Heartland Tour, Spring 2013
Ames, Iowa - March 29th
On March 29th, we set off from Viroqua with a van load of musical instruments, a suitcase of clothes each, and one cooler full of Driftless carrots, Wisconsin cheese and a gallon of maple sap. The sun was shining, it was even warm enough to bare our arms! Our most southerly destination was Wichita, Kansas and it felt exciting to be heading toward spring. We crossed the Mississippi River and traveled dry roads across Iowa, noticing several Pennsylvania Dutch-style barn paintings along the way.
Local hardware stores had replaced snowblowers with tractor equipment and riding lawnmowers in their parking lots, though there was still no sign of green, only brown, barren looking fields as far as the eye could see.
We arrived in Ames with enough time before my first performance to find the house of the folks who had offered us a place to stay for the night. They we’re not home yet so we dropped off our sleeping bags and took a walk around the neighborhood to stretch our legs and get one last ray of sunshine in our eyes. The venue for the night’s gig was an art center near campus called The Space for Ames. I liked the feel of the college town, plenty of diversity, clean and classy, an appreciation for the arts seemed evident. I had the sense that the school attracts more academics than athletes. Iowa State University even has a masters program in Wildlife Ecology!
The evening’s event was set up at somewhat short notice after I had met a man from Ames who had just been at the Midwest Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, WI, where I performed mid-February. We have a mutual friend who we both happened to visit at her Amish cabin in the Zephyr Valley near Winona, MN the night after the conference. Jeff put the word out to a few folks he knows in Ames and that’s how I came to be in contact with both Jay Parry and Jim Coppoc. At first, I kept mixing their names up - Jeff, Jim, Jay. They all work at the college. Jay was primarily responsible for scheduling the events at The Space for Ames and invited a local singer-songstress named Lindsay Nissen to play an opening set with her ukulele and lovely voice. She played all original songs, when she sang one called “Rock Collector,” I had chills like taking a leap into Lake Superior. I was wearing a stone around my neck that I had collected from that lake, she was singing about finding an agate there and about meeting other people who are also Rock Collectors. A woman after my own heart!
Next up would have been the debut of Jay’s new band Marrow however, Jay had broken is arm recently when a car pulled out in front of his bicycle. He’s the drummer, made a joke about practicing Def Leppard style, but chose to sit this one out. Just at the last minute, given the mood Lindsay had set, it seemed best that my set be next. We quickly set up the gear and when I flipped the switch, no sound came from my PA. We scrambled for a few minutes, trying different outlets, cords etc and finally decided to run through the house system which Jay had at the ready. I played primarily Renegade Spade and Wild Birds songs. One more act for the night, then packing up gear again - Indigo was a trooper!
We slept in a room with Yoda on the wall, Star Wars bedding, curtains and posters everywhere. May the Force be with you!
Awoke to birthday party preparations for Jen and Jim’s four-year-old son. Musicians both, they had performed with their band at an art opening the previous night as well. Jim is a published author, teacher, poet and playwright. LA Times call him a "Guerrilla Prose Pusher"! More about Jim Coppoc on his website. Jen McClung is also a musician as well as a teacher at Iowa State. We swapped books, CD’s and stories until 10am then Indigo and I we’re on our way to Des Moines for a lunchtime show at Ritual Cafe.
Des Moines, Iowa - March 30th
When I booked this performance, I hadn’t realized it was Easter weekend. Seemed early this year, still March! Across the street from the Ritual Cafe, the city was hosting it’s annual Egg Hunt. Someone was dressed in a big bunny suit and had a wireless mic so we could all hear his DJ voice while we unloaded the van. It was raining lightly, making the city’s umbrella art seem even more appropriate.
The rain stopped, several friends filled the room and I played for two hours. One family who had seen me perform in Kansas a few years ago packed their five kids in the van and drove for two hours to get there for the show! It was a birthday surprise for their 7 year old daughter, they hadn’t told any of the kids where they were going. Two of the girls even missed their roller derby practice for the show; made me feel like a rock star! Jill and Gloria Beebout were there with family visiting for Easter. After packing up the van again we did a quick walk through the sculpture garden then went to stay at Blue Gate Farm for the next three days.
Blue Gate Farm - Chariton, Iowa - March 30th to April 2nd
Jill Beebout and Sean Skeehan operate this organic vegetable farm and CSA. They sell their vegetables, honey, jam and free-range eggs all year long - thanks in part to the high tunnels (passive solar greenhouses) they installed well before the days of government subsidies for such projects. The tunnels allow crops to grow in an extended season due to heat and solar retention, providing a protected environment and buffer from wind and torrential rains as well as cold and snow. When we stepped inside the high tunnel it was 80 degrees while a chilly, 40 degree wind was blowing outside the door.
We arrived just in time to glean and fill three large plastic grocery bags with greens from one high tunnel before helping to dig up all the rest and feed it to the chickens. Early spring spinach is my favorite! It’s so sweet from wintering over and storing up sugars. The hens seemed just as starved for greens and raced happily to the fence where we tossed over at least six large buckets full. They’ve been relying mostly on grains until now and have been laying 120-130 eggs a day already! Indigo and I enjoyed a real Easter Egg hunt.
The house/cabin where we stayed has a lovely picture window overlooking a pond. We enjoyed bird watching and hearing stories from Gloria about the wild life experiences she’s had there. Recently there had been an otter visiting the pond. Gloria is an avid photographer and showed us some great pictures of the otter and many birds. We started listing the types of birds we were seeing, reading about them in field guides and Indigo was really inspired to take pictures as well.
Watching the pond, we spotted some ducks we were unfamiliar with. Even Gloria had to look them up - turns out they were buffleheads!
Migrating to their spring nesting site somewhere north, they had stopped for some food and a float on the open water and bird sanctuary of Blue Gate Farm. If you’ve ever taken a long journey around the Midwest, you’ll likely have noticed the vast expanses of corn and soy. Wildlife corridors have nearly vanished from the landscape and with the price of corn going up lately, farmers are even taking out hedge rows and planting row-to-row corn right up to the property lines. Everyone at Blue Gate places a high value on the importance of re-establishing critical habitat for wildlife, especially that which is native to the area. They go to great lengths to help diminish the populations of invasive species - both birds and plants. Girdling the black locust trees to keep them from taking over the forest puts nitrogen back into the soil and provides the farm with a good source of firewood for the cold months.
There are traps set for the European house sparrows as well and a variety of feeders and houses to support and attract all kinds of birds and beneficial insects. Being an organic farm, there are no pesticides being sprayed on tomato horn worms or colorado potato beetles, it’s all managed by hand - much to the chagrin of some Blue Gate interns!
Bees on the farm were just starting to wake up but there were no blossoms for them yet. At dinner one evening, Jill received a call from a neighboring goat farm. Every spring, Jill’s father Leo goes over with his skid steer to dig manure out of the winter pen. Win-win! Reichert’s Dairy Air has a super clean barn in time for spring milking and Blue Gate has rich, organic compost to continue nourishing the vegetables without having to raise the animals! Later in the season, Blue Gate provides Reichert’s with herbs, honey and edible flowers to use in their cheeses. One night, we indulged in some ice cream made by another local dairy, Picket Fence Creamery.
Jill has specialized in Performing Arts and is well versed in the arts of storytelling and sign language, I learned from her how to sign this quote from Thoreau that I like to drop at the end of my Naka Ima song, "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined". Jill always seems to find a way to highlight the most humorous details of a situation, a quality that must have helped them all weather the storms of the previous year. We had arrived just before the one year mark of a very tumultuous time for the family, thankfully, everyone is doing well! Including Grandpa! While we were there, Jill’s 94 year old grandfather was just moving in to a little cabin they built for him on the property. He dug the trench for the water line himself and he and his son Leo (Jill’s dad) had gotten to work right away planting his dream orchard: several native white peaches and apples from an old tree on what was once Grandpa’s farm next door.
Leo reminded us that it’s never too late to plant a tree!
Before leaving the farm, we hard boiled a dozen eggs to add to our bounty of greens. Indigo had also harvested a big handful of violas. She put a few in her mouth and exclaimed, “It’s like eating butterflies!” We now refer to them as such and made sure to garnish our eggs with butterflies, and sprinkle them on our salads for the rest of the week. I wonder if butterflies would taste like wintergreen the way violas do?
Lawrence, Kansas April 2nd
We left Blue Gate Farm and hightailed it across the rest of Iowa, Missouri and into Kansas to land at our next stop in Lawrence. We made three stops along the way. Once in Chariton for gas, once in Liberty, MO to use a loo, once in Lawrence for dinner. It seems that at one of these stops, Rump got off the bus and went on a journey without us.
Rump was born from the scrap pile in our little apartment in Viroqua only a month or so earlier. He was red, stuffed with lavender and some batting that was escaping from the quilt on my bed, a little osha root tucked in his mouth. He had a blue, sparkly, toe sock mohawk, blue gumball button eyes, polka dotted ears and snout. He was somewhat of a pib/bear and had a big rump, hence his name. He became our mascot and little friend to keep us company. We miss him. We noticed he was missing on Wednesday but with so much gear in the van, figured he was hiding in there somewhere.
While Rump was out wandering the Midwest, we enjoyed a couple of days exploring Lawrence and learned a bit of Civil War history. I knew that Lawrence was known as a college town but not why had it been the chosen site for a state university. Lawrence had been nearly destroyed by Quantrill and his Raiders in 1863. As a way to help revitalize the area, the state chose Lawrence as the site for a new college in 1866. "Since its founding, the University of Kansas has embodied the aspirations and determination of the abolitionists who settled on the curve of the Kaw River in August 1854. Their first goal was to ensure that the new Kansas Territory entered the union as a free state. Another was to establish a university."
We spent a few days in the part of town near the Haskell Indian Nations University which opened in 1884. Anyone with a minimum of 1/16th native ancestry can attend the University for free!
I tend to detour from a main route when I see public murals or sculptures, I appreciate public art, it adds so much to the vitality of a community.
Mass. St is the main drag through Lawrence. There you’ll find any number of eclectic restaurants, music venues, skate shops, clothing, galleries and sports memorabilia stores. I always look for places to eat that are locally owned and offer fresh food; Indigo has ice cream radar. I especially enjoyed a bakery called WheatField’s that has some beautiful, handmade ceramic mosaic work around all the windows and doors.
In addition to local food and art, we look for thrift stores and consignment shops where we can find funky duds that fit our budget and the money we spend supports a locally owned business (often some kind of social service program as well).
Given the interesting styles we saw walking down Mass. St, we thought we’d be likely to find some unique items. I have a new favorite hat!
As a write this, a week and a half later back in Wisconsin, ice and snow is smacking my window and it’s been wet and grey for a week solid, hovering around freezing.
Enjoying the colorful character of Lawrence even more!
Thursday evening I played an outdoor house concert for our hosts! We added our Blue Gate greens to the taco bar, enjoyed an evening fire, someone may have roasted a Peep.
Friday morning we packed up the van, still no sign of Rump, and made the trek to Wichita. We arrived at the Hampton unprepared for the construction zone at the front door: workers cutting floor tiles pierced my ears, dust was everywhere. By now I was a bit fried from being on the road for a week, doing all the driving, not resting particularly well in unfamiliar smells. I found my earplugs in my ukulele case and did all the unloading in the company of the voices in my head. They’ve become much kinder and more encouraging in my middle age - I hope my adolescent daughter can somehow avoid being seduced by the cultural messages imposed upon our youth that somehow manage to erode what self-esteem they may have started with! We chillaxed in the hotel room for the rest of the night, ate Blue Gate Salad with butterflies and hard boiled eggs, Driftless carrots and cheese.
Up at 6:30 am, joined several folks in the breakfast room and loaded up a bowl of berries to bring back to the room and add to some plain, organic yogurt I had picked up at the co-op in Lawrence. This was my big day, not going to start it off with GMO cereal or hydrogenated waffles with high fructose syrup. Thankful for the fresh berries. We packed up the van and drove to the museum area of Wichita, by the Arkansas River. The Botanical Gardens were beautiful even though most flowers were not yet blooming. White crab apple blossoms were bursting like popcorn trees around town. Daffodils, hyacinth and a few tulips greeted us at the garden.
It usually takes me about an hour to unload and set up for a show, this particular morning started out chilly, windy and grey. I kept adding layers to my costume. By the end of my first set, layers were being shed, the sun was out and the wind had subsided.
It usually takes me about an hour to unload and set up for a show, this particular morning started out chilly, windy and grey. I kept adding layers to my costume. By the end of my first set, layers were being shed, the sun was out and the wind had subsided.
We had two hours to explore before my next set. I especially enjoyed the musical maze in the kids area! There were sculptures by many different artists throughout the gardens , 54,000 tulips planted (I imagined what it would look like there in a couple of weeks), a beautifully designed contour of paths led us through many seemingly different gardens. Outside the main building, a group of kids were singing broadway musicals. An occasional balloon sailed up and away from a child’s hand.
I played a total of three, one-hour sets at Botanica and by the end of the last one, Indigo’s nose and cheeks were quite sunburned and I had the beginning of a nice farmer tan. We packed up all the gear, loaded the van and drove to a coffee shop also in the Riverside area for a two hour evening performance. I think if was nearly midnight by the time we arrived back at the hotel!
We arrived at the site of my Kansas City performance with a hour to spare. The venue had change on short notice, after I had already sent out posters and promotions. Not surprisingly, attendance was low but I played for two hours never-the-less. As soon as the music stopped, the rain came. Then gumball-sized hail, thunder and lightening!
I was appreciating having set up our tour schedule in such a way as to avoid any night time driving and feeling thankful that the roads were dry the whole way. The Heartland needs the rain, creeks and rivers we crossed were so low you could have crossed everyone of them on foot. Traveling across the Flint Hills, we imagined how rough and rugged it must have been not long ago in the days when people traveled in covered wagons pulled by mules. Not long ago, in the days of Quantrill’s Raiders when men and boys strapped themselves to their horses saddles and rode for days to kill each other by hand in the names of “Freedom”, “Power”, or “Revenge” and women and girls were punished for harboring their sons, brothers and fathers.
Somehow things seem so easy and convenient here in the Heartland now. Easy to forget that people and plants and animals are dying everyday because of our culturally unconscious consumption. I live in a town where I see people riding horse-drawn carts nearly everyday and the local businesses still have places for those folks to tie up the horses in the parking lot. I wonder, as Walmart trucks go blasting by us on the freeway, what’s it going to take to turn this tide? Not many people have what it takes to travel by horse these days, I certainly wouldn’t be a touring musician, I can say that for certain! I’m still on the lookout for a big diesel van that I can run on veggie oil. Since I carry around used charcoal water filters, empty chip bags, cardboard “rainsticks” and repurposed easter eggs along with all my acoustic instruments - I need a big covered wagon!
I hope that after being at my performances, people are purchasing less packaged products, more local food, even growing some of their own. I hope they are considering other uses for items they may have otherwise tossed in the trash. I hope they are finding more joy in each day, connecting with nature, appreciating what they have, and sharing with those less fortunate.
We are thankful to have a quiet, safe, warm home to return to. A place to slow down and rest - we are blessed to have had safe travels, lovely and welcoming audiences, good food and clean water, and enjoyable companionship.
Before we left Iowa, we got one last picture of spring
Next morning leaving Minneapolis....
It's been like this for a week now! C'mon Spring!!!!
