This was another intense but lovely tour. Thee IFF were no strangers to 2 weeks here and 3 weeks there. But after those few summer months on the road there was an itch that needed to be scratched. This tour involved some planes but mostly a blue Chrysler minivan. The bright idea was after some shows in the cold north country they would tour the south where it would be much warmer. Well, a winter ice storm had a different plan in mind for the fellas.
For the Canadian shows the lineup consisted of Marc Francis Hug, Tim Bones and Cookie Costa (on bass and trumpet). They spent a couple of nights rehearsing in an old cold garage that belonged to Tim's family before playing a rowdy show at the Zero To One Galleries in Kitchener/Waterloo. Folowed by a NYE show in Toronto.
The rest of the tour consisted of Marc Francis Hug and original touring lineup memeber and long time engineer mastermixer Jeffro Richards.
That was until they played an excellent show with the amazing psych-punk band Dead Meadow at the Lamplighter in Knoxville Tennessee. They made some friends with a local guy named Samuel who's band was also on the bill and pretty much said "fuck it", quit his job and came along playing guitar for the rest of the tour. So did a gal named Beatrice. Jeffro and Bea had a torrid little affair and, sadly, years later we heard she was struck by lightning and killed while hiking in North Carolina. Life is fucking crazy, innit?
The first leg of the tour took them up the California coast; across the mountains and down to Las Vegas. They actually played a casino (the Flamingo) where they played for 30 or 40 seconds before being cutoff. There was a rule about no swearing and no vulgarities or something and as they looked out at all these aging rock & roll dudes who had cut their hair to a respectable length and traded in their black leather jackets for brown below the buttock ones a feeling of knowing they were 100% in the wrong venue washed over them. They had also drank 40's of Steel Reserve malt liquor in a gas station parking lot so this also might have helped the "great idea" of playing the drum machine at 180bpm while screaming "fuck" into the microphone and having their Roland digital delay/effects processor echo it all over the beautiful "hip" venue within the Flamingo. The sound man turned them off after abiut 30 seconds. Marc yelled fuck a few more times to nobody in particular. And then they packed up their gear in total silence and were escorted out by security who warned them to never come back because they were banned for life.
From there they played in Prescott Arizona and met with their old Philly friend Monkey. He had moved out west to reconnect with his tribe and was working as a sheppard. He took them into Sedona canyons and invited them to take part in a Hopi ceremony. They stayed with him for a few glorious days before heading out to the next leg of the tour: Amarillo, Memphis, Knoxville, Asheville and Greensboro.
The weather had been snowy and cold the whole time but the ice storm part of the storm hit once they'd left the comfort of their pals home in Greensboro. From New Orleans thru Hattiesburg, Baton Rouge, Nashville (Murfreesboro), Mobile, Atlanta, Charleston, Houston, El Paso and almost all the way back to San Diego (homebase) - they battled icy interstates, freezing rain, and power outtages. Shit was kind of ridiculous to be honest.
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