Iowa. who knew? these people are working hard, making it happen. we are spending the night in Iowa City tonight on our way to Springfield Illinois tomorrow. one very nerdy reason we were excited to see this area, is Iowa University is where Flannery O'connor came up to do the iowa writer's workshop in the 40's. Another reason is that the Des Moines Register, God bless them, called "says pop," when it came out, the best album released in 2002.
One event that should be mentioned went down saturday night without us knowing it. Riding in the van to our Des Moines show, we couldn't help but notice how hard the wind was blowing and how debris and paper cups kept flying across the highway (at the height of our windshield). we had been driving across kansas and missouri for two days, and had grown accustomed to an occasional "rough winds" road sign. not to mention that fact that we were a good hour late for our show, and we had other things on our mind. with some white knuckled driving and a few scattered "wow - that wind is pretty strong.."s we got to the venue, played music, etc. and went home for the night. when we woke up in the morning the headline on every newspaper, and on cnn at the best western was "NINE TORNADOES RIP THROUGH IOWA." hmm. we were surprised to ay the least. Not to sound insensitive, but we were expecting the headlines to be closer to "ROMAN CANDLE TEARS THROUGH NINE IOWA TORNADOES IN FORD 350 VAN,"
just kidding (naturally the headline would have probably included that we not only arrived safely but melted faces all over town with our sheer acoustic prowess).
truthfully we felt very lucky not only to have arrived safely, and (in a vague artistic sense) on time to the venue, but we were especially glad to have found out about the tornadoes the morning after. now alls we gots is two words for springfield IL. look out -