In November, I toured with my longtime friend and collaborator, Al Lover. This tour was fun, but it was absolutely brutal on our wallets. The first nine shows featured either zero audience or zero dollars. We even had trouble finding floors to crash on.., We each shelled out obscene amounts of money just keep the van rolling and to sleep indoors. Neither of us had ever ate it so hard on a coast-to-coast tour. I had seen my share of financial failure on tour, but frankly I thought I was past this level of struggle
It was largely my fault. I had been touring overly hard in the previous year. I overplayed all my go-to cities, and we ended up playing many places where neither of us had any footing at all. (Cincinati, Columbus, Missoula, etc.) I thought it would be a good experiment to branch out and cover new ground, but the experiment failed in a serious way. I considered putting an end to all DIY touring after this one.