We’ve been contending with some seriously dangerous bullshit, and in all my fatigue and all my worry, I’ve become ensconced in a dense psychic torpor. Sometimes I don’t even want to move, much less attempt to solve these problems that threaten our imminent health and financial well-being. I’ve spent the last 24 hours slowly sweating in my sleeping bag on a Denver floor, lucidly fever-dreaming of a succinct domestic bliss I’ve never quite experienced.

All is not lost, though, and there’ve been some shining bright times, for sure.

To catch you up: Bernard, who was making the solo 1,500 mile trek in our newly-repaired bus to meet us in Denver, got caught in a freak early-May blizzard in western Kansas. When he could see through the white-out, he witnessed enormous 18-wheel semis being blown over in the winds. Our 13-ton machine, he says, was tossed around the freeways like a toy. He pulled over countless times, yet pressed on, diligently mindful of our deadlines. He’s a motherfucker and a hero.

He’s still not here though: the subzero temps nuked our battery. The engine oil, he says, was near-frozen this morning. We missed our Salt Lake show, which is a serious bummer because those kids there last tour lost their shit over us. Also, it happened to be a Friday, so it promised to be packed solid. Nevermind the financial repercussions of missing that show, it would’ve been a huge spiritual boost to fry those Mormon minds.

We are missing Missoula tonight, too. We’ve got to go straight to Seattle. I feel blackhearted about missing these shows. Individually, we are going broke; I’m really skinny. And, as with any group facing uncertainty, our collective spirits have flagged a bit; I look around at my comrades sprawled across this room and intuit wordlessly the same psychic exhaustion I’ve just described.

Bright side, though, is that our interpersonal unity has been burnished, I feel, by this hardship. There’s been absolutely no infighting, and our sense of mission has hardened. Once we hit Seattle, it will be like a new tour beginning. A new month-long tour: the half-circle homeward. Plus, in retrospect, having the rest here in Denver feels pretty necessary: we are staying with Forrest’s amazingly gracious and generous first cousin who lives right downtown. I’ve caught up on sleep, taken a couple showers, gotten sober. I just walked around in the sunlight with The Minutemen on my headphones, drinking coffee and being truly alone for the first time in weeks. It felt truly restorative.

Plus, we’ve got some cool shit waiting for us on the West Coast. We are doing a “Take Away Show” in Seattle, in which this group of video artists films us playing acoustically on our bus. They’ll set up pro recording gear, edit it, and publish it online. That’ll be a blast.

Also, we are recording a song in Portland to be remixed by the producer Diplo, and released on a split record with Atlas Sound by Henry Owings, as part of his Whirlyball series.

In Portland, we are picking up three old, dear friends of mine, two of whom are producing a documentary for Vice, and one – former Athenian Brett Heckman – is just coming along for the ride, thankfully. There, we also pick up a lovelorn photog for Spin Magazine, who’ll document the rest of the tour, as well. Fresh blood all around!

We’ll have Curtis and Bernard back in tow, too. Our squad reunited. I’ve missed those mugs in everyway: musically, schematically, personally. They’ve become indispensable as far as our trip goes. Our touring party will balloon up to a whopping 20; the Last of the Frontiersmen, for real: a logistic nightmare, and proud of it, motherfuckers!

We also have a day off planned to camp in the redwoods, and later, I will see old buds Long Legged Woman and Thee Ohsees in San Fran. Things will get real cool real soon.

I’m listening to the Hindustani slide guitarist Debashish Battacharya right now on my headphones, and it is blissful; he’s my new guitar hero. His playing is absolutely inspiring: the most soulful shit I’ve heard in a long, long time.

On a hopefully similar note, I get the Gay Africa CDs from Lars Gotrich soon, and I’m hella excited. He’s releasing an early live performance on his Thor’s Rubber Hammer Productions, called “Dream Cables,” and my first love Kate Burnet and her partner Danny Woerner (who happen to be the two documentarians we are picking up in Oregon) did all the covers individually, by hand: cut-and-paste collages with these strange and amazing drawings interspersed. I saw some in NYC, and they are beautiful. I’m really proud of the release, and when I get back to Athens, I plan to do a bunch of Gay Africa shows, some acoustically, some loud as shit, some solo with my drone box, some with an ensemble. Playing sets of basically-scripted rock music every night for the past month has made me crave all-out improv.

I also saw that Sweet Teeth was nominated for Flagpole’s best jam band award. We’ve talked about starting a grassroots campaign to win that award. That would be a weird coup d’etat. What would P-groove think? Fuck 'em.

Alright, I plan to write thumbnail haikus depicting imagistically and impressionistically all the shows we’ve done since I last wrote. There’ll be: bad breakdancing in fresh lakes of beer; dumpsters flying into vans; spleen vented at lazy promoters; Touch and Go’s version of Better than Ezra; shitty hip-hop; a dog that looks like a huge cockroach and a tiny little kid using yours truly as an ambulatory firepole!

Aren’t you stoked? Stoked?

Jim McHugh