victorontour

So I wake up Sunday morning in the parking lot in Downtown Nashville as always, slightly groggy and late after the rest of the band guys have already headed home. Randy (my boss) says, “you wanna do this charity bike ride??” I weighed my other option, which was go to the house, do laundry, pay bills, try to come off three nights of adrenaline and act like a functional adult. Of course that didn’t sound too enticing, so I said yes. We saddled up to ride the 40 or so miles down to the Harley dealership in Columbia, Tennessee where a large stage was set up and a variety of more or less known country acts were waiting to perform. About 200 motorcycles or more slowly rolled out of downtown. For most of the ride we never did more than 30 miles an hour. It was torture in the TN heat. I would rather be stuck in L.A rush hour traffic any day. Big props to one of the most talented acts in any genre of music, Little Big Town for organizing that, but next time 90 miles an hour on the interstate is the key to all of our happiness

Look at this glorious plate of meatballs!!! . I mean look at it, served with small summery potatoes. If you are from Sweden, this is the shit, to put it in plain French.  I did not expect this in rural Canada, I mean they know what to do with healthcare, they are multi lingual in some cases, they have given us Bryan Adams and Pam Anderson, but this was indeed a pleasant surprise on top of all that. Of course, since I usually prefer to see the glass as half full, I spent a good minute enjoying this sight, but then the dark side swiftly took over. “Where are the fucking Lingonberries?” I thought to myself. (This is the sugary goo/compote served with this course traditionally back in the vikingland.) It is not too different from Cranberries here in the States. When I was a kid I ate so much of it as a condiment to all kinds of foods, which created some strange food combinations and made me seriously chubby. The plate of wannabe Swedish meatballs brightened up a somewhat strange festival with moody weather however. We had fun on stage as always. It takes a lot for that not too happen. For all my bass player friends, my rental rig that day was a Mark Bass. Too put it mildly, I have never played through a bigger freshly steaming pile of shit in my entire life! No lows, no real highs, just a lot of midrange punch that wasn’t even that clean.  I mean how does that happen, with two 410’s and an 800 watt head?? I’d like to think one of my skills in life is the ability to EQ the living fuck out of a bass rig, but there was no winning with this waste of space. Whew!! I am happy to have that off my shoulders. That is an official anti endorsement..lol.

My first Califonia break from touring since I started in early May. Since most of the touring this time of year consists of fairs and festivals in the south and midwest, I have been hot, sweaty and dirty for most of the summer. When I got the chance to fire up my Triumph for a mad dash through Los Angeles traffic and the beaches of Orange County it felt like a clean shower after the first month of summer touring. The first goal of the day was to visit Southern California Motorcycles in Brea, They sell the only three motorcycle brands that matter, Victory, Triumph and Ducati. The store has plenty of knowledgeable staff and a great layout. The Ducati dealer in Nashville will not let you test ride anything, so I was very surprised when I was offered a test ride on a Ducati Streetfighter. It is undeniably the hottest streetbike around this year, I declined, but on my next trip down there, I will take that magic carpet ride in a second. After that I spent 10 orgasmic minutes inhaling a complete meal from the California staple In-And-Out Burger. Finsihed with a strawberry shake, gazed over at my Triumph in the parking lot with the California sun in my face and pondered life’s gloriousness for a second. Hopped on the freeway out to the coast again from the hilly country around Brea toward my second goal for the day, Huntington Beach. Pictures are from the pier. The weather was as perfect as Southern California gets and I stayed on the coast until Long Beach. The traffic was getting heavy, the redlights too frequent and so I hit the Interstate back to my temporary home in Hollywood.

I love the tour bus, always have, I probably always will. I like the way I sleep with a diesel engine under me and I like visiting questionably truck stops in nowhere, USA to find fashion so bad it’s good. My favorite place however is the captain’s chair (PIc 1) next to the driver (who in our case has driven AC/DC, Def Leppard, Poison, Bon Jovi, Beck, Meat Loaf…etc) whose stories are better than any TV reality show while looking though the large windshield of the bus at America rushing by. This chair has lots of automated functions to get so comfortable that you basically could hibernate there for an entire season….it NEVER gets old, except when you have two 20 hour bus rides back to back. I am not kidding. This run was almost long enough for us to fly but we were on the bus. I survived. The first tour stop was Springfield, MA where I used the stairs of the arena to work out on. The never ending quest to create an ass for myself never ends really. Of course while the south was hot always, the east coast was experiencing a heat wave, so venturing outside was not an option.

Traverse City Michigan was unbelievable. With a short summer and some amazing beaches, the town was at its peak when we rolled in. The view from stage was beyond pleasant (Pic3). After the heat wave we just left behind, it felt like playing in northern California with the pine trees and the clear blue water. It is soo far north that the bus driver’s GPS originally routed us through Canada just to get there.

The next day we were in Ohio. We got to enjoy the righteous country singing onf Joe Diffie…this shot is of him (Pic4), his band and the crowd during one of the few songs involving a pickup truck that doesn’t make me throw up. As a matter of fact I really like it. “Pickup Man”. All is good.

Early summer evening with bright clear sky that you never see in the south. Reminds me of Sweden when I am in the upper midwest, it always does. . We finished the festival early in Saginaw and headed west toward a lake house 80 miles away for two days off. . I can appreciate some ski doos and a small lake, but I am a city man at heart so I rolled out the bike from the trailer and headed to Chicago where my buddy Jim from the Buffett band had a suite at the Ritz Carlton. I don’t think the front desk staff there is used to rained out, wet bikers with dead bugs all over their face….I quite enjoyed the whole scenario. Walked along the lakeshore, shopped and did some inner city riding. In the middle of the night 36 hours later the tour bus came through to swallow me and the bike in downtown Chicago like a hungry monster.

So here is my blog. The starting point is that on tour this year I am bringing my Victory motorcycle on tour.  I mostly do shows with singer Randy Houser. I was originally going to post updates on the online Victory motorcycle forum as I hopefully will meet and ride with fellow enthusiasts from around the country, but decided that since my family and friends back in Sweden never have gotten the chance to closely keep up with me on my travels, I want to give them the opportunity to do so as well.  So here it is out in the open. Occasionally there might be opinions/pictures posted here that might be offensive to some people. There will inevitably be lots of motorcycle talk and bass (not the fish) talk, so if you are not interested in that…just skip down and more general travel observations are likely to followJ With that in mind, here we go.