North Carolina - Raise Up

The only appropriate headline I could think of.

Onstage at WDVX Knoxville. Photo by our new friend Jack Goodwin.

Knoxville TN is our new favorite town. We got to play on WDVX which is a radio station based in the visitors center in downtown Knoxville. It's a daily live music show, that is free to attend. The crowd was interesting - a huge group of (mostly retired and/or independently wealthy) people who come to see the show almost every day. We had a blast and ended up hanging out with a bunch of the people for much of the next two and a half days.

The citizens of Knoxville treated us to lunch, drinks, dinner, and drinks throughout our time there. The show at night was also wacky -- we played at The World Grotto, which is built to look like a gigantic cave underground. People refer to it as "The Fraggle Rock." It's totally weird, but was fun.

On our day off there, we went back to the WDVX taping and saw all of our friends again - and more lunch/drinks/dinner/drinks....by this time they were our family. What a group of swell people. The host of the radio show is a guy named Matt Morelock -- an amazing banjo player, world traveler, and impeccable dresser. Pictures to come. We stayed at his house and he made a very convincing sales pitch to move to Knoxville permanently. We're strongly considering. I paid back his kindness by stepping in an enormous pile of dog crap and tracking it into his house.

Matt's roommate is the member of a fantastic band called The Everybodyfields, and since that band is on tour, I got to sleep in her vacated room. So last night, after our show in Winston-Salem, a girl I ran into was excited to hear that we played at The Garage, because she had just seen "The Everybodyfields there and they were amazing." When she asked me if I had ever heard of the Everybodyfields, I got to tell her that "yes, I've heard of them, and I actually slept in her bed last night." Boom!!! I calmly took a drag from my cigarette, finished my glass of cognac, left a $50 on the bar, and exited.

Yeah, the cigarette, cognac, $50, and exiting are lies, but the rest happened.

We're in my family's apartment in Charlotte right now, eating bagels and doing laundry. The excitement never ceases. It's going to be a week of nothing but raising up and waving shirts around our heads like helicopters.