We've been out on the road for a little over a month now and I really feel the groove comin' on. The record's been out for a few weeks and I'm starting to see more and more people in the audience singin' along with the new songs. So far we're doing "Road Runner", "Never Loved A Woman", "Baby, Please Don't Go" and "Stop Messin 'Round". The other night we tried out "Shame Shame Shame" and plowed right through it. It feels kind of like "Big 10"" on too much caffeine. Playing it reminds me of when Joey and I would set up in his room back at 1325 when we were just getting started. Joey would hook up his bass drum pedal to a box or something and use a chair for a snare. My amp was always somewhere else with the gear so I'd just bang away on the strings without plugging in. We'd spend entire days working on different beats so we could play 'em really tight. The beat from Shame and Big 10" and "One Way Street" is called a shuffle-although we've always called it a hop. Whatever you want to call it, it's been one of the main elements on our big ol' beat bag. We were determined to perfect it and now we're finally getting close. Almost. And, by the way, you can't perfect it.

Right now we're on the plane, flying back to the road from our first break. It was more of a long weekend than a break. There's that weekend thing again. It's moments like these that remind me of the delicious irony of the fact that we live in a time where rock hippies are not only allowed but encouraged to fly on beautiful private airplanes like the one we're on right now. It probably seems commonplace to some people but I regularly get a wave of emotion just thinking about it. We've spent our lives on these things but I never get over it. A machine that flies through the air. A machine made of metal, stuffed with luggage, guitars, people, fuel, food and bags of morally questionable reading material. It's our clubhouse. A freakin' flying clubhouse. A freakin' five hundred mile an hour flying clubhouse.

We're taxiing out to the runway getting ready to launch. I can hear Steven and Joe behind me quietly talking over the set list. Joey's across from me on his cell phone talking to someone about cars and eating a Twizzler. Brad's seat is all the way back facing a long narrow table piled with newspapers and magazines. I just know that when we do the take-off run they're all going to slide off right into his lap. (Which is exactly what happened.). A few minutes later the engines scream the G2 leaps forward and as we abandon the ground I look out the window and watch the runway fade into the distance until it's no bigger than Joey's Twizzler. I ask Brad if, while he's at it, could he pass me a copy of the Boston Globe. Pretty soon we all talk about some of the things we always talk about. Movies, guitars, motorcycles, books, etc. Somebody starts talking about the Da Vinci Code. I'm the only one who hasn't read it yet and I have to put my fingers in my ears and do that humming, grunting thing so they don't blow the plot.

Okay its a few hours later and we're at the gig starting the sub-conscious rituals that get everybody ready to do the show. It's the clubhouse thing again only this time in the dressing rooms. It's cool to see all the crew people and see what everybody did over the break. Food's a cookin' in the 'Honkstility Room'. Time to eat. It's good to eat early so when you get onstage you're not belching up some hot curry you just crammed down your throat.

Okay, got the eating all taken care of. Got to get out on stage for sound check. We're adding more new songs to the set and also some old ones that we haven't played for a while. We still practice old songs even though we've played them countless times over the years. No point in waiting to in the middle of the show and have a mental block over when the guitar break starts in "Draw The Line."

Sound check went smooth and we're back in the backstage. We practiced "No More No More", and a couple of other songs from the distant past. It's a cool feeling to notice how we play those songs now compared to when they were fresh off a new album. We also practiced "Back Back Train" and decided to pop it right into the set.

Some of these places are brand new state of the art arenas yet when you go to take a shower, half the time the water doesn't get hot or it just dribbles out and sprays in all directions like an infected phallus. They spend millions on building these places and then decide to save a few bucks by getting the crappiest plumbing on the market! Forget sleazy rock bands, don't they care about the athletes? I think we usually get the visiting team locker rooms. Maybe they intentionally put the rotten plumbing in to bum out the visiting team. Nice. I'm sure when they sell ten dollar beers out in the lobby the stuff roars out like piss from a rhinoceros!

All right, enough complaining. It's great to be out in road world. We're back in the dressing rooms and Joey's over on the other side of the room warming up on his practice pad. He's bangin' away. Sounds like a gang of rampant woodpeckers. Or a crankin' bag of popcorn in the microwave. We're going on in an hour or so and I can feel the energy wakin' up and comin' out. The story gets longer but never old and we're psyched to be out here.

Hasta Manana,

TH