1700 Miles By Land...

I’m somewhere over Indiana or Ohio, I think. Between flights and driving, it’s been a dedicated task just to keep track of where I am and what time or day it is. My great friend and artist, Kevin Masch, and I hit the road this week on a Midwest leg of “The Commuter Tour”. Wednesday, I flew from Philly to St. Louis while Kevin was getting off of work and driving up to St. Louis. I got a day pass with the St. Louis Metrolink and reminisced as I visited Union Station, The Gateway Arch and a few other local stops along the way. After a couple hours, my college buddy and St. Louis native, Ryan Love, finished work and met me on the Metrolink. We went to his home and caught up on everything. A few hours later, Kevin met up with us to get Steak n’ Shake and rest to prepare for the string of promotional appearances. Early Thursday morning Kevin and I hit the road to Greenville, IL to make a radio appearance on WGRN. We talked a bit about “The Commuter Tour” in general as well as specifically our leg of the tour. We ended up doing a couple of live on-air performances when the playback of our songs malfunctioned.

After that, we hit the road to Ft. Wayne, IN to meet artists and friends Joel and Beth Gragg. It was a 5.5 hour drive and we had 6 hours to get there. We beat the GPS estimate by 30 minutes and were able to take a tour of the Sweetwater music facility. From there, we loaded up at Mad Anthony to perform with Joel and Beth. It was a good night a great warm up for the gigs to come.

After spending sometime exchanging songs with Joel and Beth at their home, we hit the road for another 2 hours to Greentown, IN to rest a few hours at my parent’s home before performing at brunch for my hometown high school. It was only supposed to be for faculty and staff, but we arrived and were asked to play for the students. We went along and performed for anyone in the space and had a great reception. Kevin gave a crash course guitar lesson after that show to an aspiring musician at the high school.
We left there to Indianapolis, IN to perform at “The Abbey Coffee House”, a hip vegan café downtown. We had a great group of friends and family there. That gig started 30 minutes late due to a speaker malfunction, but the audio company took care of it as much as they could and it gave us time to hang out with friends. Kevin played an absolutely stunning show and I closed the night with some songs ranging from “Live From LaDue Auditorium” to “A Fortunate Consequence”.

From there we hit Steak n’ Shake with some friends and had a great night trading stories and laughing. We crashed in Indy with good friends, Jeb and Dawn, and headed out in the morning to Greenville for a show at our Alma Mater. We performed a show at the campus coffee shop with special guest Ryan Love (aka Nightmute). The show went great and we were able to hang out afterward with friends Ian (the drummer for my album), Rebecca (radio director) and Sarah Jahn (friend and incredible musician). Later that evening, we did another radio show where we phoned in interviews from the others on the tour and listened to tracks from each artist.

We spent that night with Dan and Christy and their MASSIVE dogs. In the morning we headed to the St. Louis airport where I found out my flight was oversold. It was a welcomed change of plans as it was an excuse to ride down to Nashville with Kevin and see his part of the neighbor. Kevin and I continued our road trip south to his home in Nashville. I had forgotten how beautiful that place was. I wish I could have stayed longer, but it was good to be back regardless of how long it was.

Kevin and I caught up on the new season of The Office thanks to DVR technology while we waited for his wife, Brooke, to fly in from visiting her family in Florida.
The next day Brooke dropped me off at the airport where I took a flight back to St. Louis and then to Philly.

It was a great tour and I missed it the minute I was back home, but it really lit a fire under me to find a way to perform full time. There was just something perfect about being on the road doing the music I love with a trusted and talented friend.

In the end, Kevin and I accumulated 1700 miles by land, I traveled 1600 miles by air and we completed 6 scheduled engagements and numerous impromptu ones. Thanks to everyone who came out to see us, hopefully we’ll be hitting the road again soon and we’ll see you all again.

-Rod

Landed in St. Louis.

Radio Promo in the morning.