I never got around to busking that last night in Asheville. I had been in contact with a guy named Adam who posted on the craigslist rideshare page. We were talking about leaving that night instead. I went to Firestorm to pass some time waiting for him but he never showed.
He called later and we again agreed to meet but in the morning.
Thankfully we finally connected. You never do know what you're getting with craigslist. We made our way down to Atlanta with great conversation all the way. My show at WonderRoot was scheduled for that evening.
We arrived around sundown and took pictures of the community garden outside the venue. I love this place (and I knew I would, as I had played there on the VVOT tour).
I was roused early the next morning, which I was not expecting at all. I had to leave their home as they were all headed to work. Adam had gone to spend the night in his van elsewhere. So I walked a mile or two to East Atlanta looking for a suitable establishment to eat breakfast. Instead I found a copy shop.
I walked out a little while later with 15 color and 30 grayscale posters for the Eagles and Snowbirds tour. I then walked several blocks to a donut shop to eat breakfast and stopped in the public library briefly to get the addresses of the venues I'll be playing on the E&S tour.
It was there that I ran into Adam again.
Adam makes his living making and selling jewelry around the country. He travels, works, and sleeps in his van. I play music on the street and Adam is a musician in his own right. Someone had told him that we would really like a part of town called Little Five Points, so we headed that way. The place was pretty dead so we just perused the hip little stores for a while. I saw that it was getting late and I better run over to the post office to mail off the posters I had printed in the morning.
From there Adam and I went back to the home of my couchsurfing host. We made dinner and talked with our hosts late into the night. I would be allowed to sleep in the next morning.
I spent most of the following day at WonderRoot using the computers in their digital media room to check my e-mail and send out fliers to more venues. There was a fund raiser for the SOAW Vigil in Atlanta that night, just a mile or two from the venue.
So I got to walking.
The fund raiser was held at an art gallery where a few dozen people sat before the performers, many of the same that would be at the vigil over the weekend. I came to this event in hopes of playing and securing a ride to Columbus, Georgia the next morning. The performance schedule was over-packed (indeed it went an hour or two later into the night than planned) and by the time I found a place to stay for the night it was 1:30a. The gentleman who invited me to stay with him wasn't even going to the vigil the next day; but he could put me in touch with others who were.
The next morning I was headed to the convention center in Columbus, GA ready for an action-packed weekend.
For more pics from the tour, go HERE.