How And Lightning: News

Iowa City was under siege. The waters were riding strangely near the interstate. Tossing out our ideas of camping out that night, we decided to strike a course straight to the industry and attempt to contact the booker for our venue. Fortunately, she called us back shortly after receiving our message and guided us in to town, good thing too because we would have been in tough shape without her help.... You see, we had become reliant on technology. We have in our possession a device called a Magellan, a GPS device which gently tells us when and where to turn and which, until now, had brought us quickly and safely to our destination. But the Magellan (or Maggie for short) had no way of knowing about the flood or the road closures. So it was a stroke of luck that coming into Iowa City we already knew that we couldn't trust poor Maggie and to add insult to injury we had acquired physical(!) directions to our next stop: the industry.
If you ever intend to play music in Iowa City (which I highly recommend you do because the city is fucking awesome!) the only place you need to know about is the industry. The stage is enormous, the lights are brilliant, and between Chris and Randy it was the best sound we've ever had on stage. And if it wasn't in the middle of a disaster area it would have been a hell of a show. (Actually shows as we decided to stick around and play the next night as well.... The band which was supposed to play had to bail, presumably because there was freaking water everywhere!)
So we spent a thick three days in Iowa City, all of us bedding down in our booker's little living room after late nights of conversation with great people. I swear that I saw the sky lighten in the east every night that I was there and I know damn well that Ezra never fell asleep before I did. How he does it, I don't know... Maybe there is something to the Lucabaugh diet: Meat and beer.
Which brings to mind another great aspect of Iowa City, the food. This city was a little oasis in a vast desert of steaks and burgers. No longer did I have to default to soup and grilled cheese, I had options here! So many, in fact, that I didn't even make it to the vegetarian Ethiopian buffet or Masala's, the Indian joint. But I soaked it up cause Virginia was the next stop and I didn't hold out much hope for a whole bundle of options in Lexington.
On Friday, after we'd had a couple of days to see the city, we were doing promo printing for the upcoming gig and started listening to the radio spots calling for sand bagging volunteers. Apparently the floods were encroaching on the water treatment facility and there was a big push going on to fortify the area. So we met up with this cat Mark who had a real comprehensive knowledge of the whole effort and he took us on a tour of the danger zone, past the library and water treatment area to a bridge which was closed to vehicles (due to a massive lake forming on one side) but passable by foot. And we stood out there in the middle of the bridge looking out on this swollen river, the current rushing furiously beneath us, and it was too surreal....
So we throw together a quick game plan—Paul and Rick would hit the town and promote tonight's show as a flood benefit and Ezra and I would pitch in down at the sandbagging operation, so Ezra and I headed down towards the library. Dump trucks full of sand powered past us, bringing their cargo to a dump site beside the house of books where all kinds of people were pitching in, filling bags or forming long parallel lines which would allow us carry the bags to where they were needed. The wall protecting the water treatment facility was completed soon after our arrival which meant that the next order of business was to build a wall to protect the library. (I'm not to sure about those priorities—I might have done it the other way around) So I joined the line and found myself surrounded by students involved in graduate work with engineering, religious studies, psychology, etc.... A very cool group of people who were maintaining an incredibly positive attitude in the face of a pretty epic situation. My respect was quickly earned.
--I'd like to take a moment to emphasize that at no moment were any of us in any kind of danger. The Industry is located at the top of a very steep hill and the same goes for the house at which we were staying. So knowing that we and our equipment were safe and sound allowed us a level of comfort and detachment from the entire situation. Nevertheless, our hearts go out to all of those affected by the floods, may the tragedy be speedily resolved....--

It was hard to leave Iowa City. We had made some great friends, seen some things which will last with us for all our time, and I still hadn't had the chance to try Paliai's pizza.... But Virginia was calling and if we didn't know how long the roads would be open so we packed the van and scored some directions and made the bid to flee the floods of Iowa City.
Turns out, however, that the water was overflowing onto a roadway that we really needed to take and instead of stopping and reasoning it out, we decided to hit the atlas hard and try to make it out of Iowa on our own brain power.
Which left us, naturally, at this T-intersection staring at two big road closed ahead signs with a tornado warning squawking out of my radio and those dark, dark tendrils reaching ominously across the sky.
It is not often that I am happy to see a cop but that day was a powerful exception. And this was the kind of cop that I wish the world was full of. He was friendly as hell, asked us where we needed to go and pulled the exact directions that we needed out of thin air, already typed up on a quarter sheet of computer paper.
We thanked the man and headed back the way we came, a little bit apprehensive of rolling back in the direction of the storm, back through the heart of Iowa City, but bracing ourselves for a challenge against the full fury of the winds.

So we survived unscathed the great floods of Iowa, crossing the swollen Mississippi River into Illinois via the U.S. 34 on a twenty hour epic journey from The Industry to Ezra's fathers place just outside of Raphine, Virginia.
Crossing over the hills of West Virginia was outlandish. It was just before dawn lit her torch and the mist grew so thick at places that I had to take the starship down to twenty or thirty mph. The craggy hilltops constantly obscured the growing eastern light so we would go through intermittent periods of hazy illumination and then plunge once again deep into the heart of darkness.
Yet still we pressed on, albeit slowly, and West Virginia gave way to Virginia and once again the sun, the great maharaj, blessed us with his presence. And for ten days it was nothing but acres upon acres of sweet Virginian fields, some good times with Ezra's extended family, great music, and tasty twelvers of yuengling (Oh yes, I'm afraid that my righteous path was quite demolished while bobbing down the Maury River.... No worries, the path of clarity is with me stronger than ever now).

--Until the next great chapter or disaster.... A--

We were deep in Iowa.

The directions which we had been given hadn't quite worked out.... The combination of a few unanticipated road closures and our own inflated sense of self-confidence had led us to a dead end. Well, perhaps not quite a dead end.
We were, in fact, stopped at a simple T intersection and the road stretched far beyond the limits of my ocular capacities. “Turn on the radio,” somebody said, so I switched it on and, at Paul's direction, scanned to the bottom of the a.m. stations. We were hoping to hear some kind of listing of open roads for river crossings or news of massive sun breaks, but what we got was a tornado warning for the county from which we had been seeking our escape. I looked back at the direction from which we had come, the direction in which we would inevitably need to return, and observed with mounting excitement (with a corresponding surge of adrenalin), that the clear blue skies under which we'd left Iowa City had been replaced by the darkest, most ominous storm system that I'd ever chanced to see.
These weren't clouds, they were an entity. This was the reason why man had crafted the spirits of Olympus, the lords of Valhalla, the anthropomorphic representations of nature's mighty amoral strength. The darkness behind us was some ancient force, a force which did not fit properly into our civilized world, a force which promised many uncomfortable things.


This chapter begins, as so many before it have, with a jay. A doobie. A marijuana cigarette.

I, having learned my lesson about hypnotic drugs a week before, dutifully abstained. But the rest of the crew soaked up what we expected would become quite a rarity for us in our travels after that point--the tasty ganja found on the West Coast. (Even the overpriced eighths of chronic which the East Coast offers don't really compare, or so I've been told.)
So we hit the checklist; the house was clean, the gear was packed and good to go in our new trailer, our first gig in Spokane was locked and awaiting (despite the fact that our local support had canceled on their end), and the crew was finally in the proper mindset to begin such a journey. We said our final goodbyes, Paul and Kaity got in Kaity's explorer and the rest of us piled into the Periwinkle starship which would be carrying us across the nation.
I turned the key, hit the gas, and felt the sharp sting of defeat drip her poison into my heart.
Clouds of smoke billowed up past my windows as my tires lost traction at the top of our driveway. I rolled back a little bit and tried again, with similar results. I rolled back even further, as far as I could with trailer in tow, and made one final bid to crest the hill. And oh yes, I failed again.
Ezra had brought the issue of this possibility up earlier before we had begun our packing, and I, with my usual inflated sense of self confidence, had quelled his doubts and fears by asserting the superiority of the Periwinkle starship. I contemplated this moment while my tires and the cement below cooperated to manifest more of the aforementioned dreaded white smoke.
Now I can imagine a great number of activities which could be made more enjoyable by a thick hit of hasheesh, but pushing a trailer that has been loaded past capacity up a short but steep driveway doesn't make the list. A couple of the boys bit the dust but they rallied quickly and we inched the rig up the driveway and onto the street and after making a fast u-turn (actually a rather long and arduous process as it was my first experience of navigating a trailer in reverse) we hit the freeway and set our sights on I-90 and beyond.

Sometime past the Cascades the clouds opened up and we were invited to sample golden sun rays for a few hours. (We liked them a lot. Seattle should really devise some method of diverting the perpetual cloud cover, although perhaps the real estate is expensive enough already.) But of course Spokane butts up next to another mountain range and it's occupants spend a great deal of time looking up into precipitation. More rain but this time in Spokane and tempered by the fact that the local publication had gotten wind of our existence and had written a short but (very) sweet blurb on our music. We have copies but I don't know where so I won't tell you what the name of the paper was or what it said.....
But Spokane went well, maybe too well—Apparently we rocked harder than Metallica and Jerry Cantrell combined that night, probably something in the deli subs or a dark stout which the bartender called Irish Death.

That was just the beginning of that night but right now the lightning bugs are little luminescent points out in the Virginian countryside and the boys are drinking under the red light on the porch so it's time for me to head outside and enjoy the sweet Appalachian air. But goddam these mints that Ezra bought are tasty. Festival mints from the Food Lion out by the Trimble farm sending waves of nostalgia coursing through my blood. I've just got to stop.


We hadn't had the chance to fine tune our packing system so that first night after Spokane we took a little while to get our gear back in the trailer. But we had Xander and James and Crazy Don to keep us company while we worked so the time passed quickly. (This was where we learned that we had out rocked Hetfield and Cantrell and apparently C.O.F. as well, though I haven't a clue what the hell C.O.F. is) After the gear was restocked we decided to take the door guy, Larry, up on his offer of shelter for the night.
This meant, of course, that we would be stopping off at the Missing Piece tattoo parlor to chill out with a few beers late night. It turned out that Larry was a piercer for Missing Piece and the barback for the bar we played, Brandon, was one of the artists at the parlor. (Great art by the way, feel free to stop by their myspace and check out his profile) Next door to the Missing Piece another little group was raging after hours, blasting Beatles through a pair of fifteens, which was very cool. They later turned the tables on us and started blasting Journey which was very uncool and made me wonder at the cost of freedom.
Larry and Brandon turned out to be cool as shit, setting a precedent for our good luck on the road. They told us a freaky story about a Native American gang in Spokane... Apparently Brandon and Larry were throwing a birthday party one night and these Native cats were denied entrance so they come back in force an hour later and toss teargas into the house. Well one of the guys at the party actually knew something about something and he got all the ladies into the bathroom and turned the shower on full force to try and counteract the gas and the rest of the guys there grabbed some machetes and took off in pursuit of these Native Americans. I don't think they ever caught up with them though, probably for the best.... Anyway, Kaity got a quick lip piercing from Larry that night, apparently a painless process, which was hopefully some small compensation for getting nabbed for speeding on the way over. Damn the fund raising coppers!
It was late when we finally made it back to Brandon's pad, so late that it bordered on early, the glow to the east was proof of that. So I gripped up a little cot upstairs after making sure the streets were clear of the possibility of gang warfare (or trailer lootage) and left the rest of the gang to spend the wee hours with drink, smoke, and Natural Born Killers.... At least I assume that's why Ezra was talking about Rodney Dangerfield the next morning.... Great movie but so fucked up....
The drive to Bozeman is long so I had to wake the boys up in order to make it in time for the show. We piled out to the Periwinkle Starship and said our goodbyes to Kaity and for the first time of the tour the four of us piled into my little minivan and hit the road.

We got into Sioux Falls at dawn. The sun hadn't yet poked up over the horizon when I pulled into the greasy truck stop just outside of town. Me and Rick and Ezra left Paul to sleep in the van and grabbed a booth at the twenty four hour diner. The boys grabbed a cup of coffee and shat themselves when they noticed the early bird special. Three ninety nine for a mess of bacon, sausage, eggs, biscuits and gravy, and toast.... My perusal of the menu left me with two options: Hashbrowns or oatmeal. The mid west officially had me by the tender bits.
After breakfast we headed back outside in time to watch the sun finally crest the horizon, granting us our first view of that precious orb since before Spokane. It was glorious (if perhaps still a wee bit too cold for my liking).
Despite the early hour, we decided to rouse Paul so that he could share in our first experience of the city which turned out to be much larger than we expected. It was still incredibly early so we decided to find a park in which to spend the morning and here we scored big, for the park we chose just so happened to sport a swimming pool. Through some quick detective work, Rick (the legendary Rising Sun pool hopper) ascertained that the waters would be open to the public come noon thirty so we formulated a game plan for the day around the possibility of napping pool side. And after taking care of some business downtown we returned, triumphantly, for a quick pre-show dip.
Audience turnout was great for a Monday night.... It was a four band bill and the local acts graciously shortened their sets in order to let us and fellow touring act, Riddle of Steel, give the people of Sioux Falls a substantial taste. We played well, apparently, for as soon as we left the stage the bartender purchased our album and had it playing over the house speakers. Riddle of Steel came on next, sporting both impressive musicianship and composition.... Also, their drummer blew my mind when he snapped the chain on his bass drum pedal on the last song of their set.
After the show, a couple of guys from the local group The S3TBACK offered us a place to crash so we took a quick trip to their practice studio and talked music while indulging in smoke and alcohol. As the night wound down we scouted out couch and floor space and left the light behind.
Leaving Sioux Falls was uneventful except for a short conversation with some crazy drunk bastard who claimed to have robbed a local convenience store. The dude was belligerent and possibly carrying weaponry so we cut the conversation as short as possible leaving him ranting about respect with his middle finger raised towards us as a parting gesture. What a dick.
It was on to Iowa City next and with Ezra muttering prescient warnings of apocalypse we journeyed forward.

We've teamed up with Epidemic Music and a few of our favorite local groups to put together our CD Release Party which will be on March 1st, saturday night, at the Showbox at the Market!! Joining us that night will be Collider, the Darlings of the lo fi, and Bee Simonds. This is an all ages show, doors open at seven and the show starts with Collider at eight. Tickets are seven dollars in advance and ten dollars at the door. Tickets available here at Ticketmaster.

We have released our debut album, Numinous, for sale to the general public. The album was recorded at Robert Lang Studios by Jeff Gall, was mixed at RLS and Three Dueces Studio by Brian Valentino, and was mastered by Ed Brooks at RFI/CD Mastering. Many thanks to these three men for their irreplacable help with this work. You can find Numinous for sale at select stores or online at cdbaby.com.

Thanks everybody for all your support!!

Make Way for the Gorilla

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