so the next stop on the ol’ weed hounds tour was jackson, mississippi. i think because we spent so much time in oxford during the day once we got to jackson we were only about three hours away from the show. not to mention that jackson really didn’t seem to have much to do.

don’t get me wrong, it seemed sort of nice when we were outside the city limits… but once inside we didn’t really see much. this was one of the days that i took my new longboard for a nice ride. i noticed a few slanting slopes and powered my way up and down for a number of runs. it really carves like a snowboard

we played at this place called the tavern, which had decent sound and a nice space. this fellow cole from the band dead gaze hooked up a nice show

i zoned out on the floor of the empty stage for a little while before moving in my drums and shit.

at some point i decided it was necessary that i get photos of nick’s hilarious cartoons. these things had my sides splitting in the van, i shit you not! i think the story behind two stern dads was when he and i were up front (loosely – me on right, him on left) and we were pondering the concept of a two father family. these things make me giggle still

the next one was meant to accompany an idea that we had quite a long while ago. a few months ago nick, laura and i were heading east on long island listening to U2… we came to the conclusion that U2 is a total “dad band” and that someone should do a blog called “dad rock.” being that the idea still didn’t exist in the internet world we came up with a list of our top dad albums. a few may be questionable, but we were very tired so cut us some slack (or suggest your own – it could be fun!):

• Aerosmith – Pump
• Cream – Disraeli Gears
• Creedence Clearwater Revival – s/t
• The Eagles – Hotel California
• Grateful Dead – American Beauty
• Hot Tuna – Burgers
• Led Zeppelin – IV
• Tom Petty – Damn the Torpedoes
• R.E.M. – Green
• Rolling Stones – Exile on Main Street
• Bruce Springsteen – Born in the USA
• U2 – Joshua Tree
• The Who – Who’s Next?

this other one is a drawing of what became the constant tour joke based on scene from the sopranos. i think pat mighta been the first to say it… but the concept of a writer taking a pen and writing down the lines “when do i get my money?” with the reply “when you suck the money out of my ass! now get the fuck outta here!” were endlessly hilarious to us in our slightly dazed states. another nick rice masterpiece

the tavern offered us free food… full meals! only the first perk of playing

we opened up… played to a room of (we were told) over 200 with maybe 13 interested parties. kind of took the spark out of my performance. if you ain’t interested sometimes that just makes me ain’t interested. “whatever… they didn’t care, oh well,” i thought, “at least we still get to watch girlfriends”

girlfriends were fucking awesome as usual but to my dismay.. they got the same freaking response! no one seemed to care

“why are you turds all here?” i kept thinking as my eyes darted from frat boy to frat boy. then it hit me – remember when i said that jackson didn’t seem to have anything to do? yeah, this was the only thing to do. so everyone from the city was at this bar because it was the only “place to be” as kool moe dee would say

so at first i thought it was just me who was frustrated by the crowd…

…then benny jumped down from the stage and got in the middle of the dance floor to try and stir things up (i took that shot with jenny’s cam) that was an interesting moment. it still didn’t phase them. they continued drinking and hitting on one another at the bar behind us. end of the night we were a little disappointed but then cole came over to us at the nice dude he was an informed us that we had just gotten paid more then we did for the other days combined! like waaaay more! enough to cover us pretty much all the way home. holy shit! it turns out that so many people paid to get in the place that we made bank on the door. the bar probably made thousands. we headed back to cole’s place and partied for a bit and then went home with his two generous friends who offered us a place to stay. that ruled. they had cute kitties and nice decorations. we stayed with chrissy, laura slept in her daughter’s room. how’s that for weird? i have no photos of these things cause i was tired. i did get to see some of the famed “mississippi mud” as well. good times. the next day we were headed to memphis so that was something to look forward to. cool!

yep, according to my calculations oxford, ms was the next stop on our route of the south. we were slotted to play at a place called the red star bar. for some reason i didn’t shoot too many photos the day of the show but i can’t quite remember why. we set off to mississippi and eventually found ourself in a great deal of traffic with people uncomfortable and full of pee

my reaction to the traffic

we eventually stopped at some point at the king of burgers somewhere. i can’t even remember what state it was

i guess we were near rt 412?

on the way to oxford there were tons of two lane highways we got on. rolling, two lane highways.

at some point it started to rain and shit can it rain in the south. the weather just springs out and shows its face. can you see the size of those rain drops? i did my best to capture the sheer magnitude of the things

these photos still don’t do it justice

oh so everywhere in mississippi is covered by this beautiful vine called kudzu (sp?) i was informed that although it looks beautiful it is a complete nuisance to the natives. it springs up and covers literally everything. but it makes for some really marvelous views

we got off the highway and ended up in some sort of ghost town where old college buildings that once appeared to be thriving were just abandoned. they even built the new buildings directly next to the old beautiful ones

we eventually landed in the square of oxford. my first thought was that its not the biggest town in the world. there is just sort of a square with a courthouse in the middle and that is about it. nothing much else. people in oxford seem to like to eat and read because there was only bars, restaurants and book stores

they had cool old phone booths (obviously)

we got to the venue, which was closed, and noticed a flier for our show that night. that ruled. its cool when people seem to care about the show when you get into a town

we walked around a bit and found a bar to watch lebron’s announcement. we were hoping he’d choose the knicks but had no luck

after eating a descent slice of jalepeno pizza we entered the venue for sound checks. this turned out to be the best sounding place we played on tour. the promoter, dent may, really hooked us up. we had a cooler of beers (who cares) and an awesome stage to play on. i didn’t shoot any shots of girlfriends with my camera that night because it was the first night i remembered to take jenny’s camera and use it. here’s one of the shots that i found on her tumblr (which is incredibly entertaining, btw)

after the show we followed dent through what seems like 10 miles of dark forest and eventually reached his amazing barn-like house. we had a few couches and a few strips of carpeted floor to crash on

his house that he shared with a few other dudes was filled with fun stuff like a giant poster of andy warhol, a movie poster for wild style and assorted portraits and knick knacks

also this massive fly was left where it was flatted on the window. i stared at it when i woke up for a while. hey guy, how’s it going

the rain rolled in and out again but we missed it for the minute. i found myself trying to photograph dent’s place and saw jenny was out there doing the same. look at the ominous edge of the sky in the distance

after packing up we went back into town to meet dent and his co-worker pal at a real southern comfort food spot called tallulah’s kitchen. the food was pretty phenomenal but the portions were massive. i couldn’t finish my black bean chipotle burger at all. the others got catfish steaks and fried oreos. woah. i missed the fried oreos but made up for it this past week on the jersey shore. anyway

it was here that dent’s friend (who’s name slips my mind) told me that in town someone started selling a variety of jam made from that stuff kudzu i mentioned earlier. he said it sort of has a minty flavor… who knew!

when we got back to the square i ducked off for some ice cream with the girlfriends. the heat was wearing me down. i took this same photo with my camera but the scan had so much dust on it i decided to use the version i took with jenny’s camera. the coke float i had was so tasty. i wish i was drinking it right now… old thymey coke bottle… mmm

when i walked back to off square books, the place dent worked at, i narrowly missed the rain which came down in torrents. i think pat was unfortunately stuck in it

the book store was really cool, it had all sorts of cool titles and authors as well as recordings and treats. the night prior i wandered into it alone not knowing it’s connection to our promoter and bought steven martin’s born standing up for only six dollars! good read btw

we waited for the rain to dry off a bit and pet the local book store cat. nick and that cat became the best of friends.

the girlfriends were gonna wait a little longer in oxford but i think we wanted to see what our next stop, jackson, was about

we thanked dent and parted ways. he is a great dude, look him up if you’re ever in the city of oxford

off to jackson, the next stop.