Road Notes 1999

Happy Holidays! Though not on the road touring, the four of us have again taken a welcome break from each other to join our families and loved ones for the egg nog chuggin' bruhaha. Just when I had worked off all that weight from the Thanksgiving feasting, it all seems to have started over again with holiday hams and yams (yuck!) and more of that nameless green jiggly stuff. Maybe I should've asked Santa for an excercise bike! Oh well.

Just before our seasonal hiatus, we were lucky enough to head back Montana way for some more performing in the schools. Thanks to all the students and teachers that made our trip possible! After we get back, we head east (I hear it's beautiful there this time of year - BRRR!) for performances in the Big Apple, ME, and NH!!

Keep watching the site for lots of upcoming exciting stuff! The CD is on the way (sound clips are already up!), and lots more!

Again....thanks to the fans. We love you guys!! Keep on listening....

-joe

Happy turkey day to all of you die-hard Four Shadow fans! Thought I would take a second out of my holiday belt-loosening to check in and say hello! We're all enjoying a much needed hiatus from each other for a few days as we have scattered to different extremes of this great nation to celebrate the pilgrim's progress by consuming vast amounts of turkey, stuffing, hot rolls, and that green jiggly stuff in the casserole dish. With Jon in Mississippi, Karl in Nebraska, Kevin who knows where, and me in Alaska, we are all enjoying the off time with our respective families and loved ones, both quenching our feelings of homesickness and realizing again why we moved out in the first place. Ah, family. Sometimes you can't live with 'em, and you can definately never live without 'em!

Party time is drawing nigh, friends. In just a very short time, the newest addition to the Four Shadow recordings will arrive! This promises to be a great album, and is definately something you'll wanna pick up if you haven't already. The screenings of the finished material have so far been met with nothing but good comments. Be watching for those sound clips on the web site soon!

As always, thank you, Thank You, THANK YOU to all of our fans and supporters that have been there for us, jammin' along to our unaccompanied vocalizin'. We wouldn't be here if it weren't for you.

Joe

p.s. - reports of my bad driving are greatly exaggerated. i swear....ya have one little accident and.....

Greetings American humans, and welcome to the third installment of Notes from the Road, the spankingly newest addition to the Four Shadow website! It might seem ironic that this Road Notes entry comes from the safe confines of home. Indeed, we have just returned from our whirlwind three-week tour of Montana, and are presently repairing to the newly refurbished basement to whip up some cool tunes for the upcoming ALBUM! However, we have stored up enough stories, wisdom, and van odor (yuck!) for one final ode to the great state and people of Montana. So, pull on your warmest mittens, pur yourself a strong cup of "joe," and join us on our road trip down memory lane to the sunny days of vocal harmony and van high-jinx in big sky country.

Picture this: Four Shadow sings its last Montana show at a lovely, historic riverside town called Ft. Benton. It is a fittingly awesome end to a tour filled throughout with the kindest, coolest people in the world. By the way, if you ever find yourself in Ft. Benton, take a moment to look around in the second hand store on the main drag. There are some amazing deals on great clothes in there! Anyways, back to the story. We awake the next morning to begin the homweward journey. As we pull in for the midday combination tummy-fill and pit stop, Jon, Joe and Karl scramble from the van vying for first crack at the potty. Meanwhile, Kevin gently rouses from sleep to the realization that lunch is at hand. As he yawns and streches his way from the van to the cafe, he pauses at the trailer, which usually has two wheels per side. He is very confused because at this time the passenger side only seems to have one wheel in its entirety. Beside it sits a lonely hub where a wheel used to be. Confused, but certain that there must be a reasonable explanation, Kevin saunters to the cafe to survey the menu and satisfy his own need for the aforementioned facilities. In passing, he fires off a casual question to the ever unshakable Karl. "Hey, dude. Are you aware that we are minus one wheel on the trailer?"

Pandemonium breaks loose. All thoughts of bathroom glory are set aside for the moment, as everyone scrambles outside for a look. There it is in black and blue: the trailer's front, passenger-side wheel is gone. Okay, this cannot be stressed enough. We've had flats before. We're no sissies when it comes to changing a tire (as evidenced by the upcoming events). This is another situation altogether. Where there used to be a nice, happy wheel with a healthy tire around it, there is now nothing more than the inner hub, and the stubby remains of five bolts, sheared in half where the wheel apparently decided break free, bolts and all, while no one was looking. After some thorough head scratching, in the fine tradition of mechanically incompetent men everywhere, we decided on a sensible course of action. This missing wheel thing was not going to throw off our lunch.

After the last soda had been refilled, and after Kevin bummed the last fries from various plates, we drove to a slew of repair places in the small town where fate had landed us this blow. As we were summarily turned away by shop after shop, we realized two things: 1)trailers are evil, and 2)that darned wheel could have come off hundreds of miles ago, leaving us with no idea how much stress the remaining wheel had already undergone, and thus how much it might yet be able to stand up to. We received the answer to the latter question in the form of a loud POP! ten miles out of town. This was, literally speaking, the low point. Here we were, stuck in the middle of the road, miles from civilization on a rural state highway with NO WHEELS ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF OUR TRAILER. Springing into action, Jon ran back down the road to light flares alerting oncoming semis of our distress. Since the shoulder sloped down steeply from the edge of the two lane highway, there was nothing to do but change the tire right there in the middle of the road!

Once the spare was on, the dust settled and the endorphines calmed. It seems funny now, but at that time we were actually happy to have at least one functional wheel on the right side of the trailer. Now we were faced with our slowest, most stressful strech of driving ever. As dusk settled on the wild countryside, we drove along at what can best be described as a swift trot - 25 mph. Much to the chagrin of our fellow drivers, our hazard lights had conveniently chosen this moment to stop functioning. So we had no real way to explain in car language the reason for our ultra conservative driving strategy. As we prayed that the wheel would hold all the way to the next town (50 miles!), our scariest moment actually came at the hands of a vindictive semi-truck driver who apparently took great offense at our chic, retro, horse and buggy approach to automobile travel. In his defense, he probably never saw the right side of the trailer. But as he paused menacingly, mid-pass on our left side, he sure enough almost ended our journey right then and there by driving us off the road!

Still, we rolled into Circle, MT, with wits and spare intact. What's more, we found a gem of an auto repariman named Todd who left his warm home at 7:00 pm to pound loudly on stuff until it was all fixed. I wish I could relate more of the technical details of the repair for the benefit of you auto buffs out there. All that I truly understand is that a sledgehammer is a useful tool when you need to unflatten wheel rims, and that grease is a necessary requirement of all car repair. For both of these reasons, not to mention the fear of breaking my guitar nails, I will never be a car repairman. But suffice it to say that we limped into town with one functional wheel on the left, and hit the road an hour later with new (unbroken!) bolts, a gleaming new tire, and a new sense of what's really important.

In a job where traveling is part of the bargain, we consider ourselves extremely lucky to have avoided any major catastrophes (knock on wood!). Last week's trailer embroglio was one of the most dangerous to date. So if we may impart some wisdom, at the risk of ruining the fun of this space with a lame public service announcement, do make sure you have a spare with you at all times, even if you're not driving in rural Montana. And, if you are ever in Circle, MT, and need a miracle fix, don't call our friend Todd. He's still resting from our job.

Thanks again to you Todd, wherever you are. Your kindness and skillful work allowed us to get to our next gig in St. Cloud. And to all the folks who made our Montana tour the most enjoyable tour ever, a hearty Four Shadow THANK YOU!

lots of love,
Kevin and the boys
p.s. - thanks to the Krogstad's for the lovely care package. It is much appreciated and has already been put to use as a motivational tool in the studio.

greetings friends of fourshadow--

i am truly grateful to have the privilege to compose the second ever entry for 'notes from the road'. thanks to you all for taking the time to check out our site. we are thrilled to have just recently passed 10,000 hits.

montana is treating us quite well so far. joe's driving time has been kept to a minimum so travel has been relatively safe. and aside from one disgruntled audience member at a senior center gig (i'll tell you more about that later), we have been well received.

as of today, we've been gone from home 13 days and have performed 11 of them, sometimes two shows a day. it's been a great opportunity since we made yet another member change a mere 2 days before we left town. brilliant. so that gave us roughly 24 hours to pack, get an oil change, and work up 90 min. of material before our first show. somehow in there we found time to do a naca showcase and get karl a new cell phone. however, we can't by any means complain as the repetition has been extremely beneficial to our new and improved sound. i think after tomorrow we get a couple of days off to go trick or treating and such. we thought about going as the backstreet boys but probably won't as we've been accused of actually harmonizing in some parts of our songs. we wouldn't want to offend any diehards.

more about the sweet old lady at the senior center--we had just finished a grueling 30 min. set (off mics) and were visiting with some of the residents. kevin commits to one seemingly kind woman and as he leans in to hear what he thinks will be praise and adoration, he is met with quite the opposite. she says, and i quote, "couldn't you have done any better? that was awful. you ought to be ashamed of yourselves, draggin' me outta my room..........." poor kevin was a bit surprised, hurt and offended, but apologized none the less. can't win em all.

well, our sound is constantly improving. we debuted a record 4 original tunes in our first full night concert. it would have been 5 but kevin forgot the lyrics to his latest masterpiece entitled 'glasgow' in mid performance. that was loads of fun. kevin repeats the chorus 4 times as joe scrambles backstage to bring up the lyrics on the laptop. meanwhile, karl is preparing to tell the ever faithful panda joke as i stand there with a tamborine in my hand for no apparent reason. i sure can't play the stupid thing. we apologize to all who were present.

other than that and a few other minor explosions of suck, everything is going great. the crowds have been very supportive of our new originals and have given us tons of positive feedback overall.

special thanks to all who have come out to see us (and have given us free food) here in montana. we are indeed grateful to have the opportunity to sing for you.

on a completely serious note, we are grateful to the students at sidney h.s. for receiving us so well under such horrible circumstances. when we heard of your classmate's tragic death, we truly did not want to sing at all. however, since it was the only day we could be with you, we gave it our best and you were very kind to listen so well. god bless.

well, we're looking forward to the rest of our tour of the big sky country. if all goes as planned, we should be home around nov. 7 or 8 and back to work on our cd. i can't tell you how excited i am about all that is happening within the group. we have had a great deal of positive changes recently and more are on the way! stay tuned. we can't wait to bring the new sound to you!

take care.
jon

Like a bolt out of the great unknown comes the first installment of Notes From The Road! These are mucho exciting times for Four Shadow, and we want you, the fans, to be with us every step of the way! Read on.....

We've spent our time the past month or so touring HEAVILY across the upper midwest, and are prepping for our stinkin' LONG venture into the great wide open spaces of Montana. I can't wait to see what the van smells like in a few weeks! Wait....yes I can. We look forward to seeing all of you Montan-ites along the way. Mention this Notes page and get a complimentary rubdown from Kevin.

Thanks SOOOOO much to all of the people who came out and supported us at our shows the past few months. I am quickly making the transition to life in the group, and I couldn't have done it without ya! Thanks also to all the promoters that have made our behind the scenes experience so wonderful! You know who you are.

Well, signing off for now.....sorry...I know it's short, but check back often for more and perhaps longer installments from the hearts, minds, and literary geniuses of the men of Four Shadow. You know you want us.

-Joe
p.s. - Mr. Ventura says hi.