Wed, Sept. 1. Ames, IA. The Ames Progressive.

This was the first day of the tour! It turned cool right as we left. The Ames Progressive is a rented office space in Ames, IA, thirty minutes north of Des Moines. The place is run by Nate Logsdon and his girlfriend, Kate Kennedy. Nate and Kate have been good friends of ours for a long time. Nate’s band, Mumford’s, an energetic rock band backing up Nate’s intricate, dark and creepy songs (with a horn section!), just got back from their own US tour with Utopia Park, and we hosted the first date of their tour at Clawfoot House just a month before. Our show on Wednesday was with Kate’s band Pennyhawk. Kate’s such a great songwriter, also pretty quirky stuff, with simple arrangements for her new band on guitar, drums, trumpet, clarinet, keyboard and one large metal sheet. The new song she played last was a riot.













Kate Kennedy

One of my favorite Lincoln bands, Ron Wax, played this and the Iowa City show the next night with us. They’ll join us in St. Louis and Columbia as well. Ron Wax is Ron Albertson, who started the band Liars in Brooklyn and plays drums in Mercy Rule, and Lincoln artist “2-Finger” Dave Rabe on drums. It’s a minimal punk/swamp blues duo, but they always try to get the whole audience to join in somehow. Ron Wax played that Mumford’s/Utopia Park tour kickoff show at Clawfoot House on July 30. Ron played his song “Clawfoot” for the first time that night, and all 11 or so of the hyper Mumford’s and Utopia Park guys joined in the music until the punk rock house show was broiling. That Clawfoot House show was, as Ron would say, fucking rock and roll, and I wasn’t sure how we were going to follow it in Ames a month later. At the Ames show, at first, I wasn’t sure anyone was even going to stand up to hear the band; the audience was shyly nestled into the couches far back along the walls. But before I knew it, Dave was unzipping his roller suitcase full of percussion, tossing tambourines at people and rolling plastic egg shakers held together with electrical tape along the floor to rest at the audience’s feet. After a minute I was playing the old upright piano, someone was playing the organ, Gary joined on as a second drummer and my bassist Chris Bowling jumped in, too. The Mumford’s guys produced horns. After the music was in full swing, when I turned around from the piano bench to look, they were playing their horns and rolling on their backs on the floor like the croquet flamingos in Alice and Wonderland. I was playing the piano so hard that Chris’s keys, a pack of cigarettes and a few other items that someone had set on top of the piano would periodically fall down onto the piano in front of me. At the time, though, I just thought someone liked what I was playing and was throwing me gifts! I actually couldn’t hear a thing I was doing on the piano since I was right behind Dave, who plays two drums hard with a mallet in each hand, until his remaining fingers blister. And Ron who sings and plays guitar: that guy. You’ve just got to see Ron Wax.

Ron is also an amazing printmaker. He made the tour posters and the t shirt design, check it out.