Chicago Part 2: Indiana!!!

I awoke the morning after the Chicago Show/Sound Check/Meet & Greet still in a good mood. I thought fondly of my Closer Cassette Single that Trent had signed, and all that as I lay in my nice fluffy bed, lit by the early morning sun. I turned over to find Jen playing with her phone and started giggled,

“What happened on Twitter now?” I say quietly - not loud enough for Lukas to hear…. Of course he was still asleep.

“Nothing,” she says with that guilty look we all get, “I’m looking to see if there’s tickets to Indiana left…”

Then I start laughing my ass off… (Still I don’t wake Lukas)


Now mind you, the night we got in we were joking – JOKING – about going to the Indy show – since it was only like 2 hours away. Sawyer was going, it was only two hours away… but fuck that, we laughed as we drove through the hotel parking garage – no way were we doing Indy…. No. Way.

36 hours later….

So….we got Lukas up. We debated it for a bit….


I’m sure I don’t have to explain in great detail the nature of the conversation, as the outcome should be fairly obvious… I mean really, as we kept saying that day, “It’s just not a tour with out that one random extra show.” We had to really, someone had to reach their 26th show by the end of the tour. That’s like, THE milestone.

We went to aLofts computer, checked Live Nation once again. Of course Jen magically pulls up tickets and all that – I quick change the reservation on the rental car, we packed our shit threw it in the trunk and that was it, we were off to se Nails in Indiana.

But first we had to stop off to buy CD’s at this cool record store. Honestly, there’s no point to a road trip if you don’t have good music, I don’t care if it’s to see Nails….


“Uh…Lukas, Jen, I don’t think we’re in Chicago anymore.”

WTF? We crossed the state line and instantly everything changed like it was a damn cartoon. For real - it felt like that episode of South Park when the cross into Nebraska and suddenly white snowfields become brown cornfields!




So this was to be a pretty record breaking show. It was going to be Jen’s 20th Lukas’s 30th and my 55th. Damn. Those are all some serious numbers to be hitting all on the same night.

This show was also a big milestone for me seeing as I hadn’t planned on doing Indiana, I hadn’t packed another Dress! So I decided to go with out dress AND with out make up! I was totally incognito!

Last time I did that was Fragility ahhh!


Abby swears she was at this gas station. That’s because all gas stations in the Midwest look the same. But who knows, we’ve all driven all over this damn country to see the band it’s quite possible she did stop here, so who’s to say in this insanity…


In another tribute to Abby, In Rainbows was playing – and Videotape ended just as we pulled into the parking lot and put the car in park. It was a total Abby moment.

I’m gonna go on record here and say once again how much I hate Videotape… don’t get me wrong, Reckoner and I are OK, and god knows I’m all about Faithless the Wonderboy and Anyone Can Play Guitar… but I’m just not OK with Videotape. I digress….

So we get there right, and seriously – scariest crowd Lukas has ever seen. Now me, I was more scared in Montana, but Lukas wanted to get the hell out. We all did. Some dude was preaching – for real preaching when we were walking in. Well, in his defense, where better to find the fallen then walking into a Nails show….


This is to prove I was at a Nails show with out one of my Nails Dresses or Makeup. As other Jen pointed out, I have worn pants at recent shows – but My Down In It super hero suit kinda doesn’t count – but she does raise a good point. Anyways. This is me at the Nails show incognito.






Smoke it out! They opened with Home. I knew Jen was hoping for a “Now I’m Nothing” open, really who doesn’t wish for such things… But I knew where ever she was she was digging Home just as much as I was.






Yay Zoom!


I was having so much fun, just hangnin back filming everything. It was the extra show, I wasn’t supposed to be there… So I finally got to film an entire show. And yes, every photo I took I took while my other hand was busy getting the whole thing on video.


The weather was insane!


During The Fragile, there was all this Lighting and Thunder. I loved the lightning so much, it reminded me of the lights the first time I saw that song live, but I digress…


It was pouring during The Downward Spiral. It fit the mood of the song perfectly…


All of a sudden I started to think it, I was looking at the clouds, they were just circling around in this eerie way….


I was thinking it – and just as I did, everyone around me started to say it-


Tornado.

Seriously, everyone was talking about it, how their friends were all texting them about all the Tornado Warnings in the area. Oh my God – Tornado, how I’d made her up on the plane

From my journal two days earlier while we waited for the plane to take off:





My drawing of Tornado from the two days earlier… drawn as we took off. She would show up in Indy….


Rob’s shot of the weather that night…

Oh my god, all those jokes about Tornado just two days earlier - we’d gone right into to Tornado Zone and I hadn’t even thought about it. But of course there had to be a damn near Tornado that night. Why wouldn’t there be. It was THIS tour anyway…


The show was great – the weather just made it that much more awesome – but the cool shit wasn’t quite over yet.


We all found each other in the parking lot after the show. The Car took a little longer to find as we wandered the dark expanse of the parking lot through rain and frequent flashes of violent lightning…


Thing is, Jen didn’t just get an extra show that night…. It’s hard to see – but believe me, you could hear it quite well over the thunder as we ran through the gravel lot…


See? Wait… lemme turn on the flash -


YAY!!! Tambourine!


Jen was so happy. We all were, Another Luna! Well… mine got named Luna, hers is named Ernie, ‘cuz hers is a boy.


It was such a nice car ride back to Chicago. I watched the video just the other day, we drive off into the lightning storm. We’re talking and laughing and really happy as Jane Says plays in the background. We all quiet down as the song nears the end. The camera focuses out the front window, lighting still flashes in the distance and all you hear is a little Tambourine lightly playing along as Jane Says fades out… it’s the sweetest thing….


We got up early the next morning to fly home. We knew our photo had been posted, and - having been in that airport at least twice before to see Nails… I knew they had Internet access – So I went to go look at the photo. I loved it. It was just like that scene at the end of The Beach when Leonardo DiCaprio’s character gets an e-mail of the group photo of everyone together and happy on the beach while he’s in the airport!


'Parallel Universe. Love, Françoise'.


… and on top of that we found a new way to torment Lukas when he falls asleep in random places in public!


Awwww. What a nice weekend!