Wow, thanks everybody who came out for our Southern Exposure aka Firecracker tour! Thanks especially to our new Johnson City friends Mary and Seth for putting us up and feeding us, and Kelly from Back Door Records for his very generous much appreciated contribution and for all the great music. Special thanks to the waitress at Zarzaur’s Café in Chattanooga, who called Dreamboat a skinny jeans wearing motherfucker. Following is a little blurb of highlights
We had a nice send off from Bloomington from our friends Neal, Boom Boom, and Pedro. After a challenging first night of sleep or lack thereof at Red River Gorge in Kentucky, we were pretty excited to see that our first venue, the Root Bar in Asheville North Carolina, was a total dive. Got to be good friends with Stoker the bartender and resident Root Bar patron/ barfly Ronnie. Ronnie joined us for a few jams on stage and then got us to play a naming game which made no sense to anyone, including I’m pretty sure himself.
Sunday we busked in downtown Asheville. Had a small crowd go crazy over hillbilly hippy haiku heaven and burn down the high school, but the best part was when our new friends Rachel and Julie jammed with us and then played their own songs and we played with them. Had a show that night at the Town Pump Tavern down the road in Black Mountain, another delicious dive with another great bartender, Gretchen. When we announced we were about to do a sing-along, Gretchen yelled hang on a sec, and literally ran out the front door to get the folks smoking outside to come in and join us. We camped that night just outside of town and woke up to a gorgeous sunny spring day in the mountains. 
Monday we checked out the epicenter of hippy grunge, West Asheville. It’s pretty fucking cool. Couldn’t hang out too long as we had a three hour plus drive to Chapel Hill to play at our third dive bar in three days, the Cave. I do not have adequate words to describe how cool this place was. Literally a cave, like carved out of subterranean rock. Lots of huge bands have played, including REM. We played a killer set, and right after we’d finished these two guys came in and were insistent we play another song for them. so we did Rat Turd (Jesus Is Comin') which they loved. After the show we found this all night place called the High Point, where Bryce (aka Escape from New York) was re-acquainted with his long lost buddy Terrence. The fact that Bryce had never met him before didn’t seem to be a deterrent to Terrence’s esteem for their friendship. We camped that night outside of town right on a lake, and spent the morning on the beach in the sunshine.
Last Tuesday though was the best day. Wow. Got on the road for the 4 hour drive to Johnson City Tennessee. On the way we stumbled onto Big Al’s Diner, which was about as southern as you can get. Waitress and everyone were so lovely, so sincerely friendly, she was pretty, maybe early 30’s, with neon eye shadow on and called us all hon. While taking our order she would turn and call out, mamma, can we can get some more iced tea, or mamma, we got any turnip greens left? She was mighty curious about what we’d been doing the night before that we wanted to order breakfast at 1 o’clock in the afternoon. They all treated us like minor celebrities when they found out we were a band.
Got back on the wonderful incredible road (NC 421/ 321) through the mountains full of shacks and little farms and all the gas stations were also small general stores and all locally owned. Gorgeous views across the mountains. We had a firecrackin’ good time. The Acoustic Coffee House was great, people were there for the music and also pretty much to get shit faced. Randy and the Lugnuts opened for us and got the crowd going along with Sven, who joined them for a few songs on trumpet.
And then we played, and we rocked it. Shelby Jo was the star; they just could not get enough of the Blonde Diva. Jim, the fiddle player from Randy and the Lugnuts and also 
the proprietor of the Acoustic Coffee House, joined us for a few songs on fiddle, and we also had our new friend Heather join us on vocals for our 2nd set. Our new friends Mary and Seth invited us to crash at their place, and then Mary made us a big breakfast in the morning.
Wednesday we hit Back Door Records on our way out of Johnson City. Holy crap- great record store, but even better, Kelly the owner was this super cool guy who ended up burning us 4 cd’s cuz the regional music he’d recommended and we were keen to buy wasn’t for sale in his store. We all hung out in his little office next door and had a mighty fine time before we had to hit the road for our show that night at Ziggy’s in Chattanooga. I also got two awesome albums on vinyl there: the 1968 First Recordings of R.L. Burnside, and Junior Kimbrough's and the Soul Blues Boys 'All Night Long'.
Drive to chattanooga was mainly interstate, which sucked, and then got to ziggy’s and the booking had fallen through. There was some discussion that we could in front of the dart boards, cuz there was a pool tournament out the back where the main stage was, but it wasn’t a good vibe. Dreamboat and I struck up a friendship with smiling mike, another barfly, who was on the verge of finding us a band to play with and who just loved my blind uncle harry look and couldn’t hardly stop laughing when we told him we had a song called Dopesmokers of the World Unite and Take Over. We had a few beers, then went down the street to the awesome vegetarian restaurant.
Thursday morning we had breakfast at zarzaur’s café, a sweet all home cookin' make shift little restaurant in an old house, been in business since 1918. It was great- real local southern diner. As we went up to pay the waitress (good naturedly) called Joseph aka Dreamboat a skinny jeans wearin' mother fucker. As in, ‘what’d you have, you skinny jeans wearin' motherfucker?’ So, just to be clear, his name is now 'Joseph Dreamboat the heartbreaking' hypochondriac I'm all over it four day rule skinny jeans wearin' motherfucker' Klatt. We then hillbilly hippy haiku'ed our way back home to B-Town.
