The Whiskey Daredevils just returned from a road trip in Europe. Frontman Greg Miller fills us in on what happened.
The family that put us up is unbelievably nice. The mother is a skinny blonde that dotes on her husband. He is a full bodied, bearded man that has just suffered from a botched operation that has left him without the use of his left eye. In the States we would sue everybody like crazy (and win) from the sounds of this debacle. That doesn’t seem to be an option here, and he regards the loss of his eye with a “whatta ya gonna do about it?” shrug. We had been there just a few moments last night when he arrived, dusty from working on a house with his brother. He walked into his house to find three strangers, and sat down not really even looking at us. It wasn’t like he was pissed or anything. It’s just that he didn’t seem to think it was odd that two Cowboys and a German were sitting on his couch at Midnight. I offered him a beer with a gesture (he didn’t speak English), he shrugged “yes”, and we drank silently with each other.
With that solid relationship, we woke up in the morning to join the entire extended family for a Mother’s Day breakfast al fresco. The daylight revealed that their house was more like a “complex”. Bicycles were being modified by the youngest brother in the back lot in various stages of completion. An empty shed had been converted into a recording studio by our host, drummer of the band “The Horny Horses”. A 33-year-old van of undetermined origin sputters to life in a cloud of blue grey smoke. The wife, daughters, and sons all fill in each others sentences as they tell us the story of how they drove this rickety old truck to Tunisia just to get spare parts. “The good news is no one bothers us or tries to rob the van, because they think we are gypsies!” they gleefully tell us.
They are a fun eccentric family like a slightly tamer version of Augusten Burroughs’s family in his book “Running with Scissors”. Everyone is smiling, and they exude a great creative energy. You can tell there is always something happening over at there at the house. I would also assume they probably drive some of their neighbors crazy with the unpredictable goings on. For example, if they had told me that their father was building a rocket ship out of scrap metal, and asked me if I would like to go on his planned trip to Pluto, I would not have been shocked.
We eat outside at a large table, enjoying fresh pastries and cheeses. We shower, and help take the table back inside to the dining room before bidding our goodbyes. We drive away trying to find Gary and Michelle’s hotel, and realize about 30 minutes later Ken and I left our bags at the house. Oh yeah. We don’t know how to get to the house. Or what the name of the town is for sure.
