Gallivanters

I notice a lot of blogs on Tumblr feature mostly vintage or retro vans. Our 2005 Chevy, however, is relatively newer and decidedly less romantic. Not that I have anything against retro vans and all the awesome conversions that people do to their interior. We just went for the sleeker van for one main reason: It doesn’t look like a typical van that musicians are traveling and living in. In other words it doesn’t say “Hey, come steal all my shit”. We’ve heard too many horror stories. We don’t adorn the outside or the dashboard with any kind personalization. We want it to look sterile for reason.

We personally like the bad-assery that the midnight blue and dark tinted windows convey, almost as if the van you’re looking at is some kind of government van on a creepy stake-out mission.

A few nights ago at The Shed in Ocean Springs

Found ourselves back at Perdido Key at the home of our friend Pat Pulaski. He’s someone who we’ve met through music. He was gracious enough to let us use his beautiful home on the water. Nikki sailed one of his small sail boats that he had built. It’s so beautiful at night there that we tried to get a few night shots.

Frog Pond

Woke up in a Walmart parking lot in Marianna, Florida yesterday and moved on to Silverhill, Alabama for the gig at Blue Moon Farms. It’s basically someone’s backyard, yet they’ve built a beautiful stage and have live music on the weekends. This particular gig fell on a Sunday and it’s typically in a songwriter-in-the-round type of format. Molly Thomas, Nick Branch, and Grayson Capps were the other performers.

meganjeanandthekfb:

Last night while watching the presidential debates, I was struck, like many of you, by Mitt Romney’s plan to decrease our National Deficit by cutting funding to PBS (which takes up roughly 0.012% of annual spending). I couldn’t believe how flippant Mr. Romney was in his dismissal of a national…

New @nikkitalley live cd’s now available! (Taken with Instagram). We hand pressed the covers ourselves. DIY baby!

polerstuff:

Our friends at Korduroy have a great video on how to live in your van featuring our bud Foster Huntington. Check it out and get your #vanlife on! #campvibes

(via outofreception)

DIY CD Covers

About a month ago we recorded one of the live shows we did here in Asheville. We liked the quality enough that we decided to put it out there for sale; however, time and money dictates a slightly more scaled down version of the packaging, which can easily run upwards of a thousand dollars. After a little research, we settled on a very cheap and enviro-friendly DIY packaging scheme.

One pack of recycled sleeves, a stamp making kit, a wood carving block, a day to stamp 100 covers and we’re in business! All for a FRACTION of the traditional packaging costs….and they look cooler.

Working on DIY covers for the live cd #music #livemusic #diy (Taken with Instagram)

Getting electricity to the van.

Showers

Every now and then there a few multi-day stretches where getting a shower gets a little difficult. To us it seems silly to pay for a hotel just to get a shower (unless it’s 100 degrees outside). We figured out a way to at least wash our hair while moving down the road. We bought a small tub from Wal Mart to catch that water that we pour over our heads. We use Dr. Bronner’s liguid peppermint soap for some extra tingle and about a half gallon of water, and that’s all you really need! Then just stealthily dump the water out at the next stop. Fun fun!

Hot, Hot, Hot

Been hitting it hard the last 6 weeks or so and are just now starting to feel the effects of the summer heat in our midnight blue van. When we bought the van back in December of 2011, the air conditioning didn’t work. We held out as long as possible and, knowing we were going to be foraying back into south Georgia in the middle July, we finally came off of the wallet and fixed the A/C. $250 and 3 pounds of freon later, we were in business. This obviously only works when the engine is on so sleeping in Walmart parking lots and state parks is still fairly uncomfortable, especially in the morning when the sun starts to come up. 

At night we’ve taken to using a a power converter hooked up to a deep-cell marine battery to power a small fan. Just to get a little air moving around in the van makes a difference. 

We’ve taken to staying in hotel rooms a bit more. We ain’t millionaires so we obviously can’t do it every night on the road, but until we can come up with a better solution we’ll chalk it up to a new expense in the middle of summer while we’re in the deep South.

Cheers from our cold hotel room.

Doing laundry at a campground and realizing what a strange life we lead.

Got a little time off. Been doing some writing, booking and chilling! #banjo #mountains #music (Taken with Instagram)

Demolition

We’ve had some downtime over the last week or so and have just been chilling on the mountain while trying to avoid the intense heat. We just came off some great gigs at the end of June in West Virginia and Tennessee. We were scheduled to close out Knoxville Pride Fest after Taylor Dayne (of all people), but ended up not playing thanks to late schedules and city noise ordinances. Everyone was apologetic and at the end of it all we were still handed a check. We’ve got the rest of the week before getting back out there.

In the meantime, we’re doing some demolition on the old shack that we used live in. Nikki and her mom built it about 15 year ago and was the first footprint for the Talley family on Gordon Mountain.