Fling leftover cranberries at the chicken wire Fence in front of The Getaway Drivers!

OK, maybe not. We don't have chicken wire fence, and you've probably already thrown out your cranberry sauce. Nonetheless, you should heed this last call for some Tuesday night Happy Hour mirth at High Noon Saloon: we shall most certainly enjoy your company and we promise to play BOTH kinds of music.

So come join us after you shake off another Tuesday for some good music and good fun tomorrow night, after work, or after whatever it is you're doing during the day. As we mentioned last time, the High Noon crew will be serving up two for one rail drinks and special taps. If you're hungry, there's pizza at the bar and great food next door at the Brass Ring!

6:30- $5 cover - see you there!

The Getaway Drivers

Moline, IL - Oct 25, 2007

The Switchback

To Steve's surprise, Bob pulled over and handed him the wheel with a nonchalance that belied a long-perfected habit of reading the Cellist's mind.

Gail & Barbara lay snoring in the back seat, utterly worn out by the previous evening's gail-force drumathon and herculean multi-instrumentalism, respectively, not to mention the debauchery that had followed.

Ken was awake but silent, mourning the scratching and mild warping of one of his most treasured fretless basses after an unexpected moment of rage during which he'd harpooned a particularly unruly fan. He grinned suddenly in the moonlight.

Sheila was taking a turn strapped to the roof, trying to let the 80-mph night air clear her mind as she dreamed incessantly of "the most perfect song ever," and how it might be realized. She barely noticed when the car ground to a halt and the boys climbed out, shuffling in tandem towards an odd concrete building belching smoke deep in the shadows off the side of the road.

Bob and Steve stood in the isolated boiler room, sweating, and not just from the heat. A decision hung in the air, deep and dark and important, but nearly impossible to define.

Trust the Driver

everybody knows what we're looking for. take us there.

Ever Been to Darby?

a while back we were driving up the Bitterroot Valley of Montana, on the run from, or maybe, for a change, chasing after a who or a what that by now I can't place.

Bob gazed away, up into the mountains. "They'll never hear it the way we did, Stevie," and I wondered what he had heard, and wished he'd keep his eyes on the road or switch with someone.

Practice at Powers Ave

Something's wrong with Bob's leg.










The Fiddliste in a Dentyne moment.
















The Drummiste--faster than the speed of light or at least the light setting.

Thurberfest Memorabilia

The unsuspecting neighborhood.



















E-Man formulates the Master Plan.


















First order of business: Beer. Canadian. Now.




















Sean Michael Dargan
pipes
Thurberfest 2007
into official existence.


















Unable to resist the call of the pipes, hordes of Irishmen storm the stage, led by Paul Martens, Kevin Wissink & Craig Heilman.



















Larkin (including guitarist Tom Blain whose generous donation of time, sound equipment and audio engineer is now a thing of legend!) fires up the crowd with an excellent set.



















Now it's time for rock and ROLL, baby!! Madi soundchecks the drums, and...



















Gail and Ash start the beat, The Getaway Drivers take the stage, and the crowd goes WILD!!



























Barbarita & Kenworth
rip it UP.























''Keep your hotel flowers...''




















''Yeah!''


















It was a long day for The Cellist.
Thurberfest 2007 winds down with a beautiful and mesmerizing performance by our good friends & colleagues, subvocal.









That's all she wrote!

Thurberfest 2007 launch - and the crowd goes wild!!

Come on down and have a wee dram...

The Kid disappears...

So much had happened...

so very, very much.

The Drivers, exhausted from their seemingly endless traverse through Canada, had at long last made it across the North Dakota border.

The Kid, picked up only hours before, had requested a pit-stop for candy bars. Some time around midnight Bob spotted a vile, pink glow on the horizon and pulled into the only all-night gas station--and indeed, the only permanent structure--they'd seen for several hundred miles.


As The Kid scrambled inside, Bob glanced toward the back of the van. Ken, Steve, Gail and Sheila were entwined in an unlikely sprawl of limbs, soft snores, and--hey, what the heck--nah, everyone was just asleep. Zonked. Dreaming fitfully away about the week's stranger-than-strange adventures.

Bob heaved a sigh and turned his gaze away from his enigmatic flock of musicians and back towards the sickly cast of the neon sign: ''Gas. Beer. Cheese.''

The Kid was taking a long time. Bob's weariness gave way to an odd prickle at the base of his consciousness, and he sat up, straight. Okay, Kid, get on with it--get your damn Hershey bar and get back into the saddle.

Nothing.

If there had been something in the van besides a green digital radio clock, it would have been ticking ominously at this point. Bob fidgeted, then swore loudly and threw open the driver's side door. Bloody immature little...agggghhh. He stalked inside and glared around the isles as a sleepy Pakistani teenager raised an eyebrow at him from behind the counter. ''Kid? About this tall?'' Bob pantomimed. The boy shrugged and gestured towards the service door in back.

Bob charged through the flimsy double door and found himself in a long, dark, dingy hallway--much longer, in fact, than he could imagine this tiny building supporting. The hair on his arms raised, he began to move purposefully down through the darkness.

He heard moaning.

All senses on overdrive now, he began to run, throwing his arms out in front of him for protection; the moaning grew louder, and he sped towards it, faster, faster, faster, until he was racing full speed into the neverending blackness. He tripped over something hard and cold, pitched headfirst into the stone wall and lost consciousness.

He was vaguely aware of being dragged...scraping, mumbling, squirming, strong leathery hands around his chest...then blackness again.

Vivid dreams tormented him--lost bandmates, unintended crimes, bad PA systems--and he began, finally, to come to.

Everything in his body ached--bones, muscles, joints--but as his mind sharpened, and his eyes focused, he became acutely aware of--a woman. A creature of incredible beauty, ignoring him completely, as she worked to fasten a recently-undone skirt over her smooth, naked hip. Bob stared dumbly, unable to fully absorb the 55-second transition from van-full of sweaty bandmates to clean, nude vixen.

3 Piece Adjustable Getaway: Debut!!!

Dateline June 16, 2007: At half our number--or just slightly under half, depending on fortune's whims--the 3 Piece Adjustable Getaway plays smooth and sweet to an appreciative crowd at Mother Fool's. Mothers--none being fools--were spotted in the audience!! The only way to have fit Ken, Gail, Barbara and Mr. X. onto the stage would have been to debut as 7 Piece Adjustable-Stackable Getaway with OSHA-approved connectors.

Come on down and have a muffin...

Of hitchhikers and new turns.

They were two days south of the dreaded Canadian border, Sheila now in the driver's seat. Ken gave her the wheel at an exit north of St. Louis. Anything to stop the Cher songs - maybe she would concentrate on just driving. No such luck, but he was able to slip into a fitful sleep in the back. The rest of the band were awake but quiet, still thinking of the losses in Winnipeg. Steve was mumbling again. "No way, I can't play the guitar parts on my cello," he whined. Bob was insistent. "We've got a gig in two days, and you're going to play them, so start practicing." Steve: "Oh yeah, like... in the VAN?" Bob lashed back. "I'll banish you to the roof and you can play them in the wind. They might sound better like that anyway." Steve mumbled something not nice, and Bob drifted off again, depressed.

On the straight road ahead, Sheila spotted a figure walking the shoulder with the unmistakable shape of a guitar case in one hand and a thumb sticking out of the other one. She pulled over and he walked up like Robert Johnson at the Crossroads, expecting to see the devil. No such luck. "Need a ride?" Sheila said excitedly. "Yeah- hey thanks," he said. He hopped in and cheerfully said, "I'm Chris." Bob said, "What are you, like twelve? Does your mamma know where you are?" Unflapped, he said, "No, just lookin' for a gig." He dumped his guitar in the back, accidently bonking the sleeping Ken, who just couldn't catch a break.

Gail: "Looks like you're going to get your gig. We need a guitar player." She reached out the window and pulled the sullen Steve back in as he was making his way to the roof. Sheila stepped on it, the van lurched forward as instrument cases tumbled again. Bob pulled out a flask and handed the whiskey to "The Kid," as the young highwayman would henceforth be known. Little did he know what he'd gotten himself into. He might have been better off with the Devil.

R.I.P.

Russian maestro and activist Mstislav Rostropovich playing as the Berlin Wall comes down.

Of celebrities and a clean Getaway.

Not to be outdone, Bob donned the Freddie Mercury costume to compliment Sheila, now posing as Cher. The gang was ready to make a run for it. Dodging traffic, they made their way to a not so well lit parking ramp. A few minutes later they were heading down highway 75 in a 1979 VW van, hurtling toward I29, back to the good old USA. Ken took an exit 20 miles south of the city, and lurched onto a blinding network of backroads. The last town, Winkler, was dark in slumber - nothing open but a dimly lit gas station complete with buzzing Mobil sign and half asleep attendant. With no Mounties in the rearview, all they had to do was get across the border into North Dakota. Steve and Gail slept; Steve mumbling something about Redbull, gasoline and cotton balls, and Gail twitching in perfect time to Bob and Sheila singing turns of "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Life after Love." Ken missed his wife, Jen, who was now running a ranch in Montana, long having given up hope of his return. He wondered why he EVER left his accounting job. The wound in his cheek itched. He reached for the a.m. dial. Fargo never sounded so good.

Tasty Pralines, Unplugged to Boot!

The lovely Pam Richardson and her musical cohorts, collectively known as The Pralines, playing "Paris and My Own Passing" at Uncommon Ground in Chicago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyL6hd57FwE
"The Pralines" made their club debut with "The Getaway Drivers" at the now defunct Slipper Club, driving up from Chicago through a raging blizzard to grace the stage.

Of Unionsuits and Tutus...

Having sacrificed her shirt for the dual purpose of disguising the hyper-publicized cellist and bandaging the bleedin' bassist, Gail extricated a daybag from the front passenger seat of a Mini-Cooper through its smashed window. The five ducked into a nearby alleyway, giving Gail the chance to sneak behind a dumpster to make a quick change. The others heard a gasp...then a stifled giggle as she rummaged through the bag. Two minutes later, she made her appearance.

"Kee-rist!", was the collective utterance, followed by a "Wha...huh?"

Gail stood before them, dimly lit by an overhead lamp, wearing a red woolen unionsuit topped off with a shimmering white tutu. "Chanuck ballet, I'm guessing. You don't want to know what the alternative was."

Sheila was more than interested, though, and ducked back to the daybag to peel off the layers of sludge and take advantage of the remaining booty...

The value of bodily fluids

Covered in sewage is no way to be when you find yourself in the middle of the street, in the middle of Winnipeg, in the middle of Winter. Unfortunately, that is exactly where the small, but resourceful clan found themselves. They were soaked, and they needed shelter and quick. Sheila had the foresight to slather the thickest of the sludge on her bare arms, neck, and head. This seemed to provide a useful, albeit noxious barrier to the harsh winds. Ken, with his bullet wound found that his bleeding had slowed if not stopped. In addition, the bullet must have nicked his olfactory nerve as his sense of smell was non-existent. Bob, with blind-folded "CELLO" producer-cum -loudly in tow, used the Sundance "kid" as a shield to the elements. All Pingry could keep saying was "Bob, don't stand so F*%#ing close to me, man".
And Gail, shivering to the bone did not hesitate to break the side window of the closest car that appeared to have any kind of apparel in it. This later proved to be helpful.....

Rising Up to Paradise

They surged ahead, slipping and clawing their way through the acrid slime to where Sheila stood illuminated by two garish shafts of red and blue light. There was a grate overhead, old and filthy, which begrudgingly allowed the unsettling glow to ooze in and down a series of wet, rusty rungs like an electric fungus.

''What light?'' came a muffled voice from somewhere near the armpit of Gail's t-shirt. ''Uh, you can probably take that off, Ken...'' Gail retrieved her bloodied garment as Ken blinked painfully, eyes stinging but bullet wound now staunched.

''I don't like the look of this,'' growled Bob, ''But we've got no choice--we can't hang around in this disease-infested hole any longer, and Ken's cheek wound could rip open any minute. Y'all get on up that ladder.''

They clambered up and out, the clammy grate offering surprisingly little resistance.

The sight that met their eyes above ground was nearly as terrifying as the dank underworld below: an enormous, crackling sign screamed ''Winnipeg Central Cinemas,'' its excess light spilling across a larger-than-life poster featuring a sullen Asian beauty, a hideously bloodied cello case, and--Steve.

STEVE???

''Jesus GOD,'' bellowed Bob as his startled brain strained to absorb the fact that the boyish mug of his fellow gunslinger-cum-producer was now plastered all over Canada, if not the entire Western hemisphere. ''Pingry, what have you DONE!!''

''No, seriously, wait, it was just a little college project, I mean, I sent it to Sundance like AGES ago but never heard back, and...'' Steve gaped, transfixed at the glorious horror of the predicament.

Bob ripped Gail's shirt back off and tied it firmly around Steve's head. ''Dude, congratulations and all, but now every joker in TOWN knows your face. And you WOULD have to call it CELLO,'' he fumed, glaring at the telltale instrument case Steve was now fumbling to use as an oversized cane, having become both famous and blindfolded in under 4.5 seconds.

Bob cinched the shirt down tighter. ''Keep this on your head at ALL times, or we're DEAD,'' he hissed through gritted teeth, adding a somewhat embarrassed ''Sorry, Gail.''

A Way Out.

Gail managed to stop Ken's bleeding by tying her shirt around his face. The wound wasn't as bad as it looked. The bullet had entered his open mouth as he was blazing away, blasted a tooth, grazed the jawline and exited the cheek. He was going to be OK. Pain was another issue. The five of them trudged on through the sewer muck. Sheila had gone ahead, and soon they heard her call out from ahead... "LIGHT!" As they made their way to her, they could see her standing in a shaft of light. There it was, the way out.

on the conflict of tendencies...

in true art, the end is always the beginning.

String Section PA Problems SOLVED!

Amps, schmamps--batteries, schmatteries. Check out THESE puppies!!!!











It's perfection!! And here you can watch a clip of one being played: strohviolin-shop.com


But wait, there's more...

Stroh guitars for Bobby and....











Yes,
this is a
Stroh bass
for Kenworth.

I have yet to find a Stroh piano or drums, alas.

Anyway, whad'ya think, huh, huh? Let's grab convention by the cojones, discard those run of the mill things we're sawing away on and demand that the Getaway Driver arsenal reflect the true and splendid bizarreness of our collective selves!!

A Nod to Our Brothers

In the midst of our own landmark project--rich, deadly satisfying and now with a full head of steam--here's a nod to some blood brothers on the Getaway Trail.

If the Getaway Drivers were rocking a swampy Louisiana tavern, then a few of us got shot and took out the power supply as we fell, we might sound like these guys. Or maybe we wouldn't, but our stories sure do:

Pistol with half a grip
torn white satin slip
ten yards of dirty drapes
stack of old acetates
die cast toy truck
picture framed first buck
buckle latch diary
greasy bag of recipes...

Let the moon shine, let the skin crawl, let the monkey jump, let it all go...

Kieran Kane, Kevin Welch & Fats Kaplin; from the album Lost John Dean. The best $15 you'll spend anytime soon, guaranteed to bring you almost as much neural bliss as the blistering vocals and savage mando Bob and Ellie put down on Billy in the last 48 hours.

Fire & Grace

The sweet, intoxicating current of music, whiskey and cameraderie coursed through the six like medicine.

Tongues loosened, hearts warmed, wounds healed and the spectre of the past few months' devastating run of illness, bad luck and uncertainty began to fade, giving slow but steady way to a fundamental, defining realization:

They were good. DAMN good.

The audience of freethinkers, dignitaries and fellow musicians had sat transfixed in the dusky saloon as The Getaway Drivers scorched through songs of fire and ice, love and loss, sweetness and destruction, the stage transformed into a whirlwind of flesh, steel, weathered wood and determination. They sounded finer than fine, they sounded like The Next Big Thing...

They sounded like they meant it.

Mangled Angles

Nice shot, but they could have chosen a more flattering angle in the interests of camaflouging our embarassing physical defects.

Steve's right leg, you will notice, has paled strangely next to his left, a precursor to it's melting off entirely (as had his right arm earlier, victim of ungodly temperature spikes in the postal van).

I have no legs, and am only kept aloft by freakish strength, balancing on The Cellist's head with my elbow. Despite what the photo seems to depict, neither his teeth nor remaining pinky were assisting me in any way.

Bob's loss of both balance and left leg (lopped of below the knee earlier in a mowing accident) are counteracted by the stabilizing gyro-like motion of his right hand and the jet-propulsion effect of the singing, so long as he keeps his lips pointed left.

Having boogied her own off onto the dance floor earlier, Gail gazes wistfully at Bob's posterior (yes, this is the body part Gail boogied off--what WHERE you thinking??) but otherwise looks pretty suave.

Ken's early-morning rampage through a Walmart pesticide isle has left him with most of his body eaten away; only a handsome face and disturbingly large right hand remain.

Ellie has four sound limbs, no visible equilibrium issues and very fetching magenta hair--odd coincidence that it was HER papparazzi snapping the photo.

Riddles in the Dark

Never had it been blacker or more rank than this. The Dudley Do-Rights at the Check Cashing place were Canadian Mounties. Someone tipped someone off. Bob scratched his head and thought about Scrapes. It couldn't have been him. He'd gotten them out, down into the sewers quick. After guns were drawn and in a blazing flurry of gunfire and smoke, Scrapes got them out the back and into the alley. In the dark, the images in Bob's head were clear: somehow, Sheila and Gail grabbed a shitload of cash as the stunned Dudley's dived for cover under the spray of Steve and Ken's tommy-fire. Then they were in the tunnels before the smoke cleared. Now there they all sat, or stooped, the putrid liquid lapping at their ankles. Ken and Steve were both bleeding- Ken shot through the jaw and out the side of his cheek; Steve nursing a flesh wound to the shoulder. Gail and Sheila had come out unscathed and tended to their injuries the best they could in the cold dark. Scrapes had gone on ahead and was now missing. It was black as Gollum's tunnels and the riddles were worse. How would they get out of this one?

posted by B-Man

Scrapes, Sewers and a Sick Plan

''It's bad,'' he rasped, his left eye squinting harder than usual. Scrapes had a permanent brow-furrow which at this partucular moment had become so deep that Ellie was compelled by sheer morbid fascination to thrust in an index finger.

''Goddammit, woman, we don't have time for this wacked-out Madison ''Berkeley of the damn Midwest'' spirit worship crap right now! Withdraw your digit or forever strum your sickly electric instruments nine-fingered!''

Ellie reddened and yanked out her hand. It was the longest utterance produced by the man in their 20-year partnership; the combined shock of verbosity and spontaneous brow-poking left her oddly dazed.

''Anyways,'' she muttered.

''ANYWAYS, the gang's in the sewers. Lost all sense. Scattered to the four foul winds like a bunch of wet, panicked chickens. Damn Mounties sprayed a tonne of Canadian lead, and that ain't no picnic what with the ricocheting, stink, slippery footing, foreign architecture and so forth. Small wonder they abandoned their wits.''

Ellie rubbed her finger absentmindedly and chewed on the news. Another fine, stinking mess.

''I'm gonna need a bigger amp,'' she growled suddenly, wheeling around to pull an ungainly, oddly-shaped instrument case off the flimsy motel dresser which had been sagging under the weight.

''Ellie, the crew's in the pits and this is NO time to drown your unfathomably twisted sorrows in equally twisted music...'' Scrapes choked, brought up short by the savage, determined glare the woman was directing at a point somewhere between his good eye and brow-furrow.

''I LIKED YOU BETTER MUTE!'' she bellowed in her inimitable baritone, shoving past him out the filthy, paint-chipped door. ''Like I said, a BIGGER AMP!!"

Back to the Getaway Drivers... The Mysterious Man

The long dusty ride in the patchwork car left them exausted and feeling mean. They pulled into Rivertown, an oasis at last. It had been ten days on the road and they'd run out of whiskey. Sheila's hyperactive cavorting had turned into a brooding frustration: as much as she liked her male band companions, it had been a long time since she enjoyed the company of a boy to have some fun with. They tumbled out of the car and into a dark bar. Then she saw him: tall, mysterious, handsome. He flashed a dangerous smile seemingly directly at her. She melted in the heat. The rest of the band seemed unaware and wanted only a beer and a place to rest up for the coming evening's gig. He stepped out from behind the bar and approached the band. Bob was already crumpled in the corner, still recovering from an earlier thwack on the head administered by Ellie for taking a wrong turn in Yankton. The rest of the band hung back, still blinking from the transition from bright sun to the dim saloon. Sheila was now leader by default. The gorgous man stuck out his hand. In a deep, sweet baritone voice he said, "Hi. My name is Candace. But you can call me Candy." Sheila cursed in Chinese. It was THAT kind of biker bar. Shit. The last time she got even so much as a goodnight kiss had been that stupid Irish boy in Boston who had passed out before they could get to first base. She stalked away, picked up her bow and sawed furiously on her fiddle. Let Ellie deal with him. Bastard.

posted by B-Man

Our next song

So I'm biking to work today, and up ahead is a 14-ish boy on his way to school yelling at the top of his lungs.

As I get closer it becomes clear he's trying to rap on whatever he's coming across in his environment - he stops and glares menacingly at a sapling, and I hear:

"Yo, yo, you standing there, TREE
YO, where you FROM, B??
I'mo KICK yo ASS....!!!!''

At which point I nearly pee myself laughing, only it gets worse because he bogs completely down, unsure whether to rhyme his next Pulitzer-winning line with ''tree'' or ''ass.''

Sondheim, move over.

[P.S. This kid here is actually Lil' Bow Wow, who makes as much as Sondheim and me put together, so I don't know why I'M laughing.]

(not so) kinky lee said...

OK...one of the chinks in the kinky armor is an affinity for rappy pop...'Wordy Rappinghood' was an epiphany. Now that I'm out of the closet, I think the rapping acolyte was vamping on Imani Coppola's 'I'm a Tree':

There's a tree in the city
It ain't lookin' pretty
Blessed with stress
Smog clogging feelin' shitty
There's a river on the highway
Things aint goin' my way
Turn around, go away
Come again another day
To the bed I go
Stumble to and fro
Tired from another day of lookin' for my glow
It's hard to get up
You can say I'm fed up
One things for certain
I gotta keep my head up

Keep your head up-keep my head up
Keep your head up-keep my head up
Keep your head up girl, keep your head up
Keep your head up-keep my head up
Keep your head up-keep my head up
Keep your head up girl, keep your head up

The sun aint hard to see
Just turn off your TV
Everything around you is just part of every other thing
I'm a tree

Why you gotta do what you do
Why you gotta tell me how to be
Gee, make me feel like you do
I'm tried of messing around
It's time to let these people know
A tree in the city
It needs somewhere to grow

River on the highway
I've never seen a grayer day
It's sad, its crappy, it needs somewhere to play
As for me, I'll sit under the tree
Cuz there ain't no better place to be

Keep your head up...

The sun ain't hard to see
Just turn off your TV
Everything around you is just part of every other thing
I'm a tree

Yo, what a freak
Are you all staring at me? I'm a tree
Yo, what a freak
I'm a tree! [no you're not]
I'm a tree! [stop lying]

Keep your head up-keep…

Who knows...

who knows what’s right
lily you don’t have to when you see the moon
you trust it’s light

the crickets sing loud
lily you can hear it in their voices how you’ve made them proud
...
at the top of your voice there is no doing wrong i swear
lily you be just who you are
...
southern skies
lily you’re connected to the stars and to the world tonight

~Matt Pond PA