Mile 1,822: Austin, TX

After Mardi Gras, we took an extra day of rest on our way out of New Orleans with a new friend Shane. I'd met him outside of a bar a few nights prior, and got to talking about Detroit- he's an urban explorer/ photographer and knows the city well. So well, in fact, that it turns out that he'd spent time with my old roommate Geoff, and even BEEN TO MY HOUSE in Corktown. He lives in New York, and we're chatting outside of a bar at 3am in New Orleans. Such a small world.

Wednesday also marked the beginning of an unanticipated feature of the journey: sickness on the road. Midday I was feeling especially haggard and laid down for a nap, which grew into five-hours of sweaty, achy, nauseous rest. The sleep, coupled with a host of home remedies (tea, garlic, apple cider vinegar, cayenne pepper, etc) snapped me out of the worst of it before we hit the road in the morning, but it's been tough to rest and eat right, and I'm still feeling it today.

On our last day in New Orleans, we also picked up two new travel companions for the road to Austin, Tschuai and Rich. They play in a brass band in Seattle, are old friends of Leslie's and were on their way to the HONK! Texas Festival. We had to abandon two of the bikes we'd brought from the Midwest to fit them in, but even still it was a tight squeeze to get four musicians, plus horns and gear into that Ford Focus.



The road to Austin was cool, sunny and pretty pleasant. We scored some incredible Cajun food in Jackson Mississippi (I'd never seen a gumbo that BLACK!) and stopped in at the bleak, oddly elegant Rothko Chapel in Houston. The sun was setting and the failing light filtering into the grey room played tricks with the eyes. We were the only ones there as a classical duo played piano and sang opera in the empty space. It was an invaluable stopover on a long day of driving, and appropriately otherworldly for a day when I was traveling, still a bit ill, into my first leg of the trip full with unknown places.



I was expecting these days would be a bit of a lull after the endless incredible music we experienced in New Orleans, but that's hardly proved to be the case. As soon as we made it into town, we made our way out to the Swan Dive, a sophisticatedly raw bar downtown to see Petrojvic Blasting Company. Easily my favorite new band I've encountered on the trip, they played Dixieland jazz and Balkan brass in front of shimmering white curtains, on a stage flanked by white radiators.



I slunk in the back of the bar with a drink and watched the music, before retiring at a bleary 2:30 in one of many interesting sleeping arrangements I've walked into in Austin, crammed in with 5 members of Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band in an unheated trailer in some one's back yard. It was cold, my sinuses hurt, it was tough.

That's what's made this leg of the trip so interesting though- in New Orleans, we had open access to our cozy hotel room. Now, a bit ill, a bit more hard up for places to stay, everything is beginning to seem more poignant, more immediate. The following day I posted up at a cafe with an abundance of tea and fruit to soothe myself, and came back feeling so energized! By the time evening came around, I made it out to the east side to see the opening performances of HONK! Fest. Brass bands stormed through the night under strings of carnival lights, brushing up against dimly lit encampments of Austin's legendary food cart parks. The whole world felt dark, and loud, and unreal.

Today, I'm still feeling off. I ate hot dogs on the river last night at 1am, slogged through the adolescent inanity of a Saturday night on Austin's 6th Street and slept at a friend's house in an arm chair. It's good though. I'm getting better, and you never see anything staying at home.

Places of Note: The Treehouse

We first heard about this place a year or two ago during Mardi Gras, an epically ramshackle tree house built along one of the main drags of town. They were supposed to have a party there with live music, but a few hours after hearing about the event, we got word that the cops shut it down.

We stumbled upon the tree house on our way out of New Orleans, and it was no surprise that the city would be iffy about this contraption. It towered thirty feet above the ground, looking poised to collapse at any moment. See that water slide? It opens up 15 feet above a muddy pit, empty except for a few dozen partially inflated basketballs. I'm not sure of the tree house's history in the last few years, but it looks like it's clearly in disrepair- this is about as close as we were comfortable venturing into the crazed park. It makes Theatre Bizarre look like a government-contracted construction project.

Oh, punks and the dangerous fun they find...

Four Days in New Orleans

I'd expected to hit the road to Dallas today, but instead I'm taking a much-needed day of decompression here in New Orleans after four whirlwind days in the city. I felt like I might have been coming down with something earlier today, and spent the better part of this afternoon napping, drinking tea and resting up.

Our time in New Orleans has been incredible. During past Mardi Gras, I never felt as engaged with the city and the music as I have over the past several days. On Saturday we got a tip that we might have an opportunity to march with the Krewe of Eris, an illegal parade celebrating the Greek goddess of strife and discord. With only a few hours to try to learn the music and assemble our costumes, we rushed to the Bywater for the start of the parade. Slow, heavy drums led into simple, twisting trumpet lines that I tried to pick up and play on the fly. As we marched, the crowd swelled, the band spread out and the procession took on the chaos of its name. Onlookers jumped from car roof to car roof, hanging dancing from balconies. As we approached the French Quarter, the parade's initial musical cohesion had morphed into something much looser, and more imposing.

An Eris Ghoul

We were all drunk on the parade's unhinged power (that was about all we were drunk on- the crowd made it impossible to stop along the way for a beer!). The lumbering drums pulsing through the tight streets of historic New Orleans easily attracted the attention of the police, and that's where things went south. As we finished our lap through the French Quarter, altercations between the cops and the marchers began to flare up. Soon, the police were arresting over a dozen marchers, while cries of police brutality and protests began to overtake the music of Eris. We saw the scene becoming increasingly destabilized and kept ourselves on the periphery. We were there for the music, not to fight cops, and continued marching to the end of the renegade parade’s route as others got caught up in altercations.

The dark energy of Eris was surprising in its contrast of the brightly lit exuberance that characterizes the rest of Mardi Gras. On Fat Tuesday, Molly and I donned costumes again and headed out to watch the street theater of the French Quarter. We’d barely made it into Jackson Square and sat down for a bite to eat when this band came barreling past us.



For the rest of the day, we were hearing dispatches of the movements of our favorite brass bands: Panorama on Chatres, What Cheer Brigade on the waterfront, Petrojvic Blasting Company in an alley. We met up with our cousins to watch the street from the balcony of our hotel, until their friends showed up dressed like cops to bust up the party.

By the time we headed back to Frenchman Street in the late afternoon, we were all beat- too much music, too many beers, just too much excitement- and found our way back to the hotel room around nightfall, to close out Mardi Gras day with coffee and beignets.
The whole weekend was delirious- seeing some of the best bands in the country, staying out until dawn, meeting new friends from LA, Chicago, Seattle, Sweden and here in New Orleans. I treasure having four days a year to let loose, and I’m just as glad to put it behind me. We need the mania of Mardi Gras, just as we need the dutiful normalcy that it contrasts.

Miles 323- 1,222

On Friday morning I picked Leslie up at a bike shop in Wicker Park to head towards New Orleans. We'd met a few years back in Boston, ran into each other six months on the streets of New Orleans and got to know each other at Detroit's Serbian American Hall, watching Macedonian saxophone legend Feras Mustafa play to a paltry crowd of 20-odd people.

She's essentially been on the road since 2007, criss-crossing the USA and Europe, playing in Balkan and radical marching bands, pedicabbing and working odd jobs to make ends meet. Of late she's been living on a boat in Bushwick, chopping firewood to trade for rent. Excellent road trip companion.

Central Illinois' early March landscape of barren soy fields slowly faded into a deep blue dusk, marked by occasional violent bursts of rain. We made it to Memphis just in time to snag a meal of authentic barbecue- jumping from the car, babbling to the bewildered servers about our drive so far and how we'd come straight here from the road to grab a bite. We met up with old friends and headed to The Cove, Memphis's best pirate-themed bar for a drink as a tattooed, bearded punk bluegrass band blared in the corner. Our kind of place.

The next morning, we took a quick drive-by trip of the city's tourist traps (Elvis overload!!) and headed out to our first true destination, NOLA. We had a perplexingly difficult time locating food in Jackson Mississippi (no restaurants open on a Saturday afternoon??) and made it into the French Quarter just after nightfall.

We are staying in the awesomest, creepiest old hotel ever. Oh, the photos you'll soon see.

Day 3: On the Road to The Crescent City

I'm sipping coffee with my travel companion Leslie on a warm, drizzling Memphis morning. We linked up in Chicago yesterday morning and will be riding together through Austin. We braved the drably American cornfields of central Illinois with old stories, Mediterranean pizzas and several hours of mobile saxophone rehearsal. Leslie's going on tour with her band immediately after this jaunt, and needed to bone up on some new tunes.



This morning, we drank coffee and watched doves shrug in the rain from the balcony of my old friend Sarah's apartment, drowsily marveling at how unfamiliar the vegetation can be after a day's drive.

Right now though, we need to cruise Beale Street, swing by Graceland and get on down the road to New Orleans!

Mile 0

"On the old highway maps of America, the main routes were red and the back roads blue. Now even the colors are changing. But in those brevities just before dawn and a little after dusk- times neither day nor night- the old roads return to the sky some of its color. Then, in truth, they carry a mysterious cast of blue, and it's the time when the pull of the blue highway is strongest, when the open road is beckoning, a strangeness, a place where man can lose himself."

Last night was my final in Detroit for some time. I'm off to venture the nation, to see new places and to encounter unknown spaces & spirits. I'm not leaving from a space of loss, or desperation, but in a spirit of joy and adventure. Ahh, so much to see!!

My final day in Detroit was ordinary, but poignant. I had the last authentic Coneys I'm likely to taste for the duration of my trip.

It's a rough delicacy, one birthed of a city slim on pretension. I felt honored to spend an honor at the venerable Lafayette, soaking in this tradition.

My bags are packed, a month as slim as I can fit into the trunk of my car. Choosing music for the road was equally arduous, a slight stack of cd's reflecting where I've been, I am, and where I'm headed.

Today, I'm hitting the road, full of pins and needles about the journey. Tonight I'll be in Chicago, probably the most familiar of this trip's foreign cities. Beyond will be the journey I've longed for, into territories I know well in my mind but have never seen with my eyes and ears. Seatbelt's on. Here we go, folks.