A Month Long Dream

Right before we went on stage last night in Dubuque, IA, we realized Frogs Gone Fishin' have been on tour for exactly one month. The scarily awesome part is that we have another three weeks to go before we can return to that winter motherland, Colorado.

Being the psychology nerd that I am, I'm constantly analyzing how the passage of time on tour is perceived. Thinking about how my band-mates experience their time on the road helps me stay tolerant and calm whenever anyone has their inevitable but minor, I've-been-away-from-any-normalcy-for-months freak out session. On the other hand, it's hard to say how thinking about my own perceptions alter my perceptions. Sound redundant? It's called meta-cognition in the textbooks, thinking about your thinking. I would hope that it allows me to put a realistic grasp on my mental/physical health, the group dynamic and how well I keep up with friends and family. For example, not calling a close friend for a week might seem totally OK to me while on tour. But, for that person, an entire week of living in the same place with no challenges about how to get around this super-sized country of ours, a week could be an insultingly long time not to hear from someone.

This alteration in the perception of time is by no means unique to traveling musicians. I have no doubt that anyone who travels and/or works hours outside of the generally accepted 9-5 work day experiences this same dream-like transgression from day-to-day. You know those nights when you can't decide when you are dreaming and when you weren't and everything seems blended and vaguely foggy? Welcome to tour life.

This phenomena is made worse by sleeping in the car. Our journey north from New Orleans has seen stops in Tennessee, Illinois, Iowa and now to the roof of the Midwest in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Waking up groggily, driving through the cool deciduous forests of Tennessee, you might as well wake up on an alien planet compared to the dank, humid heat of the Louisiana swamps when you fell asleep. If you manage to stay awake, you are rewarded with a more permanent sense of place. Irregardless, one develops a solid mental conception of how our vast country is laid out geographically, and confidence about the ability to conquer such an area (with your music, of course).

And so we go... go on to MN, WI, back to TN and IL, KY, NC and then back across the vastness in one fell swoop to what should be an exciting homecoming. We have multiple live-radio broadcasts to do and what will hopefully be our biggest show yet in Colorado at The Fox Theater in Boulder. For/Sure Productions is going swimmingly as we have decided on Austin Shaw, the talented designer of the Tell Me True album cover, for our artwork. Nothing has made me feel better about Mountainside Mardi Gras recently than hearing Austin talk about his ideas and skill in design because with that kind of stuff, I am roughly a mental midget.

Down the road in January, we are planning on recording a follow-up to Tell Me True: an album we decided will focus on the art of rock and roll music.