2013 Day 6 – Spearfish Canyon, Glencoe Camp Resort w/ Candlebox

Tonight’s show is a later one, so we had a chance to finally take the motorcycles out for a ride!

We rode through Spearfish Canyon, which snakes through the Black Hills National Forest, through the little towns Deadwood and Lead, and dumps you off onto I-90. It was a nice 45-mile ride and the weather was perfect!

Then we headed into Sturgis for the first time this trip, where Glencoe Camp Resort is located. It took us 45 minutes to get through 4 stoplights, but it was okay because there was plenty to look at!

Since traffic was slow-moving, Sean took over the toter wheel and Nick hopped out to shop at the rally 🙂

This doesn’t do justice to the number of bikes parked at the rally.

The legendary Full Throttle. At night it’s beautifully lit and looks like a Chuck E. Cheese for bikers.

We arrived at Glencoe and picked up our credentials. Classy pic, huh? Who knew the secret to clean laundry is PBR?

Our backstage credentials for the Glencoe concerts

We met Candlebox and some guys from a band called Gilby Clarke, who are out of L.A. We also met some very nice girls who happened to be strippers. As a matter of fact, Glencoe was full of cool people! We befriended the Flaunt girls, a traveling group that is part burlesque, part cirque, and a lot of fun. They’re best known for being featured on the Full Throttle Saloon show. We had a great view while we performed:

Photo credit: Flaunt’s FB page. One of their lovely ladies doing her thang during our set!

Jeff’s view of our crowd

We ended up playing a 90 minute set with no break. We put out a lot of energy and had a really good time, although Nick’s in-ear monitors were eaten by his mane.

True sign of a good show

Sunday night there will be much more documentation of our Glencoe adventures, because we’ll be performing with Warrant and Quiet Riot! Oh, and the Flaunt girls again, too. 🙂

2013 Day 5 – Spearfish Downtown Friday Nights w/ HOT 93.1 FM

Last night, courtesy of Summer Nights, we got to stay at our favorite place in Rapid City – The Big Sky Lodge, the hotel with the best lookout in town:

View of downtown Rapid City from Big Sky Lodge

We woke up bright and early for our visit to HOT 93.1 FM, the station that’s been spinning “Hoka Hey” for the past couple months. We hung out with the Day & Knight Morning Show (JayDay and Beth Knight) and played “Hoka Hey” acoustic on the air.  Everyone we met at this station was so nice and supportive!

HOT 93.1 FM sponsors the weekly Spearfish concert series, Downtown Friday Nights. They organized a meet & greet with us – a rooftop BBQ with select listeners before our Downtown Friday Nights performance! We were thrilled to find out that Pizza Ranch was the provider of the BBQ food. Granted, since it was a BBQ, there was not pizza – we had chicken, salad, and other picnic-y things. But they did include a few of Pizza Ranch’s famous dessert pizzas for us. 🙂

HOT 93.1 Rooftop BBQ!

The weather looked a little sketchy before the concert… we saw some lightning near the mountains… but the concert remained dry. The best part? When we played “Hoka Hey,” the clouds opened up and the sun came out!

Plans for the weekend: STURGIS! We’re playing at Glencoe Campground on Saturday with Candlebox, and Sunday with Quiet Riot and Warrant. Get ready to party!

2013 Day 4 – Rapid City Summer Nights

This is our second time playing for Rapid City Summer Nights. It’s a weekly festival where they block off the street, and people can come out for a free concert, buy food and beer, and enjoy downtown Rapid City every Thursday during the summer.

We were honored to perform this particular week for two reasons. 1) Summer Nights acknowledged the men and women of the armed forces, and 2) the Budweiser Clydesdale Horses made an appearance with a short parade through downtown!

Budweiser Clydesdale horses! These guys are massive. Photo courtesy of Mike Crook.

Throughout the night, our audience was about 13,000 people!

Our view from the stage at Rapid City Summer Nights!

After the concert, we joined the event staff at a local joint, Thirsty’s, for dinner and drinks. Thanks again, Summer Nights, for inviting us back to perform! Can’t wait til next year. 😉

Friday’s plan: visit HOT 93.1 FM’s morning show, Day and Knight, and perform for Spearfish Downtown Friday Nights!

2013 Day 3 – Westbound!

Today we’re driving 700 miles, and we’re not stopping until we’re in Spearfish, SD! Well, okay. That’s a lie. We’re traveling with a crew of 9 people total and we like to drink coffee. We’ll probably have to stop once or twice. 🙂

We got a little bored and had to keep ourselves entertained:

Our adventures in Green Bay were great, and everyone is excited for what lies ahead this week! Our Spearfish hosts from last year, Scott and Mary Temple, were generous enough (crazy enough?) to invite us to stay at their house again this year. They, along with their sons Max and Luke, are also musicians.

We rolled into Spearfish a little before 8:30 PM, Mountain Time. We got the bikes out of the bike trailer (had to make sure they were safe!), grilled up some burgers for a late dinner, and hit the hay.

Thursday’s plans: ride, and perform at Rapid City Summer Nights!

2013 Day 2 – 101 WIXX BBQ

Today was supposed to be a lazy day, but we ended up running a few errands. After a complimentary waffle breakfast at our hotel, we found the nearest Freightliner dealer because our trusty toter blew a fuse. Blown fuse = cigarette lighters and running lights didn’t work, which makes both using the GPS and traveling in the dark difficult tasks!

While the toter was at the toter doctor, we grabbed lunch with some of our first Green Bay friends, Cheryl and Amy, who are choir teachers at the Neenah school district!

After the toter was repaired, we killed an hour or so at a De Pere, WI Starbucks by updating this blog and getting our video equipment charged for the show of the evening.

What, you ask, IS the show of the evening?

Well… 101 WIXX, the first Top 40 radio station to play “Hoka Hey”, offered up a contest for their listeners. The winner receives a Backyard BBQ Bash with WIXX, complete with food, adult beverages, and a band… guess who. 🙂

Of course, the BBQ was awesome! The hosts, Brian and Tammy, had the perfect backyard for a BBQ bash with WIXX and TOV. Unfortunately, Tammy was the one who had entered and won the contest, and she was in Louisville, KY on a business trip. Brian set up an iPad so she could be as present as possible for the party. Here she is, getting to know Sean a little. But, as we all know, “We can’t t-t-touch through a touch screen.”

We ran around with acoustic instruments, serenading the partygoers. During “Spanish”, the ladies couldn’t help but start a conga line, and we couldn’t help but join in.

After we finished partying and playing some music, we decided to cut down on Wednesday’s 14 hours of driving to Spearfish, SD by getting a head start. So we hit the road for awhile and then stopped in Sparta, WI for a few hours of shut-eye.

Wednesday’s plan – head West on I-90 until we run into our destination! Toterin’, what’s your price for flight?

2013 Bikes, Babes, and Bison Tour, Part II – Day 1

This year’s tour with the White Lightning Motorcycle Club and crew is a little different from the last two years. While we still shoved all the motorcycles into a trailer so we can tear up the Black Hills, the bulk of this trip will be playing some killer shows!

The layout of the tour will be this: Green Bay, WI for two days (two shows), a 14-hour driving day out to Spearfish, SD, and then 8 shows in various locations of the beautiful Black Hills.

Meet the crew of the 2013 Bikes, Babes, & Bison Part II tour:

Scott Bennett – Master of Sound and Tearin’ Down, also lead napper

Noah “Savage” Snyder – Scott’s Gilligan, video extraordinaire, Kindle Slinger, and little bro that we pick on

Tennille “Teniquah” Bryant, – Master of the Grand Tetons, Merch Queen/Booth Babe, surrogate “mom” who makes sure we sleep sometimes

Katrina “Roadie Princess” Lothamer – Intern of all things, road crew, lead vocals for the road crew supergroup

Day 1 began with a nice early departure from the Band Cave in Belmont, MI. First stop was Biggby for a massive box of coffee to share. From there, we trekked all the way from our hometown to just south of Milwaukee, WI before even stopping for a bathroom break. Today’s goal was to find the Green Bay Best Buy and give ourselves plenty of time to set up our gear and caffein-ate ourselves before our meet & greet. 🙂

So we hung out with some cool people, played an acoustic set, and ended the evening at Titletown Brewing Company. Otis Day, the program director from 101 WIXX, introduced us to the legendary peanut butter bacon burger last time we visited GB, so many band and crew members were excited for another one. Some of us (ahem, Lisa) were more interested in trying one of every beer on tap.

Then, we went to the hotel and threw T.V.s out the window. Just kidding. Or are we?

Day 2 will be our last day of fun in Green Bay, yah!

Day 7: Spearfish Canyon and the Sturgis Rally

Since we spent a few nights in Spearfish, SD, it was a must for us to ride through the Spearfish Canyon, which was just a couple miles away from our host’s house. It was a beautiful ride – waterfalls, huge rocks, and lots of curvy roads winding through the steep canyon walls.

Halfway through the canyon, we stopped for lunch at a nearby lodge, where the special was buffalo stew!

It was another overcast day, and a few rainclouds threatened throughout the afternoon, but we made it into Sturgis without getting soaked.

Sturgis, again, lives up to its hype. (All the real wild stuff that you see on the History Channel happens at the Buffalo Chip Campground, though – not at the rally during the day. Maybe next year we’ll be lucky enough to witness that!)

Tons and tons of vendors – biker apparel and jewelry, food, crazy custom bikes, bike parts, bike accessories. Lots of leather, tattoos, and scantily clad biker chicks.

As we wandered around, spent money, and made new friends, the storm o’ the century rushed in and soaked everyone, sending bikers either running for cover or hitting the road. Since we had a show to play back in Spearfish, we decided to brave the hail and wind and hit the road too. (See the Day 7 video update on our Facebook page for the aftermath!)

We made it back to Spearfish safely and were greeted by our surrogate moms (Mary and Sandy), who had a delicious home-cooked meal ready to go for us! We were whipped from riding through the rain, but were recharged by the food. We finished eating at 8:45 P.M. and had to play a show at 9:30, so we booked it to The Back Porch and set up in record time. A bunch of new fans from the previous South Dakota shows were waiting for us and ready to rock. It was another killer show – a lot of the local Black Hills college girls came out for the show, and we nicknamed them “Hill Kitties”. (Not to be confused with the mountain lions that occasionally meander into town and eat people’s pet cats.)

We loved playing shows in South Dakota and can’t wait to come back next year, but now we’re excited to leave the gear packed up for the next couple days so we can ride through some of our favorite spots in the Black Hills – Needles Highway, Iron Mountain Road, and maybe the Custer/Keystone area to see Crazy Horse and Mt. Rushmore. Let’s hope there’s no more rain!

On this trip, we have yet to sample some Rocky Mountain Oysters, but it’s in the plans. 🙂

Day 6: Spearfish Downtown Friday Nights

This show was very similar to yesterday’s in Rapid City. Spearfish is a smaller town, but we actually saw more bikers at this show (probably because Spearfish is only about 25 miles from Sturgis) and it was still a huge crowd. It was an overcast day with a breeze, so it was the perfect day to play outside. We played 2 sets again and got to meet tons of people. The festival volunteers and staff were all wonderful, and like the Summer Nights festival, we just might get to come back next year to play again… 🙂

As soon as we finished chatting with new fans and selling CDs, we started tearing down our gear. It promptly started sprinkling rain, and then pouring. TOV members, our crew, and festival volunteers were sprinting through the rain, soaking wet, to get the gear safely to the trailer and out of the rain. What a riot!

We returned to our host’s house and made fajitas for dinner at 10 P.M. Tomorrow’s plan: to finally visit the Sturgis rally!

Again – pics coming a little later!

Day 5: Rapid City Summer Nights

This is a big concert. Summer Nights is a weekly summer concert series, and while we saw lots of bikers who were in town for the Sturgis rally, the festival is widely attended by locals. It’s free and everyone is welcome, and it was awesome!

At about 3 in the afternoon, the festival volunteers manage to shut down a couple streets, get the beer and food vendors loaded in, and set up the stage, sound, and lights within about a half hour. Then we got to load in and sound check, and the show started at 5:30 P.M. The stage was set up on a corner on an angle, so we faced down two streets while we played, and shortly after we started, both streets filled up with people.We played 2 sets and sold a crazy amount of merchandise after each set!

We love Rapid City – it was so much fun, and we heard rumors that we may get to come back next year!

After the show, we went to a local bar called Thirsty’s for burgers, burritos, and beer, where we also hung out with the event staff from the festival. We were excited to see that they had Fat Tire on draft, a Colorado microbrew we love.

Between motorcycle commutes and playing shows, it’s a little difficult for us to gather our photos, so we will be sure to add some a little later.

Day 4: Rapid City and Spearfish, SD

The best way to sum up today is with a few photos.

The day included a radio interview on Rapid City’s rock station 95.1 KSKY with Randy’s morning show:

A trip to Haggerty’s Music store, where some mysterious force persuaded us to buy a whole bunch of new gear (totally necessary gear, of course):

And last but not least, a show at a local Spearfish called The Back Porch!

We’d like to thank our new friends Scott and Mary Temple for letting us stay at their house and for making us breakfast!