As they continue their Summer Tour, friends of the site The Mammoths have agreed to give us the inside scoop into life on the road touring across the country over the past few weeks. They will share the good, the bad, and the ugly, all in their own words! Stay tuned as we will update you withe the adventures of The Mammoths every week. With that said, let's go!
August 5 - The final day of Mile of a Music…this has been one of the coolest experiences of our short touring careers. Having all of our musician friends who we’ve met all over the country congregate in one place for a weekend is a special thing. It might sound cheesy, but you really do form a fast friendships with these bands based on the fact that we all our on the exact same strange journey and we all go through the same ups and downs. Anyway… we played our last show in the courtyard of the hotel where most of us stayed up until 4 or 5am hanging out the night before. The set went well an dwe had a few new fans who had seen us play most of our shows over the weekend. Mo Lowda played a surprise set after ours and Michael got on stage a guitar solo for their final song. It was v good! We spent the next hour saying goodbye to our new and old friends. We really don’t know when the next time we’ll see everyone again. Tim captained the van for a four hour drive to my Uncle’s cabin in Northern Wisconsin. We were greeted with meal and plenty of wine. My Uncle made a bonfire and we stayed up until 2am catching up.
August 6 - It’s was beautiful sunny day off in Spooner, WI. We woke up late and had coffee on the back porch and watched a bald eagle catch fish and fight other birds. It was amazing. The afternoon was spent kayaking, paddle boarding, and pontoon boating (it’s called a party barge in the north). After dinner and showers my uncle took us to the local bar through the woods on his ATV. We built a second bonfire when we got back and hung out until 2am again.
August 7 - We have an 8 hour drive today to get halfwayish to Colorado. We’re staying at my other relative’s place in Council Bluffs, IA. After a long, farty drive, we arrived to hamburgers and beers in Iowa. They have a nice backyard where we spent the evening talking to my Uncle, who is a retired police officer. He is a recently a fellow longhair who has qualities similar to “The Dude” from “The Big Lebowski”. He told us hilarious cop stories riddled with profanity - we loved it.
August 8 - 9am van call this morning. My uncle went out and got us breakfast pizza, which made the 12 hour van ride farty again…We are headed for my Dad’s cousin's ranch outside of Eagle, CO. They were not home, but graciously let us stay there because we play Eagle tomorrow. Tyler made a delicious spaghetti dinner. We are all basically falling asleep at the dining room table. Just as we were about to lock the house to go to bed, an old man with a flashlight and a huge lead pipe shows up at the back door. He was rambling about being robbed at his camp site, which is over 3 miles away. This ranch is a good 40 minutes out of cell service. It’s extremely rare to see a car out here. Tyler and I gave the elderly man a glass of water and tried to understand what he was saying. He demanded that we call the sheriff… I called my Matt (Dad’s cousin) to see how to handle this unusual situation. He advised me to keep the old man outside and call the police (the man did show up with a weapon, technically). It took the police 2 hours to arrive… the got lost and had never been to this area. Once they arrived they informed us that this county is out of their jurisdiction and they couldn’t do anything until they got a hold of Garfield County. After about an hour of trying to figure out what to do, they took the man back to his campsite. One of the officers said he would come to our show tomorrow and tell us if he found the keys or a dead body… needless to say, he didn’t tell us what happened the next day.
August 9 - We woke up late and headed into Eagle where Matt and his wife, Hope, purchased us a hotel room (they really spoil us)! After check in, we left for the venue. The show tonight is like Blues on the Green, but smaller. We found out we were featured in the local newspaper and played for about 1000 people. It was pretty surreal. Matt and Hope took us out for drinks before we retired to the hotel room with their 16 year old son, Quin. He showed us all the best SoundCloud rappers while we drank the finest boxed wine.
August 10 - Errand day in Denver - we made a stop at one of the perfectly legal cannabis stores just to see what all these darned kids are talking about… One of Tim’s friend let us crash in her downtown apartment though she was out of town. After dropping off our bass, we met up with a couple high school buddies for drinks and cheese plates. Super fancy. We got to the venue and met up with our friends in Kind Hearted Strangers and Pierce Edens. The show went extremely well. Tyler’s parents even showed up to surprise us!
August 11 - Tyler’s folks took us out to lunch for Michaels’ bday. He was feeling a tad hungover from celebrating at midnight… Our show tonight is in Boulder, which is only a quick drive from Denver. Pierce Edens asked the whole band to get up on stage for his closing song. We honestly didn’t play our best show tonight. I think we were pretty exhausted. After the gig, we didn’t help our exhaustion by staying up until 4am with Marc from Kind Hearted Strangers. He’s a great dude who we love seeing every time we’re in Colorado.
August 12 - Our next show isn’t until Thursday, which means we have the next four days off at Matt’s ranch. We’re in the middle of the drive as I write this. We just stopped for gas in Dillon, CO where we saw some fellow van people who were out of gas. We gave them $5 and some Mammoth pins, which made their day and ours. They said they’d try and catch our show in Steamboat. Only an hour left on this drive until we lose cell service, eat like kings, drink too many of Matt’s special Old Fashioned's. I guess I should say that Matt is an author. He and Hope are extremely supportive of the arts and what we are doing. Before this band started, I took a month-long solo road trip across the western US. I spent the beginning and the end of my trip with them. It’s pretty cool to have them watch this band grow. On that trip across the country, I played the acoustic guitar at the dinner table to their family. Fast forward two years, we played to 1000 people in the town closest to their home. I’m not crying, you’re crying. Our last show of tour is one week from today in Aspen where we’ll open up for fellow Austinites, Wild Child!
Below are our upcoming dates for the week and the last shows of the tour! So if you're in the area, be sure to come check us out!
August 16 - Pueblo, CO
August 17 - Steamboat, CO
August 18 - Grand Junction, CO
FMI on The Mammoths, visit: http://themammothsmusic.com/