... From DC to Pittsburgh, the land where streets make no sense whatsoever.  Our GPS system took a break (i.e. stopped working inexplicably when we arrived in Pittsburgh, and had a miraculous and equally inexplicable resurrection as soon as we left).  It has got to be the gnarliest city to navigate.  Aside from taking hour long detours on what should have been 10 minute drives (good thing the city is interesting to look at) it's a pretty damn cool town.  The Asylum Street Spankers were also in town on tour, and a couple of them sat in on Guy's show, and then Guy sat in with them during their show the next night.  We had a day to explore, and I had heard of an awesome art space in Pittsburgh for years, so Guy, Will, and I went to check out the Mattress Factory and were all thoroughly impressed. 
Photos:  (left) The wall outside Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh.  (center)  An urban revitalization art project at the MF.  (right)  A sweet herb garden in the middle of a dense urban area near the MF.

The Mattress Factory is one of the best art spaces I've ever seen, it exclusively shows installation art, and the artists can augment the buildings by cutting big holes in exterior walls and floors and flooding the basement.  I loved being able to experience that space with Guy and Will who were just as excited about the art as I was.  I was very inspired by what is going on there, and I'd love to be involved in a project at the MF one of these days.

Onward to more stops in Pennsylvania and then on to Ohio.  The guys opened for the Asylum Street Spankers in Cleveland at the Beachland Ballroom.  What a rowdy, enthusiastic crowd. 
Photos:  Guy with some Spankers at the Beachland Ballroom.

Next night was Terre Haute, Indiana which was, in my opinion, the worst night of the tour.  The guys were champs, bringing everything to the performance, as usual.  But the crowd was awful, mostly frat boys and sorority girls that could care less about the music and, instead, sat around chain smoking cigarettes, drinking their booze, and engaging in the vulgar teenage mating rituals.  I wasn't feeling particularly well for a couple of days, and so I think that amplified the situation for me, but that night epitomized all that is wrong in this world, as far as I can tell.  First of all, there are three guys who have traveled across the country bringing their music to attentive and receptive audiences.  They are not just incredibly talented musicians, but they are some of the best human beings I've met, they are thoughtful, engaged with life and the world around them, they are incredibly intelligent and funny, and most of all, each of them brings such a gift to the stage every night, regardless of whether five people are watching or five thousand.  There are not many musicians I know that will still play a good show when almost everyone in the venue is talking very noisily amongst themselves and who show more enthusiasm for the formulaic crappy pop music that the bartender puts on inbetween sets than they show for the energy these three musicians are bringing to them live.   I had come to have such immense respect and admiration for Guy, Will, and Rob and their ability and willingness to bring it every night, no matter how good or bad the venue or audience or sound was.  And here we were, in a frat boy hang out full of other people's second hand smoke and loud, obnoxious, drunken college kids who totally lacked any meaningful or substantive engagement with anything going on around them.  They were so disconnected and unaware of anything but the things they were using to distract themselves.  I really think this attitude and way of being in the world is the cause of so many ills, both individual and collective.  That night had such an impact on me that I still felt it the next day as we made our way to St. Louis.  Guy and I had a long talk about it, and I broke down.  I fell to pieces talking to him, sitting under a tree.  The thing they do every night is such a gift, and to see so many people fail in their ability to see and appreciate that made me so sad.  That gift is one of the closest things to an experience of the divine in this lifetime.  The ones that get it go back into the world with new eyes, and then there are those who cannot see it at all because they are so disconnected from themselves, much less anything else in this world.

Photo:  Guy, Will, and Rob at the legendary BB's Jazz Blues & Soups in St. Louis.

Thank the gods for places like BB's Jazz Blues & Soups in St. Louis.  This was just the opposite of Terre Haute; the folks at BB's really get it and that fact resonates so brilliantly in everything they do there.   From the owner right on down to the bar and restaurant staff, you just feel the love of music hit right to the core of all they do, and it's clear the audience feels it too.   The fans there are attentive, enthusiastic, and have a willingness to surrender to the experience and see where it takes them.  There is nothing like dancing and sweating with strangers that makes all with the world right again.

Photo:  (above) Guy and Will at BB's. (below) Kuan Yin Buddha at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art.

Onward to a couple more stops on the way back home to Austin.  I got to take a very quick peek at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City where I saw a really great Joseph Cornell box in homage to one of my favorite composers, Jacques Offenbach.  There was also a surprisingly extensive Asian collection.  The thing that interested me most about that museum was the attempt to design interior spaces that in some way add meaning and context to the art that is exhibited there.  A lot of philosophers have famously claimed that museums are places where art goes to die, and I think that designing the interiors of museums similarly to Nelson Atkins, in a way that the space actively engages the art, helps bring aesthetic experience back to life in richer and fuller ways.  Ultimately, though, I agree with the likes of Hegel and others that there is a moribund quality to work contained in museums.  It reminds me of the story about the highly coveted Stradivari violins that lose their tonal brilliance, the very thing that sets them apart from all other instruments, because they sit in a museum and are never played.  The wood, no matter how beautiful to look at, tonally degrades without regular use.  It always seemed ironic to me that preserving Stradivaris in museums diminishes the very thing that makes them worthy of preservation.  So, too, I think, the spirit in visual art is diminished in museums.  Hegel says, "We bow at the knee no longer," in the face of great works.  I walked around the sculpture garden for quite a while after the museum closed, and my attention was turned back toward the ways in which art and the environment intersect and interrelate, and because of that relationship, new life is breathed into both.

This whole idea of contextualizing art reminds me of a conversation Guy and I have had a few times.  He does a song called Play to Lose where he gets off stage and walks through the crowd, engaging audience members directly by making them into the character that he addresses in his lyrics.  It is very theatrical, and it always takes the audience by surprise.  It recontextualizes the act of performing, and it makes the audience into an active particpant and co-conspirator.  For me, the most effective art - whether it be visual or performance based - is that which shakes up and blurs the boundary between the artist and audience.  I love art that implicates the viewer, that makes them a co-creator, that compels them to some sort of action.  I love art that engenders a sense of active participation, that creates roles around which society convenes.                                                                                                                                On the last day of the tour on our drive from Oklahoma City to Austin, we stopped for lunch.  The woman who rang up my order took a good look at us and said, "Y'all have been on the road for a while, huh?"  We did indeed look a little ragged and road weary.  A month on the road will do that to you.  In that time, we only had two days off.  That's a lot of nearly constant motion.  All told, the tour was an amazing experience.  I'll be going back out with the guys in October for a shorter tour through the southeast, so stayed tuned for more tales from the road...                      Photo:  Guy, Will, and Rob at the Continental Club in Austin.

xo
LL