August 20
This is your captain writing, humbled, tail between legs. I’m sorry I haven’t been keeping you posted about our progress, as promised.
It was my intention to write a little entry at the end of every day of this journey, even if rather brief.
But after our first show I passed out in the middle of my first sentence, and ever since as I’ve made little starts at catching up – but I’ve kept getting swamped by the logistics of moving the boat and performing each day.
Today is our first real day off since we started, and I’m finally feeling caught up. And starting today, I will be updating the captain’s log daily again, even if only with a brief little note. And in the next day or two I’ll be sending a link for our first livestream from the river. Only a couple people have written wondering what’s going on – and I apologize that I’ve been so slow to answer.
I still hope to go through my notes and fill in more about what happened between the twin cities and here, but for the moment, the short story is – everything is going amazingly. We’ve performed all of our scheduled shows so far, crowds have been big and the energy around the project feels bigger than ever. We’ve had a few shows where several thousand people turned out – bigger than any of our crowds back home on the West Coast. I was expecting to have to cancel some performances for rain – which may still happen, but so far we’ve had incredible luck with weather. Heat and humidity have been manageable, but today is pretty hot, and this week is supposed to get hotter…
I’m writing from a coffeeshop in Dubuque, Iowa – which calls itself the “Masterpiece on the Mississippi.” It’s a cute town of 60,000 with lots of old brick buildings and limestone cliffs. We had two performances here on Friday and Saturday, and today is our first proper day off since the start of tour. The rest of the cast took the bus to Wisconsin, and I’m staying behind to work on a few things on the boat, catch up on email, and to finally write to you.
Dubuque is in a section of the Mississippi called “the Driftless” which sounds like something out of a fantasy book. During the last ice age, as most of the midwest was scraped flat by glaciers, a sliver of the Mississippi valley, straddling Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa was spared. The result is a landscape of tall bluffs, rolling hills, limestone cliffs and lush vegetation. In a few days we will be leaving this area and entering the flat expanses more typical of the region.
Our first Dubuque show was the closest we’ve come to having to cancel an event. One interesting shift that’s happened with this tour is that in most of the towns we are visiting, we now have official permission to perform. In the past we’ve taken an ‘ask forgiveness not permission’ approach, but this year nearly every town on our route has heard we are coming and has reached out excited about what we are doing and asking how they can help. In a few of the bigger towns, we’ve stuck with our sneaky ways – but for the most part we are now above board and legit in all but a very few places. In Dubuque the venue I had scouted is an area along the riverfront with a big beach surrounded by a stepped amphitheater. It’s one of the best places on the entire river to assemble a crowd for our show:
Dubuque never reached out to us, but we decided it would be good to try and make our show above board, since this spot is so central. We applied for a permit rather late and were told that the Saturday was available but that there might be some conflict on the Friday and that we couldn’t book the date. We suspected that there wasn’t REALLY a conflict and tried to inquire exactly where and when the other event was happening, but we never got an answer. At that point I hadn’t really looked at other spots in town – so I procrastinated on making a call about our Friday show until a few days ago when I woke up early and drove with Sari down from Prairie du Chien and found another less magical spot that could potentially work. I made the announcement that morning about the location, and by afternoon I had an email from the City informing me that we did not have a permit and that this other park would not work. There really weren’t more options and there was less than 24 hours before the show. I was worried they might cancel our other permit. But In the morning I called the City of Dubuque and even though they had every reason to be upset with me, they magically decided to make things work and were able to secure my original choice of venue for both nights. I think the confusion did cost us a bit of the audience we might have had, BUT there was still a big healthy crowd – close to a thousand people. Just over a month ago, Kalan and I came through and played an event at a little bar in town to start spreading the word about the bigger tour. Maybe a dozen people showed up. And I’m not sure if they came for the show, or were just at the bar. It made me feel pretty scared about the turnout when we came back with the circus. I’m pretty blown away by how the word is spreading about what we’re doing.
I’m going to keep tinkering with the boat. There are some issues with the fuel system, and some with the sound system. And my accordion has been acting up. Our next stop is Savanna. Local folks have offered us a house and a bunch of hospitality, so most of the crew is driving ahead tonight. Matty, Kalan, and I will stay on the boat tonight and crew it downriver tomorrow. It’s going to be a long day on the river – about 42 river miles. Even with our new motor, the “Little Pickle” (thank you generous anonymous Kickstarter doner) the mightly Flotsam only goes about 4 or 5 miles an hour. So we’ll need to hit the river by 7 am to get in by 4.
I’ll let you know how it goes. And I’ll send a link for a livestream in the next 24 hours. I’d like to Livestream for a couple hours on Tuesday. You can hang out with us for the last bit of the Driftless, and come through the locks with us. I’ll plan to livestream from noon CDT. Warning – it may be a bit boring. But also a bit meditative. We’ll talk a bit, but mostly you can enjoy the scenery and the hum of the Little Pickle.
I’ll be crossposting to the Captain’s Blog which is here: https://blog.rivercircus.com/
Again – my apologies about the long silence. I will be posting more for the rest of the trip. I promise.
-Jason
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