music festival, “We’re expecting the largest influx of foreign performers,and guests, from foreign countries at record breaking numbers this year. We’re definitely not the Olympics, but we are just as concerned with our traditions and our cultural heritage as the Chinese are, and we have several gold medalists coming from Iowa in Bejing to prove the athletic side of Iowa. Now we begin the process of proving the validity of Iowa’s traditional music. Bob (my husband) and I went to China to perform in Bejing five years ago, and my how it has changed. The experience is one we will never forget, and because of it, we continue to extend invitations to foreign performers of America’s traditional country and bluegrass music to attend our festival. This year will be an incredible adventure in ’saving’ America’s rural music. We expect 36 performers just from the country of New Zealand. There are also performers coming from Australia, Holland, Ireland, Germany, England, Canada, and France. The festival lasts 7 days, so as the dollar is low, it’s a real bargain for foreign guests.”

The event starts on August 25th, and ends on August 31st, with ten sound stages accomodating well over 600 performers of old-time acoustic rural music. According to Bob Everhart, “Acoustic music is health food for the ears, and we have a ton of it this year in LeMars at the Plymouth County Fairgrounds, with our main stage indoors in an air conditioned building. There’s also workshops and contests for just about everything there is in old-time music. Our doors are wide open, and like China, we encourage everyone to participate in our efforts of keeping our great American traditional rural music alive.” More information is available at their website: http://www.oldtimemusic.tipzu.com

We’re on the road again, heading to Knoxville to do a radio appearance on WDVX’s Blue Plate Special tomorrow afternoon, then on to Hendersonville, North Carolina for an evening show.

We’re presently, however, still on the Dan Ryan, just passing 83rd Street. Non-Chicagoans are often baffled by our freeway naming system, which uses names rather than numbers or directions. Thus, if someone tells you to take the Bishop Ford, you would take, um, whatever stretch of interstate is named after the Bishop. Dan Ryan was a politically powerful pal of Richard J. Daley, who named a perpetually clogged, perpetually under construction segment of 90/94 south of the Loop in his friend’s honor. Cheers.

We’re passing through Louisville, and will get a few hours sleep at Scott’s brother’s place there.

We’re not camping this time, and packed waaaay lighter than we did for the Colorado trip. As a consequence, the rented minivan (a Dodge Somethingorother) feels positiviley spacious. I’m in the backmost seat, affectionately referred to as ‘the hole’, typing away courtesy of my mobile broadband connection.

More later.

We had a great trip on our first ever Rocky Mountain Foray. Here is a link to my pictures. Hopefully the other guys will post theirs at some point too:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10799390@N06/sets/72157606443571057/

Here’s a quick summary of the trip:

Day one - drive 300 miles, play two sets to a nice audience at the Bluegrass Cafe in Tama, Iowa, then drive 800 miles to Denver, Colorado over night.

Day two - eat a great breakfast at Udi’s in Stapleton (finally, Colorado green chile!), crash at Ryan’s old friend Molly’s house for 4 hours of much needed sleep in the early afternoon, play a short living room set for Molly and her husband and kids, clean up and drive to CO Springs, eat a fantastic bbq meal and play three well received sets outdoors at the Front Range BBQ, before following our new friend Joe Johnson to The Ancient Mariner bar in Manitou Springs for a latenight acoustic set by the bar. Then drive an hour back to Denver to crash at our friend Cyndy Bruce’s house. Her boyfriend Tommy was an excellent host (Cyndy was stuck out of town) and gave us a great place to rest up and recharge.

Day three - chill at Tommy and Cyndy’s place all day before playing three sets at Duclinea’s Hundredth Monkey on Colfax that night. Many local and out of town friends were in attendance and we had a great night. My old school chum Pete Condon was on hand to add some excellent harmonica to Don’t Think Twice and Mountan Dew. After the show, we packed up and drove 60 minutes to Lyons, CO to setup camp in the dark at Rockygrass.

Day four - wake up to the bright Colorado sun after 3.5 hours of sleep and enter Rockygrass Festival. Hang around for several hours before playing three songs in the band contest. We didn’t place but we had a blast, and had no regrets about our lack of matching suits, or any suits at all, for that matter! Our set was very well received by the audience and though we surely could have played better than we did, considering how we got there, I’d say we did pretty well under the circumstances. The festival grounds were amazing and the band selection was fantastic. We made lots of new friends, re-connected with old ones, and had an excellent time throughout. The highlight of the festival for me was a long latenight jam session with our new friends Andy and Robin from Oregon by our campsite.

Day five - wakeup from a few hours sleep to another blazing sunny day, get a leisurely breakfast and make our way into the festival grounds for our first day of absolultely no commitments. We all enjoyed the fest in our own ways, crossing paths variously throughout the day between swimming/tubing in the river, checking out the band contest finals, enjoying the mainstage acts, shopping for gifts at the local vendors, and sampling the excellent festival chow and beer selections. It was a very nice day, the musical highlight of which was the Carolina Chocolate Drops, who fired up the crowd in a huge way and had a blast doing it. Sam Bush Band put on a great set of classic bluegrass to close out the night while Tangelweed got seriously hula-fied by my old pal Pete Condon. Sam got his friends Peter Rowan, Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer, Mike Miller and several others to join him for a huge three-song encore that sent everybody out of the festival fully sated from a long weekend of bluegrass. Not wanting it to end, we then jammed some more in the parking lot with some new friends from Nebraska before packing up camp and hitting the road at 2 a.m.

Day six - drive 16 hours overnight and all day Monday through Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois, arrive home safely around 6 p.m. Sleep the sleep of the dead.

Sorry for the lack of updates the past few days–we have had limited internet access up in the mountains the past few days. Right now, though, we’re almost to the Illinois border, having driven all night from Lyons Colorado. We’re pretty grimy and pretty tired, but in good spirits, with lots of good pictures and stories to share.

More later.

We finished our show in Tama last night at 10, and drove all night to Colorado, with Scott and I doing the bulk of the driving. We visited Molly and Richard Fisher in Stapleton for some much-needed sleep and a shower. Now we’re making the 70-mile drive from Denver to Colorado Springs for our show at the Front Range. Except for a nasty rainstorm in Iowa, and a member of the band having night terrors while I was driving, everything has been smooth thus far.

Here’s a gallery of camera-phone pics from Nebraska and Colorado.

My throat is holding up OK so far. More later.

We’re on the road today, on the way to Tama, Iowa, for a show at the bluegrass cafe. We’re in a rented minivan, packed to the gills with gear. After tonight’s show, it’s a marathon drive to Colorado Springs for our show there Thursday evening.

I’m recuperating from Strep, which isn’t the best way to start a tour. I’m guzzling water and taking Amoxicliin tablets the size of Kennedy half dollars, hoping that I’ll be getting better rather than worse as the week wears on. I all but lost my voice last week, and haven’t really tested it since. We have two sets ahead of us tonight, which is as good a test as any.

More later.

We’ve just finished two shows at the Bill Jorgenson Memorial Bluegrass Festival, and are heading south at an unlawful rate.

We had a Saturday night show, and a Sunday afternoon show. Both went well. Andy Leach filled in ably for Scott on guitar. Lots of folks bought CDs, and pre-sales for the new CD, Most Folk Heroes Started Out as Criminals, were brisk as well.

After Saturday’s show, we hung out with the Chasin’ Steel guys for a while, and jammed with some good pickers in the barn until about 1 am or so. Billy, Paul, and Ryan reenacted some scenes from Iron John and Lord of the Flies afterward, the results of which have been videotaped. The tapes will be released to the media in the event that any of them attempts to run for president.

Paul and I played a round of mini golf at our hotel, fighting to a draw. Billy acquired a large quantity of golf balls. Ryan made three cents busking. I heard the Clash playing over the store speakers at the Piggly Wiggly. We fit four people, a fiddle, bannjo, mandolin, and suitbass into a Honda sedan, largely due to Billy’s genius packing job.

Unlike our previous two trips to Wisconsin, no band members were threatened with firearms.