No Service for 106 Miles – Tour Diary Entry #1

No services for 106 miles.

These are the types of road signs I see while touring and traveling the Great Southwest. I love it. Space to breathe, time to think, miles to wander.

The Adobe Bar at the Taos Inn serves a mean Cowboy Buddha margarita. Operating on little sleep and a lot of travel lag, I needed a few to propel me through a 3 hour set, during which requests for Minnesota-themed anthems “Land of Lutefisk” and “Song to Kirby” bewildered me. Was this New Mexico or the Twilight Zone? Turns out the crowd was about 15% Minnesotan — and I indulged them as if this were a show at 7th St. Entry. Toward the end of Lutefisk, a jovial Taos Native raised his mug and sang along — further proof music is a universal language, as I’m damn sure this guy didn’t get my references to Pig’s Eye Beer, Josh Hartnett, or food on a stick. I reveled in the Minnesota love, so unexpected in northern New Mexico.

And then the lights went out. In the entire town. Pitch blackness. For a few hours, the only light I could see was the glorious night sky. Never in my life have I seen stars shine with such brilliance. The moon was missing, void of course, and the lights had just gone out in the only town in the area. I considered myself very lucky. Modern convenience fell by the wayside and though I had access to my phone, I felt no pull to incessantly “check in,” as the ancient stars told me a more fulfilling story than any social media or email ever can. It was a fleeting moment, but one I’ll never forget.

And then the storm came.

Rain. Thunder. Lightning. A tornado warning even interrupted my pop country radio binge near Cheyenne.

Alliance, Nebraska is a town you have to go out of your way to experience. It’s literally in the middle of nowhere. 1910 (the secret coffeehouse), located inside of a beautiful greenhouse, is one of my favorite places to play because of its novelty. It shouldn’t exist but it does. Once a proper music venue serving amazing fair trade coffee and streaming KEXP, it’s now a pop-up venue for, um, Luke Redfield. On this particular night, I was scheduled to perform outside, where the blossoms are in full bloom. The hard rain fell, however, and it fell as hard as the Bob Dylan song. It rained so hard that a few people left early, waving and saying “You’re really great but we’re scared of storms.” It rained so hard on the greenhouse roof that we moved the show into a quieter room for an acoustic unplugged show. Adorned in candlelight and greenery, I performed the song “Sand Hills” — which was inspired by the area’s desolate beauty — with thunderstorm as my only accompaniment. The song’s final lyric felt very appropriate, as in a dark room filled with just a few people, I sang: From Cherry County to the edge of the High Plains, I’m the darkness, I’m the ether, I’m the rain.

Onward now to the west coast.

~Luke Redfield

Photo Credit Dani Adelman