AG's Journal #4, Days 20-23

day 20-2/4-mt muggs-glens falls,ny.- first of all, huge thanks to our babysitter heidi's sister jane, who put us up for the night and made us all breakfast. the show at mt muggs goes well, nothing earth shattering. there are some old san diegans there that can't believe we're in their town. they scream out requests all night and we all have a good time.

day 21-2/5- stone coast brewery-portland, me.- our good friends kat and jack cook us up a hearty breakfast as we spend the morning in their lovely home. let me take this opportunity to really thank all of our friends on the road who opened up their homes for us. you don't know how nice it is to be 3000 thousand miles away from home and be treated so well.we arrive in portland and meet the stodola's, our drummer bruce's parents, who are in town visiting family, for dinner. we have a nice big maine-style meal and head to the club. the show is awesome. we are the opener and the crowd and the headlining band make us do three more songs after our allotted time slot before we end the show. the headliner, another planet, finishes off the night with their allman brothers, grateful dead style jams. good musicians and great singers. i get up and jam a little bit with them and we talk with them after the show. nice guys. so far, the tour has been about as good as you could want.also, big thanks to mark, a local radio dj who's been pump! ing us for about a year.

day 22- 2/6- today's a day off and it's a good thing because it's the day the shit hit the fan. after the show chad, alley bruce, heidi and the kids decide to drive the rv to killington, vt, where we play next. during the drive they hit a 300 pound buck. nobody is hurt (except the deer) but the rv is in really bad shape. the front end is destroyed along with the radiator, battery and pretty much the whole front end, not to mention the deer remains everywhere. we pack in the van to go help them out and as we're pulling out, the van starts making a strange popping noise that does not sound good. we decide to stay and take the van to the ford dealership in the mornng since they're not open on sunday. fortunately, the stone coast brewery is having their employee party tonight and they invite us to come and hang out. we feast on free food and beer and party with the employees. they have karaoke going on during the night and sean and reed do a stirring rendition of "you don't bring ! me flowers anymore" as they cuddle up together on stage. we meet a couple of really cool girls, michelle and allison, and party with them and some friends into the night. michelle let's us crash at her house and we'll deal with our problems in the morning.

day 23- 2/7-wobbly barn-killington, vt.- well, the van will not be ready for at least two or three days. so we get a rental pickup truck and head for killington. our soundman james will stay in portland until the van is fixed and stay at michelle's house, which i'm sure he won't mind since she is gorgeous. we arrive in killington four hours later and everyone is a bit frazzled but in surprisingly good spirits. we've dealt with this kind of thing before and thankfully we have reed, the king of crisis management, to make everything run smoothly. we're all ready to play and get this shit behind us. it shows as we play probably the best show of the tour. we do a lot of cool, stretched out psychedelic jams and just have a lot of fun with each other. it's highlighted by bruce's godly drum solo that everyone is still talking about. the staff is stoked and they tell us that usually it's dead on a monday night. not so tonight! very energetic crowd. because of our car problems, they have invited us to stay and play tomorrow night as well. apologies to the people in state college, pa. and the recipe for cancelling our show tomorrow. hopefully we'll do it again. we will see the recipe a lot in the next week as we'll be doing 3 shows with them.