“I’m driving along Sunset Boulevard, past CBS News and…lots of other buildings. The Metropolitan Hotel and Plaza. This is Los Angeles, there are lots of things here. Lots of coffee shops and…

“I had a dream last night that a woman placed her old, worn hand around the back of my neck. Her bracelet hung cold and limp against my skin. I still felt…

[Calexico – “Frontera/Trigger” live MP3] Joey Burns of Calexico is out on tour in Europe when I arrive in Tucson. He knows a thing or two about road weariness, too. When I…

I have just left Joe’s Boots and Hats in Clovis, New Mexico, where I conversed with Joe’s nephew as he fitted me for a Stetson. He grew up in Austin and moved…

[Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – “Henry Lee” MP3] Just over the New Mexico border, in a town called Texaco, I stopped for gas. Across the street from the station was…

“I saw my first armadillo on the road to Abilene, but it was on it’s back, viscera spread across double-yellow lines.” [Talk Talk – “The Rainbow” MP3] A man drove his wagon…

“When you were in Chicago in ’97, is that how you initially met Steve Albini?” I ask Bubba. “Well, actually, I met him at a show in Minneapolis in ’95, or something.…

I’m staying at the Quality Inn Market Center in Dallas. This weekend, it just so happens, is the annual Mary Kay convention. Makeup retailers from all over the United States have congregated…

[Drive Through Oklahoma With Oneida] “Pretty much every road I’ve been on has undergone serious construction and it really… it kind of, um…debilitates my driving when there is just one lane open…

The drive from Saint Louis to Kansas City, Missouri is one road. Interstate-70. You would think that from downtown Saint Louis it’s easy to find the highway. This is not so. I…