Destination: Los Angeles

So I will go to Los Angeles.

The beaches are behind me, I guess.

The aforementioned Thanksgiving weekend will involve sunshine, sand, saltwater, traffic, smog, earthquakes, taco trucks, live music, lots of pictures, some alcohol, valleys, canyons cornet  asphalt, palm trees, stereotypes, traffic, driving, running, hearing, smelling, tasting, thinking, lusting and writing.

I will find the taco stand where Q-Tip left his wallet. I will find the real "Seinfeld" apartment building. I will acquire a T-shirt that just says "The Beach." I will get judged for not being cool and detached enough. I will fall in love for a couple of minutes and ponder relocating. I will realize that I would miss the change of seasons and my pet sunflower too much. I will come home with a sunburned nose and blisters from walking barefoot on wet sand. I will be a tourist without apology, but I won't go to Universal, Disney or Hollywood. I will avoid sports. I will channel James Elroy and Mickey Spillane and Quentin Tarantino.

"Please don't leave me! I promise to return next August!"

Cabin fever

For better or worse, my parents instilled a bit of wanderlust in me. We always took trips every summer, and at least one of the end-of-year holidays we spent with extended family — Usually northern Indiana or Ohio, so no place really exotic. Once we headed to suburban DC for Thanksgiving, and that was my first time on a plane; to this day I consider air travel a treat, despite the airlines' best efforts to fuck it up.

Those summer trips often involved an International Harvester Travelall towing a small trailer, and sometimes I wonder how I still have regular contact with my sisters and how my parents didn't divorce or sell the three of us into slavery (not necessarily in that order). 

Ours was navy blue with the wood paneling
and my dad would never have tried to off-road like this chucklehead.

One summer we took about two weeks and drove to Idaho to see grandma, aunt, uncle and cousins. I was 3, so all I remember was losing my hat out the window of our car in the Badlands of South Dakota. Another summer we drove a loop around the South that included Disney World (pre-Epcot), Jekyll Island, Ga.; Smoky Mountain National Park, N.C./Tenn.; and Daytona Beach, Fla., my first time seeing the ocean (it rained that day. Piss on you, Mother Nature [juuuuust kidding]). The summer after that we made a loop around New England that included Penn State, Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, Plymouth Rock, Acadia National Park and the National Baseball Hall of Fame (a colossal bore for my 13- and 17-year-old sisters, a massive thrill for your 9-year-old correspondent).

Long story short, by the time I got to high school I'd visited more states than most of my classmates could name. On some of those trips I was trusted with the Rand McNally Road Atlas, and thus the navigation, so I've always been a more-than-competent map reader. My 10th-grade geography teacher told my mom that I named the five boroughs of New York City before anyone else could figure out what a borough is ("Ah, the New York City Marathon goes through all five," my mom explained, my teacher nodding slowly).

About that same time, my parents got me two books that have done more for fostering my itinerant nature than any amount of childhood travel — John Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley," and William Least Heat-Moon's "Blue Highways." I guess when I first read these chronicles of long road trips I realized it's far more normal to want to see things, places, people and events than to grow roots and live in a state of inertia. OK, fine, one can also get paid for doing stuff like this, and that has weighed on my mind as well.

So it is with great disappointment that I chronicle the extent of my travels this year. I've left the city limits just 12 times for non-work reasons, and my work hasn't even taken me out of the state; not surprising given the Wyoming-centric nature of said occupation. Mostly I've had to catch up financially from a snafu a year ago today; I scheduled bills for the regular payday, forgetting that banks get Columbus Day off and that we'd get paid a day late without direct deposit. Long story short, the mistakes cost me hundreds in late/return/overdraft fees and I haven't had the capital necessary to skip town. That plus a new computer plus some medical issues equal Dave in debt and in house. And to be creative one needs frequent temporary changes of scene, be they familiar or otherwise.

March 29, The Toadies, Gothic Theater, Englewood, Colo.

Todd in the middle — just like old times.

On Thursday of this week, I heard about The Toadies touring again with sort-of the original lineup. I lamented my state of finances. On Friday, I bought a ticket anyway. On Saturday I skipped town after getting my writing done. On Sunday I woke up with my ears still ringing. Not as good as their show in Amarillo in April 2001 (after which I talked hockey with bassist Lisa Umbarger for 10 minutes and swooned the whole time), but it embodied the spirit of the spontaneous road trip I haven't indulged much during adulthood. Piss on responsibility.

April 14-20, Atlanta, family visit

Brasstown Bald, the highest point in Georgia, looking northeast. I think.

I take a week off every spring and head to Georgia to see my family, mostly because I don't want to do it in the summer, because hot weather makes me homicidal. I watched my niece destroy her regional track meet, watched my nephew come up short in his, watched older niece's younger sister groove with her school jazz band and hiked Brasstown Bald, Georgia's highest point. Adventure!

April 27, lunch with a friend, Evans, Colo.

It turns out my friend Linda lives with her family about an hour south of here. So I had dinner with her and her kids as well as a few drinks. It was nice to catch up and awesome to skip town, as always, even if I'd been there before.

June 6, Jon Butler Trio with Frank Turner, Red Rocks Amphitheater

Frank Turner opening up and raging against machines.

I saw Frank Turner at the Ogden Theatre in Denver last fall and he just blew me away. So much fun anger that I felt like a punk for the first time in my life. Anyway, when I learned he'd open for jammy up-and-comer Jon Butler at Red Rocks, I jumped on tickets. He played an acoustic set for about 45 minutes and hit some serious highlights before Butler came on — and the douchebags came out. I got spilled on and the gentry couldn't be bothered to ice their conversations when the main act was on stage. First time I've ever left a concert early because the lardass posse with pastel polo shirts, cargo shorts, flip flops, receding hairlines and a beer in each hand wouldn't shut the fuck up.

June 9, Jamie Cullum, Arvada Center

He left me hanging on high-fives, but I will forgive him. This time.

For the second time in my life I sat front-row, and the elfin British song stylist knocked my socks off. Part of it was the seats, true, but Jamie hit all the conceivable high points in his two-hour set. There was my life before this show, and my life since.

June 16, Mount Elbert

Fucking 'ell, I'm cold, hungry and sleepy.

My friend Sarah and her friend Rachel joined me for my assault on Colorado's highest point, and the second-highest point in the lower 48. I got no sleep, had very little for breakfast and commando-crawled the final 50 feet to the summit. Trust me, I'm holding on to my sign for dear life, and I think it ended up slipping away at 50 mph before we headed back down. Three high points down, 47 to go; five Colorado 14ers down, 49 or 51 to go (depending on your source).

July 6, poetry reading at Coal Creek Coffee, Laramie

My buddy Adrian Molina speaks truth via hip-hop, slam poetry and educational opportunities. He did a reading at my coffee place of choice just down the road, and uttered profundities at great speed. He's very gifted and I recommend hanging with him if you get the chance.

July 17, Happy Jack Recreation Area/Laramie; July 18, Denver International Airport

My sister Diana came to visit me for a few days before the rodeo. We ate steak and brick-oven pizza, toured the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens and got horribly lost while on a hike. We ended up walking through ankle-deep swamp just to get to a road. Then I drove her to the airport; while not a serious change of scene, I did leave the city limits.

July 31, Laramie with Jenny

I took my friend Jenny on a little date to Laramie, where we strolled around the UW campus and ate at Sweet Melissa's vegetarian restaurant before having foo-foo coffee drinks at Coal Creek downtown. Laramie is my favorite place in Wyoming, and I make it a point to take any visitors there because it's sort of the anti-Wyoming — open-minded, sophisticated, artsy, intellectual, maybe a wee bit pretentious in its backwoods way.

August 5, Cubs-Rockies at Coors Field, Denver

The thunderstorm in the background precluded seeing batting practice.

A Denver-based Cubs blogger named Matt Clapp (The Friendly Blogfines) hooked me up with a free ticket to Cubs-Rockies — aka Javier Baez's much-anticipated big-league debut — via Twitter. To that point 0-for-5 with three strikeouts, he went yard in the 12th inning to lift the Cubs to victory. I've never been this excited for unproven prospects.

August 31, Phish at Dick's Sporting Goods Park, Commerce City, Colo.

I already documented this little jaunt. I won't waste time. It ruled, though not as much as Jamie Cullum.

So with two days of vacation remaining to burn, I'm nearly at the dart-at-a-map stage, though I would dig someplace warm around Thanksgiving weekend. Money is no object because I can't place a price on my sanity. I have credit cards (and massive amounts of debt) for this very reason. Maybe I'll just lick a finger and put it to the wind on the morning of Black Friday. Who knows?

"When Black Friday comes/I'll collect everything I'm owed/Before my friends find out I'll be on the road..."

Annual Phish-ing Trip

Thanks to my mom and dad, I have a great, great appreciation for music. They met in the marching band at college, thus my sisters and I all played instruments (I played the trumpet from fifth grade through college). 

"Polishing the horn" is not a metaphor. 

That's the 19-year-old me, chillin' in Brewster Hall

 Room 706 at Syracuse.

My earliest memories of music involve my dad practicing various instruments (he played reeds, which you know what I mean if you dig jazz) and leading the local community band while my mom played organ in church. 

Not surprisingly, I don't always see eye-to-eye with my parents regarding matters of music, though my dad and I can talk Dave Brubeck, Stan Kenton, Miles Davis and Bill Evans all day. In particular, my dad bags on jam bands something fierce. "Their songs don't go anywhere, there's no complexity, it's boring" — those are his chief gripes. No, no, I say, if you have those beefs with bands like Widespread Panic, the Grateful Dead, Phish, Leftover Salmon, then you have to say the same things about John Coltrane and Miles Davis; you know they only used a couple of chords in each song on "Kind of Blue" or "Love Supreme."

A guitar player like Trey Anastasio tries to examine every single possibility of a chord; thus he takes 10- and 15-minute solos. A lot can happen in that time. He can take a crowd from strolling over to the beer stand to bouncing up and down with joy. And his vocabulary spans seemingly multiple languages let alone hundreds of thousands of words in one language. A jam-band player has to go around the world with each chord before moving on, unlike how most humans stay in one place without exploring every nook and cranny of the places we truly love. Trey knows how to play — and live.

Don't forget the repertoire — these bands play multiple shows in the same venue and won't repeat a single song over the course of nine-plus hours of performing. How many bands in the rock genre could do that? How many of them just set a playlist for a tour and do it over and over again? (Excuse me, how many of their handlers/A&R reps/record company marketers/tone-deaf suit-wearing wannabes thusly set the playlists to drive record sales while boring the paying customers to tears?)

For the second consecutive year I ventured to a nondescript soccer stadium in suburban Denver on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend for Phish's annual unofficial end-of-summer throwdown. Last year it was my 40th birthday present to myself and I loved every minute of it. When I got the email touting the 2014 shows I made the easy decision to get the ticket.

In the five months since I bought the ticket:

• Was threatened with foreclosure (thanks to a payroll issue with my employer last October) before I got my mortgage up to date again;

• Repeatedly spent every paycheck within hours of the money hitting my account, leaving me on $0 for 14 straight days with whatever groceries I managed to buy;

• Hiked two state high points and one more 14er, the peak (pun intended) of my physical accomplishments for a second straight lost year on the road to lava;

• Acquired a significant other on terms I agreed with before she changed the terms and lit me up for my lack of communication (As if you needed me to clarify, it's over);

• Told several wonderful stories in our pages to great critical acclaim before spending two of the three months of summer back on the desk and NOT writing while we searched for a new copy editor;

• Grew the greatest beard of my life in honor of the previous development;

Just came down from the mountain.

What'd I miss?

• Oddly, I bought my Phish ticket around the time of my last haircut, too. Had to match the beard.

So I was ready for a little trip and some live music, and to take another run at my goals from the previous year while escaping reality

With jam bands you have to consider the "scene." By the time Phish arrives in Denver, they've assembled a mini-city of the faithful who have followed them across the country and seen and heard everything. Notwithstanding the pavement, the parking lot resembles a Woodstock and the practice soccer fields have become lounges. I park in a neighborhood nearby in part to not pay the $15 for parking, but also to take a stroll around the grounds and take in the scene. By the end of this lost summer I was so broke and pissed off I must have given a pretty anti-social vibe because no one said hi or offered a beer or toke. Or maybe this was the show that attracted all the assholes. I'd say it's the former.

I had a beer in my little bag that contained some food, my journal and my camera. I sat on a berm overlooking the practice soccer fields and drank it while the faithful filed toward the stadium. Did I mention I got there about an hour and a half before the gates opened? No? Well, good. I like to get there early to stake out a good spot close to the stage, usually on "Page Side/Rage Side" — the crowd's left, in front of keyboardist Page McConnell. He plays five different keyboards, sometimes within the same song, a true artist. Page Side is the place to be.

All this said, I'm not about the scene. I want to hear music, and if it involves some patchouli oil and recreational narcotics, so much the better. But I'm there for the tunes. I got in about seven minutes after the gates opened and I waited with everyone else. The false floor over the soccer surface was stickier than what I remembered but I sat down anyway; I won't stand for two hours on top of the running show time. I chatted with the free-spirited girl next to me, enjoyed the Talking Heads as warmup music, attempted to write in the journal and eyed suspiciously the dark skies to the northwest of the stadium.

Phish came out promptly at 8 p.m. and played a two-song opener that took 15 minutes. They made a few abrupt switches rather than the flowing, fluid jams we've come to expect, but they kept it upbeat and rocking. 

Then they rolled into a series of ballads that sent the faithful scrambling for the johns and beer stands. At this point I actually looked at my watch. If I do that or start jacking with my phone, I know the show's getting away from the band. Believe me, I know Phish came out with a setlist in mind, but I doubt they anticipated the crowd would check out during a batch of four or five slow numbers. I felt like they were losing the crowd.

They trotted out a staple called "Funky Bitch." That's all it took for the crowd to get back into it, to rejoin them in the unofficial end of summer celebration. They played two more after that before a 30-minute break. I stopped looking at my watch or my phone and just basked in how a band seemed to know the show was going downhill and saved it. Say that for jam bands — they have a connection with their fans that few other musical artists do, enough to know when the crowd's losing interest.

Before the second set a chill set in over the stadium. Nothing huge, like a front rolling through, but the universe gently reminding us that summer had a shelf life. Then Phish came out with a funky, groovy second set that gave me neck pain from constantly nodding my head to their driving beat. Even during their grooviest parts a lighting effect superimposed points of white light on a moving black screen — like snow. I felt a chill again and moved a little more. 

The ending of Lee Dorsey's "Sneakin' Sally Through The Alley" and "Weekapaug Groove" followed by the encore of the Rolling Stones' "Loving Cup" and Phish's own "Tweezer Reprise" just destroyed everything that came before it, a fitting climax to the summer, leaving everyone wanting more. Phish ended it perfectly, and when the house lights came on, someone near me fired up their phone and it said "12:00 a.m." Those guys played for three and a half hours. What an early birthday gift.

The house music as I walked toward the exit was "Lush Life," Billy Strayhorn's sad ballad performed by John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. When it ended I hustled up the stairs and out of the stadium in time to hear an RV blasting Stevie Wonder's "I Wish." Between the appropriate non-Phish tracks afterward and my inability to get my phone to work during the show, the universe wanted me to focus on the music. It wanted me to leave all the bullshit bullets above behind and just lose myself in music and happy smog before heading back to reality. I can see this becoming an annual pilgrimage, and who am I to defy the universe — and my true nature as a music-liver? (Yes, I live in music, I don't merely love it. The verbiage is intentional)

http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/phish/2014/dicks-sporting-goods-park-commerce-city-co-1bce652c.html