In 1988 Cilla Foster was waitressing in Telluride for a guy named Warren Stickney. I didn't know her very well at the time, but one day she called and said Stickney wanted us to come play in his bar. We'd never played further away from home than New Hampshire at the time, but Stickney promised to book a month long tour across the country. It took another six months to get him on the phone again, but I finally spoke with him about a week before we were supposed to hit the road. He said something like, "I don't know if I can get you any other gigs, but you can play my place and I'll pay you a thousand bucks." I couldn't get him on the phone after that, so the six of us - including Paul Languedoc and Tim Rogers, who was doing lights - decided to go for it anyway.

We finished playing a Nectar's gig at 2am, took a vote, and decided to head west then and there. Our friends Ninja Custodian subbed for us the next night at Nectar's, and we too off across the country with turkey ham, cheese, and apple butter. It was the middle of summer, and we were traveling in a windowless truck with only a foam mattress on the floor. We didn't even stop at s rest area for forty hours, so the truck got pretty disgusting.

When we got to the edge of Colorado, maybe eight hours away from Telluride, we met some people who'd heard of Stickney, and learned about his reputation as a guy who didn't pay either his workers or his taxes. When we got to Telluride, there were posters with pictures of him all over town that said "BABY HUEY, GO HOME." [ continue > ]