Texas and throwin' rolls!

Posted Nov 2, 2005

Hey ya’ll, I’m back. I’m sitting here on a rare day off. We’re in Indianapolis, Indiana getting ready to hop on the bus and head to Louisville, Kentucky. We’ve had a great few weeks since I last checked in. We did a few shows in the South (Georgia and Alabama) a couple weeks ago. We played in Gulf Shores and I got to spend some time on the beach. It was still warm there…a far cry from the near freezing temperatures here in Indiana! It feels like summer has finally come to an end.

Last week we did a few shows on my home turf of Texas. We played in Austin at the Midnight Rodeo. I got to hang with one of my favorite new artists, Randy Rogers. Watch for him, he’s gonna do great things. If you don’t have his record, Rollercoaster, you need to go get it. After that show we traveled to Amarillo to play. Scotty, my guitar player and right hand man, got food poisoning that day and couldn’t get out of the bunk. Luckily, my band all stepped up to the challenge and we had a great show. Scotty was back on his feet for the next night…a HUGE show at the State Fair in Dallas. We had a great crowd (I was probably related to half of them) and it was a real homecoming for me. It seems like we’d been gone for way too long.

My friend and co-writer Travis Howard is out with me right now. We picked Travis up in Texas and he’s been riding with us for the last week and we’re working on a bunch of new songs. I’m so excited about them. Travis is amazing, He helps bring out the best in my songwriting. I’ve been writing like crazy, I’m so ready to go back into the studio for the second record. We’ve got big things on the horizon.

We go home for a couple days on Sunday and then we leave again Tuesday for about a month. In that month I’ll have a birthday (November 10th…I love jewelry if you’re looking for hints!), play on national TV at the CMA Awards, write with one of my favorite songwriters, Radney Foster, and play about fifteen shows. I just found out we’re going to be doing "The Late Late Show" with Craig Fergueson on December 2. You’ll have to stay up a little past bedtime and watch. Kerosene is moving up the charts.

Please call your local station and tell them to play me. I think people are a little scared of me since they saw me burn the house down in that video. I guess that’s good, it means nobody will mess with me. Oh yeah, before I forget…I want everyone who reads this to make a special stop in Sikeston, Missouri at a little place called Lambert’s Café. We stopped in there a couple days ago for dinner and it was the greatest place I could have ever imagined. We stopped there because of the name, but the food was AMAZING. They throw rolls across the room to your table. If you’re not looking you’ll get hit upside the head with them. They bring free okra, catfish and other goodies to your table. I had to hide some of the food I ate from Tony, my trainer. Thanks to everyone there who took great care of us. Tell them I sent you. That’s it for now, I think I hear the bus honking at me. I’m late as usual. I’ll check in again soon and let you know how everything is going. Thanks for all the support.

M