From The Road

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Casey Henry

Casey Henry

I write this from the back seat of our 15-passenger van in Hope, Arkansas (birthplace of Bill Clinton, I learned from the binder in my hotel room). We played in Little Rock last night and drove a couple hours after the gig, getting to bed around two a.m. The Mexican restaurant and bar we played at was called Juanita's and they had absolutely wonderful food and drink (though the margaritas could have used more tequilla...).

We were particularly glad to have a good experience by that point in the day, because our morning had been epically bad. We left from my house in Nashville, where it had started raining during the night. To avoid having to carry all our gear thirty yards through the rain, we had pulled the van up to the back door to load. We were, for once, running early and were all in the van, ready to pull out ten minutes before our eight a.m. departure.

Buddy, our mandolin player, stepped on the gas and the wheels moved, but we didn't. Stuck. We all got out and pushed (in the rain remember) and managed to move the van about a foot while digging a couple four-inch deep wheel holes in my grass. We called AAA, but while we waited we tried one more thing: unloading all our stuff to make the van lighter and trying again to move it. No luck.

We loaded all our stuff back in and threw some of our clothes in the dryer while waiting an hour for the tow truck. When he finally arrived, the driver was kind of a jerk, and was so bad at his job that the first time he pulled the van, it didn't make it out of the yard - it just got stuck again closer to the driveway. By the time he finally got the van all the way onto the driveway, it was an hour and a half after our scheduled departure. We had built in some extra time, but not that much. We missed our first radio interview in Little Rock, but made it for the second one. The joys of life on the road.

And to top it all off, I am hugely sore from all the pushing we did yesterday! Maybe I'll be able to get out and walk some at the Hugo, OK, Early Bird Bluegrass Festival, which is where we're headed right now!

-Casey

8 thoughts on “From The Road”

  2. Steve (in Japan)

    What a kick off in Nashville! I wish I could take my two kids to see you, and meet Bill Grant too, in Hugo. OK.

  3. Stan

    ahh I love to read about the glamour of a professional musician’s life!

    keep the notes coming Casey..

    too bad about the margueritas..

  6. Steve (in Japan)

    The one above, “From The Road” of 3/26 comes up prefectily on my screen. I thought you were going to post other blogs too and made that comment. I hope the weekend schedule, and traveling too, went well for the Dixie Bee Liners. What was it like at the festival in Hugo, Oklahoma? Can’t wait to hear more about the whole weekend tour. Thanks for posting the above iphone blog. BTW, we got a nice blanket of snow on the Odawara and Tanzawa mountain ranges and Mt. Fuji got another topping. Snow looks great from a distance.

  7. MsCustSrv

    Hello there, I am so very sorry to hear about your roadside concern. Further, that the AAA driver may not have been of the professional standard AAA sets forth! I would be happy to help you further on this if you would like to contact me at lmulholland@national.aaa.com…otherwise, please know this sounds like it was pretty isolated knowing the quality of service in that areas as a rule. I am so very sorry again to hear of this and look forward to your email should you wish for me to address it for you. Thanks, MsCustSrv

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