Tour Diary – Atlanta, GA (March 8, 2013)

Today was a good day. We felt the sun on our skin for the first time in a few months, while we wandered around Little Five Points with all our hippie, rasta, punk and goth friends. A perfect day to display ones new tattoo or piercing or, for the less flamboyant, a perfect day to just absorb some vitamin D.

Little Five Points and the Variety Playhouse has become our home in Atlanta over the past few years. The theater is in need of a good cleaning and a little TLC, but for some reason we have always had good shows here. This city has always been good to us. In the early days, when we were traveling around these parts in a van, we often found ourselves stranded in Atlanta while we waited for the next gig. We were always welcomed in strangers’ homes and shown nothing but good ole Southern hospitality. We saw Townes Van Zandt for the first time in Atlanta at a small folk club. It was my birthday and he was doing two shows, so we paid to get in to the first one and somehow made ourselves inconspicuous so that we could catch the second show for free. A few years later we were traveling around the country in a bus with Townes along for the ride. So we like it here, there is a reason that Atlanta gets a call-out in the first line of 200 More Miles.

Tonight was a “Trinity” show, our third one on this run, and I think we finally figured out how to approach the material: with a quiet intensity. We had a great night and the audience, as usual in this town, was fantastic.