As we travel along the eastern seaboard, we’ve had a chance to eat some fantastic food on this tour. From the po boys in New Orleans, to the home cooking in North Carolina, to the Lobstah in Boston, it’s been a great trip for chow. We began in New Orleans with a couple days off. We parked the bus across the street from the greatest bar on earth, Lucy’s Retired Surfer’s Bar and started drinking and eating immediately. I started off with a “Juicy Lucy” the best hamburger this side of Brown’s Diner. A juicy lucy will take me back to the old days of the Lucy’s in Austin. Great bar, great burger. One of the great things about parking the bus in front of Lucy’s is that we are within walking distance of the Hotel, Canal Street, and Mother’s, a world famous cafe about two blocks from Lucy’s on Tchoupitoulas st.  I like to get the crawfish etouffee and the shrimp jambalaya combo, It comes on a plate with a huge pile of red beans and rice. Heaven.  Cody likes the crawfish etouffee omelet. I also like to get a sandwich to go, The John G, with turkey, ham, and roast beef, doused with roast beef drippings. Unfortunately, Jazz got trashed and raided the bus fridge and ate it before I could get to it. I have never been so disappointed in all my life.

After a few days on the road we stopped at Jay’s folks place in NC to relax for a couple days off. Trina was out of town so we decided to do a little cooking of our own. Jay and I teamed up with his sister “Sailor Meliss,” and made a big spread, including but not limited to: Pork tenderloin, sauerkraut, spaghetti squash, roasted artichoke hearts and potatoes, and big old bowl of Guac.  The following night, Melissa cooked up a crock pot of BBQ beef and an enormous tray of pasta, and all the fixins. Tom thawed out some of Trina’s world famous stuffed longhorn peppers and we washed them down with a few bottles of wine, as per the local custom.  

Unfortunately, a home cooked meal is hard to come by on the road and we were off again, once more at the mercy of whatever culinary disasters Applebee’s and Mickey D’s could throw our way. A couple days on the road later we reached Virginia where we were blessed with a delivery from a couple friends that we’d met on the Ragweed cruise who shall remain nameless to protect them should any of us eventually sue for assault with a deadly weapon. They seriously could have put us in a food coma. 3 pumpkin breads, a huge cornbread, 2 or 3 bags of beer bread, two trays each of green beans and mashed potatoes, an enormous bag of snickerdoodle cookies, and 4 five pond meat loaves. (two of which we later discovered were actually gigantic pork tenderloins.) That was about 6 days ago and we are still trying to eat it all. I swear if you cut a slice of meatloaf, it grows back like a lizard’s tail. No pictures can be published for the aforementioned legal reasons.

The following day I woke up with a solid brick of meatloaf in my guy which prompted me to try to eat on the lighter side that day. We were playing in Falls Church, a suburb of Washington DC, so I strolled a couple blocks to a nice little Irish pub Called “Ireland’s Four Provinces.” and took a gander at the menu. I ordered up a pint and the Seafood chowder, the lightest thing I could find on the menu. It came out in a bowl roughly the size of a man hole cover. It had a half of a Maine lobstah, mussels, clams, scallops and atlantic salmon. I could only eat about two thirds of it, but it was delicious.

On to Philadelphia, City of Brotherly Love and home of the world famous Philly cheese steak sand. Mike and I walked about a mile in the rain to an Irish pub who’s name escapes me (it was O’somethings…) and sat at the bar. I ordered mine with cheese whiz, as per the local custom and Mike got his with provolone. While they were not the best cheese steak sands we’d ever had, I took a pic to send to our old buddy, engineer and bass player Adam Jones Von O’dor, who is from Philly. Never, ever wast an opportunity to rub it in that you’re about to enjoy a culinary masterpiece from a buddy’s hometown. That’s why they invented picture texts. Since I have a pic, here it is for you’re enjoyment.

The next night on our journey took us to Brooklyn NY, just across the Hudson River from the best chinese restaurant in the world. This includes the country of China. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First we had to visit our old friend Katrina at her bar and eatery down the street. Katrina has owed me a steak for going on 6 years now and I was in the mood to collect. Again, I walked about a mile in the rain to the bar. As soon as I got there I was made aware that I was a little late and Cody and Thumbs had eaten the last two steaks in the joint so Katrina made me a short rib pot pie that made me forget all about the steak, at least for the moment… I still plan to cash in someday! I didn’t get to take a picture of said pot pie because I wolfed it down in a hurry. It was delicious! After a BLT and a well attended show at the Brooklyn Bowl,  we headed to a german beer bar for some Huge mugs of frosty cold enjoyment and then piled in to two or three cabs and headed to 17 Mott Street, New York City. Center of the universe for Chinese food. The time was 3:30 am. We arrived in groups of 4 or 6 and made our presence known to the servers. We started with some hot and sour soup and eggrolls. I can’t recall exactly everything we got but there were bowls of pork fried rice, egg foo young, kung pao chicken, general sao’s chicken, pork chow mein, shrimp with spicy garlic sauce, steamed dumplings, and some other things that either I didn’t see or forgot about. We ate like there was no tomorrow, which was actually kind of true, as it was already tomorrow…

I woke up somewhere between New York and Cambridge at a Cracker Barrel to have brunch with my Mom, Grandma, Aunt and Cousin who were visiting in nearby Pittsfield. It was a fairly regular Cracker barrel experience, with the notable exception of the fantastic company and the grits, which are always good at the barrel. Mom and Grandma loaded us up with cookies, some of cousin Jeff’s home made deer jerky and some antiques to put under the bus and transport back to Idaho and we were off.

Cambridge Mass, post soundcheck. 6:30 PM. Legal Seafood. I order a glass of pino and 6 oysters. they are so good I order a second half dozen littlenecks and Healy does the same. Cody and Dave are eating clam chowder and drinking Whiskey.  (Cody’s signature drink, crown on the rocks. Ask for it by name, it’s called a “Cody Braun. ) I order a 2.5 pound lobstah, and am somewhat relieved when the waitress informs me that they are out of the big ones so I got a 2 pounder. (the show was much better later on due to that particular development.) It was fantastic. Perfectly cooked and sweet flavored. It must have been swimming that morning. If I was forced to choose one food to eat for the rest of my life, I would have a tough time deciding, but I have a feeling Lobstah would win in the end. I like to start with the tail, then take a little time on the little legs and then save the claws for desert. A little lemon, butter and I can’t imagine anything better. If there is anything better, someone please let me know. WB

Well… I’m a dollar short and a day late, but here it is at long last. My 2 year anniversary blog.  I just woke up in Philadelphia, and I regret to report that it is NOT always sunny here. It’s 11:23 on a lugubrious Friday morning and we just spent 20 minutes standing on the corner trying to catch a cab. No luck. The neighborhood we are parked (and later on, playing in) leaves a little to be desired in the “activities” department. If I was looking for a check cashing place, some Chinese take out, or a 40, I’d be in business. However, I’m looking to find a good cup of coffee and/or our hotel and something to waste the day doing… There is one glimmer of hope.  An Irish pub that “around me” says is 823 yards away. But again, it’s only 11:27 and if I start drinking in an Irish pub now, I may not make the show, and if do it wouldn’t be pretty! Most of the time I would just whoops out the iPhone and find directions and start walking, but its pretty damn cold here and did I mention we’re in a fairly lousy neighborhood? So no walking around for me today… Somewhere up in the front lounge someone is calling a cab. I still have about six and a half hours to kill before soundcheck so I’d love to get to a part of town with some better time squandering options. maybe a little record shop and a bookstore? I may end up sitting on the bus all day, but I have a feeling a cab is coming soon.

  So,  hows the 2 year anniversary blog going so far? Is everybody enthralled with the tale that is being laid out before you? This is sure to garner me some attention from major publications… Time, Newsweek, People, or any number of periodicals that Sarah Palin can’t name…  Wait! This just in… I just got a call from Thumbs, a cab is on the way. let’s see how this shakes out…

Well, that worked out pretty swell! I’m sitting in a borders drinking coffee with Shifty and as soon as we have had our fill we plan to check out the bookstore and perhaps purchase some literature.  After that the hotel is only a few windy chilly blocks away and then it’s time to call another cab and head back to the club for soundcheck. So there ya have it, a day on the road. I’m going to see about getting this blog picked up by some big time newspaper or online media site, I mean, come on! This stuff is just golden.

I Hope you all enjoyed my 2 year anniversary blog as much as I did. Tune in next time when I hop in a New York City Taxi and head to Wo Hop, my most favorite chinese eatery of all time. I’m counting the hours, as I’m sure you are too. Till then my friends. Till then.

WB

I’m looking forward to finding out more and becoming more advanced in the ways of modern technology, I don’t want to fall any farther behind than I already am… for the love of god, it took me half an hour to type all this.

  Well, I’d love to stay around and chat, but I have a really, really, busy day. I’m off to run my fantasy lemonade stand on face-book and maybe poke someone on the twitter.

  WB

The following day, we woke up in Atlanta, thank god to find the greatest little bar right down the street from the hotel. We set up camp and ordered up some tall glasses of beer and some brunswick stew, something I’d never had but now am a huge fan of. Everything was going great until we started playing Keno, ten bucks a whack, four numbers at a time. Nobody won. Everyone played except Cody, who was busy chatting up some old rummy at the end of the bar. After a while, Cody decided to show us how it was done, and picked ten numbers, and tried to flag down the waitress who had been telling us all night what a waste of money this was… she blew him off a few times and by the time she got around to placing the one dollar bet, the next game had started and Cody had missed his window. Of course, he hit eight out of ten spots, 500 to 1 on a dollar bet. Too bad the waitress had moved so slow… the same ticket hit one out of ten on the next game and proceeded to bitch about it for the next two weeks. I couldn’t say that I blamed him.

After a fun filled night at Smith’s Ye Olde Bar, we rambled around North Carolina for a few days, the second to last stop being in Boon, a nice little town that in the changing leaves of November was just gorgeous. However, a Second strange drinking law was soon staring us in the face. The club that night was owned by Appalachian State University so legally, they couldn’t sell any liquor, however, it a patron brought in a six pack he or she could give it to the bartender and have it served back to them, so long as no one brought more than a six pack… Now I come to the point off all this. Why on earth don’t we have some across the board, standard drinking laws in this country? Over the years we’ve seen some strange ones. For example, for a brief period in Idaho, you could buy beer until midnight, and then you could only buy whiskey till closing time. Now that’s a great way to keep patrons sober! I was once forced by a waitress in Montana to chug the last half of my pint before she would set the next round on the table, as it was against the law to serve someone two drinks at a time. Another great way to keep people sober. So I say we start a revolution. I say we appoint a team of professional bartenders and drinkers to write a standard, countrywide drinking constitution. Furthermore, I say we find these professionals in the great state of Louisiana, preferably New Orleans.
That’s what I say.

WB