Michael Timmins

About Michael Timmins

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Albuquerque skyline
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Tour Diary – Albuquerque, NM (June 20, 2010)

Albuquerque skyline

(Jason Lent has forsaken the island paradise of Hawaii to follow us around for a few months. I have happily placed the tour diary in his capable hands. It should bring a new perspective to our ramblings.)

I woke up in the backseat of the car in a truck stop somewhere in west Texas. I pointed the car down the asphalt artery cutting through the wasteland and set my sights on the horizon. The low standing shrubbery stretched to distant hills on both sides. Cutting north from I-10, the roads passed abandoned junctions where cinderblock shells and rusted metal trucks slept forever under an intense sun. At some of these junctions, a few well-kept homes would be visible off the road but there were no signs of life. Plans to spend the night in Roswell, NM were abandoned upon arrival. The sign at the bank put the temperature at 103 degrees but it actually felt much warmer. The GPS told me that Albuquerque was 200 more miles up the road. I decided to push on after a hilarious hour spent at the UFO Museum where most of the exhibits look like science projects done by 8th graders. I loved it. With the end of the tour in sight, I’ve been listening to ‘200 More Miles’ more and more. The spirit of the song has taken on new meaning as I push towards 12,000 miles of driving since the tour started in March. When it was written, the band was still driving themselves from show to show and I’m sure they spent some nights sleeping in the car like I did last night. It was their dream, their adventure. I know that feeling now. The venue tonight was a large, beautiful sounding theater. The audience was superb. A three-song encore wrapped an excellent night of music in a charming town.


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One World Theater
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Tour Diary – Austin, TX (June 18, 2010)

One World Theater

(Jason Lent has forsaken the island paradise of Hawaii to follow us around for a few months. I have happily placed the tour diary in his capable hands. It should bring a new perspective to our ramblings.)

With a day off between Houston and Dallas, I decided to check out Austin before the tour bus pulled in 48 hours later. The famous 6th street resembled most college downtowns with a ton of bars and clubs geared towards those drinking on a budget. There are tons of live music venues in Austin and the town must get rocking during the SXSW festival. It was not on this day so I carved out a spot by the bridge to watch the bats take to the sky at dusk. If you go to Austin, you have to see the bats. Well, the little buggers stood up me and 500 other tourists. It wasn’t until two nights later that a local told me the bats were not cooperating due to all the females being pregnant. Nestled between the mansions in the hills above the city, the theater looked like an upscale Mexican restaurant. Walking into the lobby, I thought I accidentally joined a wedding reception in progress with two twins doing country songs as a well-dressed crowd ate dinner. The band played upstairs in a small room that felt more cramped than intimate. It was a sweltering night in the audience and Margo made similar remarks about the temperature on stage. Just behind Mike’s amp, an artist set-up a canvas and painted along to the music. After each show, the paintings went up for auction. I thought about bidding on them as gifts for Cookie Bob and Crazy Ed but I didn’t think the $17 in my pocket would get very far. The band spread twenty-eight different songs across the two shows giving the fans that stayed for both shows a real treat. As soon as the show ended, I drained two bottles of Starbucks juice and pointed the car west.


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NPR Interview with Margo and Michael

While we were in Dallas last week, Margo and I had the good fortune to be interviewed by Scott Simon for Weekend Edition. It’s so refreshing to have a form in which thoughtful, detailed questions can be asked and answered. Support NPR whenever you can. You can’t afford to lose it.

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Tour Diary – Dallas, TX (June 17, 2010)

(Jason Lent has forsaken the island paradise of Hawaii to follow us around for a few months. I have happily placed the tour diary in his capable hands. It should bring a new perspective to our ramblings.)

Before I was born, two important moments in American history bookended the 1960’s. Earlier on tour, I laid in the grass on the grounds of the Woodstock Festival in Bethel, NY. Today, I stood on the grassy knoll and watched traffic pass over the white ‘x’ in the middle lane where the 35th president of the United States of America was gunned down. Without commenting on my Catholic school education, I will admit that Kevin Costner and Oliver Stone made me more aware of Kennedy than any high school history class.

The book depository looms over the plaza and a museum has encased a recreation of the sniper’s nest in glass for tourists to visit. There was an unpleasant tinge to the idea of looking out that window so I chose to stay under the shade of a tree as an unforgiving Texas sun baked the city. I read today that the Kennedy assassination marked the American people’s loss of faith in its own government. I wish I had been around before 1963 to see what the country was like and what it lost that day.

The show tonight was somewhere in the outskirts of Dallas. I made it to the Mexican restaurant next door to the theater in time to watch Mexico put two past the crumbling French. On stage, the band put in a long night’s work with 18 songs spread across two halves. After today’s experience in downtown Dallas, ‘I Just Want To See’ hit me hard early and the rest of the night never matched that intensity. The enthusiastic crowd cheered the band into “the hits” encore of Angel and Jane before rushing to the lobby to watch the final minutes of the Lakers/Celtics game.


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Tour Diary – Houston, TX (June 15, 2010)

The late night in the French Quarter pushed back the morning drive considerably. My first visit to Texas was met with traffic and lane closures astraffic inched into downtown Houston. The House of Blues sits in the heart of downtown in what felt like a newer shopping plaza still searching for tenants in a recession. It was my first visit to one of these venues and it was even more branded than I expected. The cool artwork on the walls loses some luster when you see it plastered on t-shirts and coffee mugs for sale. Above the stage, big screens showed commercials (novelty drum sticks on sale!) until the band took the stage and someone put the Lakers game on every TV. The upside of all the merchandising and $8 cans of beers is the high end P.A. hanging from the stage.

The punch of the vocals in the mix and the rich set list gave Margo license to let loose. There was a swagger to her performance tonight and she swayed her arms as if possessed by the music. On ‘Hunted’, Pete dropped the gas on the groove and the entire song came apart at the seams (in the best way) as Jeff wailed through an extended solo. Before anybody could catch their breath, ‘Lost My Driving Wheel’ built into a lonely lament with Pete’s kick drum beating quickly and lightly under the chorus like a nervous heart stranded somewhere in Texas.

In the morning, I weaved through a neighborhood and found a house made of beer cans tucked between newer town homes. Local artist Coley gave me the insider’s tour of the property. In 1968, an unassuming upholsterer spent his retired days inlaying marble, wood, and metal into a concrete landscape. Once the yard was complete, he began siding the house in beer cans, about 50,000 of them when it was all done. His wife and him lived out there remaining years happily in the beer can house. Just another five room love story.

World Cup Fever has infected the tour and I pulled over in La Grange, TX to catch the second half of the Uruguay game and grab a bite. I found a tiny Mexican restaurant where the cooks were huddled around a Spanish broadcast of the game in an unused dining room. I joined the festivities and ate the best Mexican meal of my life for $5.95. The language barrier notwithstanding, we all seemed to agree the red card on the South African goalie was a bit much. La vida es muy buena.


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Cafe du Monde
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Tour Diary – New Orleans, LA (June 14, 2010)

Cafe du Monde

(Jason Lent has forsaken the island paradise of Hawaii to follow us around for a few months. I have happily placed the tour diary in his capable hands. It should bring a new perspective to our ramblings.)

Headed straight for the French Quarter as I rolled into New Orleans. It was crawfish etouffee for lunch followed by beignets and café au lait at the legendary Café du Monde. The not always pleasant smell in the streets, the aging, colorful buildings and the sagging balconies give New Orleans a personality all its own. There is no shortage of voodoo shops and graveyards in this old pirate town.

Tonight’s show was held at a juke joint that first opened in 1977. Not much had changed inside since then. Tipitina’s was named one of the top 40 music venues in the United States by Paste Magazine. Longevity is sometimes mistaken for importance. The skies opened during soundcheck and then as the rain moved on, a rainbow came down on the roof of the club. In a town steeped in superstitions, I took it as a good sign for the night ahead.

The show was loud, aggressive at the right times, and subdued when the music demanded space to breathe. The musical crayons sometimes strayed outside the lines but it only added to the unique evening. The acoustic set wrapped with ‘River Waltz’ and the acoustic guitar went directly into the intro to ‘Bea’s Song’ and a new arrangement of the trilogy was born with Al and Pete remaining still until the solo. When they came in, the undercurrent of the song began to quicken and built into a tense ‘Dragging Hooks’.

A late night excursion to Bourbon Street provided some well earned R&R for the band’s might  crew of two. Generous pours or rum fueled the exploration of a quiet Monday in the French Quarter. There were more beignets and coffee at Café du Monde as the clock pushed past 2am and Bourbon Street began to dwindle down to only bad decisions waiting to happen.  It was time to go home.


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the Mississippi
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Tour Diary – Baton Rouge, LA (June 13, 2010)

the Mississippi

(Jason Lent has forsaken the island paradise of Hawaii to follow us around for a few months. I have happily placed the tour diary in his capable hands. It should bring a new perspective to our ramblings.)

A straight shot south with little traffic brought me into Cajun country. The venue was in the heart of downtown Baton Rogue but that heart wasn’t beating on a hot Sunday afternoon. Very few places were open and even less people were out on the streets. A few miles away, the college campus promised restaurants and record stores but in this heat, a few miles sounded like forever. Behind the venue, a path followed the top of the levee and gave a peaceful vantage of the slowly passing water.

The Manship Theater is housed in a larger arts complex. The curved room extended only eleven rows deep with two single row balconies stacked to the ceiling.  Intimate with immaculate sound, it promised a solid night of music. Across the street, the old capitol building stood majestically on a tiny hill. Tucked in a corner of the second floor, I stumbled across the Louisiana Basketball Hall of Fame. It barely filled the small room. Downstairs, an extensive exhibit provided two different perspectives on the work of The Kingfish, Huey Long. The controversial governor and senator fueled his public works and policies to share wealth (good) through corruption (bad) and possibly kidnappings. As I walked back into a wall of thick morning humidity, I realized that I’d probably have voted for him.

After settling in with ‘Misguided Angel’, the show kept gaining momentum and turned into a fantastic set. The room captured every movement of the band. The sound of a guitar pick scraping steel strings on ‘Sir Francis Bacon’ and the murmur of the insect loop on ‘Cicadas’ became voices of their own. Without the pedal steel from the last tour, ‘Cicadas’ sounded more sparse and haunting. It moved into ‘Good Friday’ and ‘Driving Wheel’ to close out a stellar performance by the band. As I walked to the car, I accidentally crossed the water exhibit outside the arts complex and a powerful stream of water shot up my shorts. It was a welcome and refreshing end to an excellent day on a very hot road.


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Amazon release special

We are very pleased to announce that Amazon has made Renmin Park its MP3 Daily Deal which means that the album will be available  today only, (Monday, June 14th), as a download for only $3.99. The album will be officially released tomorrow (June 15th) and will be available at all your favourite retail outlets (we kind of hope that we are one of your favourite retail outlets).

bandshell

Tour Diary – Memphis, TN (June 12, 2010)

bandshell

(Jason Lent has forsaken the island paradise of Hawaii to follow us around for a few months. I have happily placed the tour diary in his capable hands. It should bring a new perspective to our ramblings.)

Chicago to Memphis is a haul so I left a day early. A night in Memphis sounded like potential fun. Then I glanced at a map and decided to keep the car running and make for the crossroads in Clarksdale, MS. The trip odometer hit 666 miles about ten minutes short of town on an empty stretch of highway with delta fields stretching to the horizon. Falling quickly towards that horizon was the blood-drenched host described in the writing of Flannery O’Connor. I had never seen a sun like this one but stopping for a picture would mean being out at the crossroads alone after dark. I pushed forward.

Clarksdale is a hard town with more vacant buildings and crumbling brick than most. The breeze only amplified the effects of the scorching heat that clung to everything and everyone. I sauntered into the first juke joint I found and Kent Burnside, grandson to the legendary R.L. Burnside, was holding court. It was the delta blues, country to its core with a fiddle player keeping up with the guitars. The beer was Bud Light and it tasted grand.

The modest Riverside Hotel served as a black hospital until after World War II. Bessie Smith was rushed here after a car accident on a way to a show in the delta and died in one of the rooms. After the war, it became a hotel that was popular with blues acts working the delta. Sonny Boy, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Ike Turner (he recorded the “Rocket 88” demo here), and many others have slept in the rooms. These days, “Rat” looks after the hotel his mother started and serves as much as curator as manager. The furniture, and even what people have left in the dressers, tells the story of the blues better than any documentary. I sat on Rat’s couch and listened to his stories. I slept in John Lee Hooker’s old room. In the morning, I walked over to the defunct train station and visited the Delta Blues Museum.

Coming out of Clarksdale and riding Highway 61 into Memphis, I made the requisite visit to Beale Street. The temperature was lapping at triple digits and the garbage in the alleys was cooking. The stench was overpowering but the only refuge was cheap gift shops and theme bars. Any music history that once existed here has long been replaced by a Disney style re-creation. Thirty minutes was too much.

Opening tonight’s free outdoor show was the children’s act The Boogers. Billed as the anti-Barney, they sang children friendly lyrics over Ramones songs. An interesting idea and they played it well. The sloping lawn remained full of families and the crowd probably eclipsed 4,000 by show time. The band kept the children engaged with “Hunted” as the lively little tykes down front tossed balloons about. It was a casual night on the lawn and the band kept it straightforward. Once the temperature slipped below 90 degrees, it became an almost pleasant evening in Memphis.


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