Howdy Folks!

Well, I just got back from the Furthur Festival, the tour that will go down in my personal mythology as The Hitchhikers Ride to the Gallery Tour.}

Our booth for the tour, the Merlin's Wheel Gallery, (site still being developed) was a travelling art gallery done in conjunction with Key-Z Productions that included work from Mikio, William Giese, Mike DuBois, Stanley Mouse, Ken Kesey, Elliott Landy and Susana Millman. Our crew consisted at different times of myself (all the time), Billy B (all the time), Mikio (most of the time) and Gretchen (filling in on the northeast.) Doing a gallery instead of a t-shirt and sticker booth on a tour of this nature was a new undertaking for us and more than a bit of a risk. We'd launched the gallery at the illfated Mobstock '99 show and had a good amount of success with it at the Gathering of the Vibes, so we figured the gamble was worth the effort.

Our drive across the country was wrought with peril. The engine died before we even made it to the midwest, so we opted to keep the engine running. The engine objected to this also, and in Chicago, while we were sitting in a rest area restaurant telling Bill Graham stories, the hood began pouring smoke and tranny fluid began spewing on the ground. Ouch!

So there we were stuck in Chicago with what we diagnosed as a leaking transmission. On a Sunday. No one would be around to help until the following morning and that would make it very difficult to make the first show in San Diego. A local was VERY HELPFUL and drove us all over town and was trying to help as best he could, but it looked like we were doomed. We drove onward into an uncertain fate, pouring stop leak and tranny fluid into the vehicle and leaking it across our nation's beautiful landscape. Finally we broke down again just outside of Denver, unable to make it through the Rockies. We stayed the night in a quaint tourist town and the following morning, before facing the heat of the day, made the decision to push on. Miraculously, the vehicle allowed us safe passage through the Rockies.

The trip to San Diego was stressful as hell. So much for our fun road trip across the country. Tour hadn't even started and already we had three ulcers onboard.

To make matters worse, our first show, San Diego, was financially perhaps the worst vending gig of our entire lives. We looked in our empty fanny packs and thought, "What have we gotten ourselves into?" (One San Diego highlight was that Mikio got to catch Steve Winwood singing Dear Mr. Fantasy with The Other Ones.) Even though we stayed in a hotel with a hottub and swimming pool and it was wonderful to be eating super cheap fruit just over the Mexican border, I was waking up two nights in a row with nightmares, my body coursing with adrenaline from stress incurred from the tour. "Don't Wanna Be Treated Dis Ol' Way!"

No, it wasn't JUST the money, but I was in no position to go home in more debt than I'd left.

LA was only slightly better. We'd made arrangements to get Stanley Mouse prints into the booth and a couple of those sold, giving us a small glimmer of hope that we might be able to turn the tour around. We went on to Shoreline, vowing that even if the gallery went belly up, we were going to give it our all at Shoreline and put together a gallery that people would remember. And we did. BGP styled us out with a nice space and we threw together a 40 foot booth, 30 feet of which was devoted to gallery space.

If every show were Shoreline, the tour would have been a raging success. If half the shows were half of Shoreline and the rest a quarter of Shoreline, the tour would have been financially solid. But Shoreline was The Bay. The backyard of the Grateful Dead and a half a century of the American bohemian legacy.

Stanley Mouse was In Da House, spending most of his time in the gallery. Neal Cassady's son John stopped by to say hello. Lots of old friends and family and folks that we just don't get a chance to see outside of the Bay Area were at the Shoreline show. The Bay is every Deadhead's Home Away From Home. Every one of our three person crew had an offer of a place to stay. We opted for the place where the vehicle would be safest. Fortunately, it was a lovely place in Bezerkeley with a hot tub in the back yard. Two days in Berkeley eating well, drinking Peet's coffee (the epidemy of caffienated decadence) and breaking out the bottles of yummy honey meade that the Brewsome Twosome had sent me on the road with were just what the doctor had ordered to cure our growing sense of road rash.

I spent a night in San Francisco visiting a friend from college and watching her make preparations with a couple of her friends for the Burning Man Festival. I'd gone to the past couple of Burning Man Festivals and had spent some time hanging out with them there, so I really wanted to jump ship from Furthur and just do Burning Man, but I knew that I'd signed on for Furthur for wherever the trip would take me.

We blew off the Gorge show in Washington even though we knew that it was one of the most beautiful locales on the tour. The person who looked at our transmission told us that it was a loose hose and fixed the problem for about $35, so we figured we were good to go.

Off we went to Denver. We passed the exit in Fern Ridge where everyone was going to Burning Man. I saw a few Burning Man attendees in the gas station and pined for the party I'd miss, then ONWARD... or so I thought. Only a few miles down the road, less than 100 miles from Burning Man (and on the first day of that festival) we broke down in Battle Mountain, Nevada. AAAAARRRRGH!

I drove everyone in the vehicle nuts, whining over how close we were to Burning Man, how BM is so much FURTHUR in the spirit of breaking ground than the Furthur Festival, which wasn't even really a festival this year, and how easy it would be to jump ship and go have fun in Black Rock City. Mikio sacked out in the van after stating that he feared I'd leave a note on the dashboard and take off to the festival in the middle of the night with an artsy blue haired woman with piercings. Night came and went. A pierced blue haired goddess did not swoop me up and deliver me to the promised land. Instead, Mikio made a phone call, was able to diagnose the problem as a fried silonoid and make the proper repairs. ONWARD AGAIN! But the delay caused us to miss the Colorado show.

In retrospect, the show we missed was a rainy show and we didn't lose much. All we missed was the chance to get stressed over whether the gallery was rain worthy.

The midwest experience was largely mediocre. Saw a few friends from the road and from school, and we hobbled together enough to justify staying on the road. The Big Rage at Alpine that everyone was expecting wasn't really all that great. But I did get to hear Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers play "Stir It Up" with TOO. That was a groovy rock 'n' roll moment!

We broke down once again en route to Darien and spent a night somewhere outside of Cleveland, OH, where only the help of a friendly local working the graveyard shift at the local Stop 'n' Rob convenience store / gas station allowed us to make it to the Darien show with any chance whatsoever of doing vending. We threw together a limited set up and just played out the hand that Lady Fortune dealt us.

We skipped Detroit and Cleveland because our current vehicle situation made doubling back even more insane than it was for everyone else on the tour.

The tri-state area proved far better than the Midwest. We blew off DC to stay focused for Boston, and as a result did well in Boston while a lot of others booths were too burnt from the drive from DC to Boston to make the most of the day. We also saw a TON of friends, many from DNC, at the New Jersey, Boston, and Philly shows... too bad that those were also the shows where I was too busy to socialize. That's always the big trade off of vending at festivals...

After Philly we made the decision to get the van OFF THE ROAD. We worked out a deal with Grateful Dead Merchandising to load our stock onto the eighteen wheeler that GDM had on the road and then began the leg of the tour that caused me to dub this The Hitchhikers Ride To the Gallery.

Our first ride was more than a little difficult to deal with. No need to badmouth anyone over the world wide weird, but by Greensboro we were all too eager to part company.

The stressfulness of the new ride did not prevent us from having an AWESOME time at the Hampton show. OK, so we didn't make much money at Hampton, but we got to hang out with Richard Biffle, one of the artists in our gallery, and as for the show?!? The show was proof that the Other Ones were ready to play a show worthy of the reputation of previous Dead Hampton shows. The sucky parts were that our two days off were spent in Hurricane weather so close to Virginia Beach and our company was only compounding our stress.

The final leg of the tour, Billy and I split up. I caught a ride with some friends from the Happy Life booth and Billy caught a ride with a couple of friendly, attractive, hard working tie-dye women. This proved the least stressful and most successful combination of all. In retrospect, hitchhiking with a gallery came the easiest for us. GDM was very helpful and hooked us up with golf carts as often as possible to load and onload gear, and the money they charged us to load onto their vehicle at night was minimal.

If we ever do a booth on Furthur again, I think we'll hitchhike with a gallery the whole way!

The heat in Florida was amazing!!! I kicked myself repeatedly for forgetting to repack shorts for the southern leg of the journey. When I went home during the North East shows and grabbed clean laundry, I completely spaced packing for the south. Grrrrr!

In Greensboro Billy found some great folx to help us put up and break down grid wall (the most exhausting part of our booth) in exchange for free passes and the following day we wandered the Live Oak camping scene to see if they'd help again today. Just as we were about to give up and get to work on it ourselves, I heard someone yell, "SHADY!" It was Jimmy Wells (aka Row Jimmy) from dead.net. Alongside him was Trew. I asked if they'd like to get in for free in exchange for helping us lump grid wall. They nodded affirmatively, so I walked the two of them, along with another friend of theirs, into the show. (The fact that the security at that gate did not insist that they show credentials because she'd seen me going back and forth all day also helped.)

I hooked Jimmy up with credentials and he in turn was able to give his ticket away to another DNCer (Jennifer Lee) and all parties were pleased as punch. (Not neccessarily the Kesey Kool-Aid variety, but pleased all the same.)

During the show's sprinkle, Jimmy and Trew were right there helping me out with rain protecting the booth, and after the show they were all too willing to help break down the booth and get it loaded onto the GDM truck.

The following day I was all too willing to hook them up with more free passes. It worked out great all around!

When tour was over, Billy caught a ride home with the Happy For Lifers and I caught a ride with the folx that I'd been working the "other half" of the Kesey booth with. (That's a long story unto itself.) Got to hang for a day in Atlanta, visit my aunt, uncle and cousins in Little Five Points, and was given front door service on my ride north. I can't complain.

So now I'm back home to patch my bones and sift through the different inventories to see if there's anything in there that could be called a profit. On the plus side, we compiled a big mailing list and got a LOT of positive feedback on the gallery we did. It was exhaustive and stressful and not particularly lucrative, but at least it looked beautiful. Merlinswheel.com is up and going, but nothing like what we have in mind for it. The winter will entail getting it to more closely represent what we took on the road and then making it more interesting than just another internet shopping site. Who knows, with enough work and a suitably deranged clientele, I could be curator yet.

Make Fuck, Not Kill!

All Power to the People!

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site last updated: 1.31.2000, according to the calculations of the                                          grossly inaccurate but widely used Gregorian Calendar  age was October 1, 1999.