(Photo Credit - Derek Miles)
Welcome to the final entry of "Stories from the Road" from The Mammoths' Summer Tour! All summer they have given us the inside scoop into life on the road touring across the country. They have shared the good, the bad, and the ugly, all in their own words! Below you will find the details on their final tour dates from the summer. We appreciate their time and effort contributing these pieces for us!
August 13 - We have the next 3 days off at this beautiful ranch! Matt, his son Quin, and the band stayed up super late last night telling stories and drinking old fashioned's. We rolled out of bed around 11am and went straight to work on the ranch. Their 80 year old ranch hand, Elmer, took us up to the wilderness property 4 miles up the mountain. He had us dig up the weeds around the old cabin up there for about
an hour. He’s a hilarious old man who can barely hear. After the manual labor, Wilmer and Michael changed the van oil. I think changing oil is one of Elmer’s favorite pastimes…he and Mikey really bonded over the quality of synthetic oil. We showered up and enjoyed a nice dinner prepared by Hope. After our we watched the Big Star documentary on Netflix.
August 14 - Today was a very lazy day around the ranch. Most of us spent it reading in various places. I went to the barn on the property for a couple hours and organized some song ideas from tour. Matt came and got me from the barn after a few hours to tell me the boys were ready to go up to the wilderness area to camp for the night. Matt and I drank a Budweiser and discussed the struggles of writing. The guys picked me up in the truck with Quin at the wheel (he doesn't have his license yet). At the wilderness camp we hiked, drank, and watched an super scary movie. Even though there were three bunk rooms at the cabin, we all slept in the same room cuz fear and separation anxiety :)
August 15 - We woke up one by one and hung out on the porch for a bit - playing guitars before heading back down to the ranch house. Matt immediately put us to work clearing brush in the horse pasture. We took a dip in the creek after to clean up. When we came back up to the house, Hope informed us Michael had taken the truck to go to the emergency clinic (he’s very prone to sinus infections). He came back a few hours later with a fresh steroid shot in is ass, feeling like a million bucks. Michael called it early while the rest of us stayed up and listened to Matt and Quin argued the best Dylan albums.
August 16 - Our drive today is about 5 hours to Pueblo, CO where we’ll reunite with our buddies in Pierce Edens. Even though we were supposed to feel rested after the ranch, our bodies are exhausted. After sound check, we slept in odd positions in the Green room. The show went decently well for a tiny town in southern Colorado…our sleeping spot tonight is about 45 mins up the road. We stayed with one of Quin’s teachers at the boarding school he attends. She’s an awesome lady who makes us food and laughs at our dumb jokes.
August 17 - Matt, Hope, and Quin are meeting us in Steamboat today. They got us a room at the Rabbit Ears Motel walking distance from the venue. From this point until the end of our tour, Quin will tag along to sell our merch and make us laugh. After soundcheck, the owner of the venue made us an amazing home cooked meal. We walked down the street with some time to kill and met Matt and Hope for some beers. This is the first time they are seeing us in an actual music venue. We really played our best show of tour, or maybe ever. After the set Matt got on stage and hugged us all. It was pretty special. We stuck around for the headlining band and said our goodbyes to Pierce and Kevin of Pierce Edens. We love those dudes and don’t know when we’ll see them again.
August 18 - Matt and Hope took us to a nice breakfast then we stole their son to take him to Grand Junction. We arrived at Elmer’s house there to hang and eat lasagna before the show. Grand Junction is an interesting town…people definitely care more about Broncos preseason football than live music. We shrugged it off and treated it as practice for tomorrow’s show in Aspen opening for Wild Child. Before bed we decided we are sleeping in until at least 11am.
August 19 - Elmer doesn’t like when people sleep in late… he woke us up at 10am because the coffee was ready and he wanted to watch Alaskan Bush People on TV. We had a nice breakfast and showers, and are now on the road to Aspen. We’ve been on the road for 40 days and are pretty ready to get home to loved ones. Matt and Hope are meeting us there with a hotel room. We are definitely going to celebrate tonight before our 15 hour drive home tomorrow. Peace ✌️
Thanks again to The Mammoths for their work on these journals, we have appreciated the inside scoop into their adventures! FMI on The Mammoths, visit: http://themammothsmusic.com/.