The Motion Sick: Friday 3/7/08 – Matt

We had to hightail it out of Jay’s place, since both he and Jason had to go to work so no shower today. We headed out and I realized early on that those chicken fingers and finger foods at the Pit were not good for my digestive system. I have been living like a squirrel for the past week, eating dried fruit, nuts, and bread so all that grease and saturated fat really put my stomach through the ringer. I still don’t think I’m totally right. Pat took the wheel and I resumed my usual co-pilot duties and was scanning the road signs in vain for some coffee, and honestly, there was really nothing to be found. This will make the day pretty terrible. I’ve only driven around the Midwest a few times, and honestly, it is such a culture shock for me. This mostly manifested itself in that there were absolutely NO coffee places. I would’ve drank Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, which I really despise but it would’ve served the need… (God knows it did heading to Indianapolis). Pat and I ended up trading spots driving and for a good hour or so everyone had pretty much passed out while I manned the Mussari Mobile. The weather took a pretty sharp turn for the worse and it was probably worse than even driving through West Virginia; I was wondering whether this was typical weather for this area.

When we arrived in Jackson; we were planning on visiting the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, which happened to be in downtown Jackson. Patrick got some directions from a nice lady in the convenience store we stopped in and we headed over in the Historic Downtown Jackson TN. We found the Hall of Fame and it had a pretty awesome painting of Carl Perkins and his band on the side of the building as well as some poodle-clad girls. We knocked on the door and nobody answered… We abandoned visiting the Hall of Fame and headed back to the van to regroup. We’ve been slightly dreading this gig; Mike and Sophia have talked it down, one of the groups bailed on the show and honestly, we weren’t sure what we were going to find. Because of this, we decided to get a hotel room for the night so we could drive part of the way to Springfield MO for the gig tomorrow and have some internets and clean reliable bathrooms for the morning. After securing a room we figured we’d drive around; hopefully there is something in Jackson that we could do. As it turns out; we found a Starbucks and knew that we could hangout there for a while and get some house keeping done as well as relax a bit. The snow outside is intensifying, and we keep hearing from the other patrons that this is really bad for Jackson.. This is fairly worrisome, since the baristas were mentioning how schools, churches, and a bunch of other businesses and whatnot were closed, hence why we were shut out from the Hall of Fame. Now, we’re wondering whether the gig will be canceled…. This day is starting to feel like we’re in “This is Spinal Tap”.