...my kind of town...

Here we are in Las Vegas, getting ready for the last show before we hit the studio! I love Vegas; the Rat Pack, Elvis, Howard Hughes, Liberace, Wayne Newton... My wife finally explained it to me once, when I told her I didn’t know why I loved Vegas so much, she said, “It’s because it’s on ‘11’ all the time.” TRUE!! So how did we get here you ask. We drove straight out here from Nashville and what a trip!! The first day was a good drive and we got to Oklahoma City by 2:00 am and decided to stop for the night. The next day it was a killer lunch at the Cattlemen’s Cafe (16 oz. Porterhouse w/salad and potato and a piece of coconut cream pie the size of my head!) and on to Vegas...or so we thought! Just outside of Albuquerque the weather went from mild and breezy to wild and freezy!! After dodging our share of wrecked vehicles on the interstate, we finally went into a ditch about 17 miles outside of Gallup NM. The only real damage was a flat on the trailer. Gallup NM closes at around 10:00 p.m. and no one was interested in helping the SHB get to Vegas before 6:00 am. Unfortunately, this information didn’t become clear until we had exhausted 3 hours or so trying to find help. Get yet another hotel room, this one for roughly 3 freezing hours of sleep (by the time the room started to warm up it was time to hit the road). We find a tire store to fix the tire, find a roadside service to get the tire on (yes I can change a tire, but it’s too many details to explain why!) and we hit the road at 9:30. Now, here’s the challenge; We have to be in Vegas by 3:00 p.m. local time to go do some local television, it’s 365 miles to Vegas, after getting my MF brother Keith to help me figure out the mathematical formula to determine what our consistent speed should be (yes we really did use an algorithm!) We started rolling at said speed (not the legal limit per se...)which, on dry clear surface, would be no trouble...then it starts to snow...again. Then, it stops snowing, the sun comes out, the roads are clear and we get up to speed. Then it starts to sleet...the roads are solid white, which could be just a covering of snow or something slicker! Then it stops snowing, clears up and we think, “whew!” Then it starts to hail...I’m on the phone with my wife and she mentions that sometimes hail is a precursor to a tornado...Dan, who’s driving, says “look in the rearview mirror”...you know what it is, A TWISTER!!! At this point, we are committed like the proverbial pig at breakfast, so I decide that if the next things falling out of the sky are frogs and locusts, we are NOT gonna be late to Vegas. By this point we’ve called the PR people and assured them we’ll be on time. It is live TV so it’s kind of a big step to be 235 miles away and say, “We will be there for sure.” but if you’ve been following us you know the SHB is not easily dissuaded. I am proud to say that even with a trailer search at the Hoover Dam and more rain and traffic, we pull up to the front of the hotel at 2:58 p.m. local time! We celebrated with dinner and a trip to the strip for a while. Marshal was fortunate, Dan was wise, Milburn was giddy and I was reassured that guitar should remain my focus rather than professional gambler! Tonight, if you’re in Las Vegas, and why wouldn’t you be, I hope you can make it out to see us. Tomorrow we start making our way to Minneapolis to record our next record tentativley titled; “Who’s Dog Is This?” (no that’s not the title, but it would be a mysterious one don’t you think? The phrase comes from one of my favorite movies, that’s your clue...western...John Ford...John Wayne...that’s all I’m saying!!) L.I.G.