Gentle Reader(s)—hold onto your hair—today is your lucky day! Why is today your lucky day? Today is your lucky day because YOU have stumbled onto Part Nine of the Road Crew saga! Place a bet on the ponies, buy a lottery ticket, acquire some risky stock, forget about getting hit by a meteorite, cuz YOU are on a roll. This chapter is a real thriller, let me tell you: The band ventures ever deeper into the heartland, hits the stage in support of the high-flying Tom Kindler Band, risks life and limb in their valiant quest for the Big Time, and comes face-to-face with their fandom. Spoiler alert: No vintage Stratocasters were harmed and everybody gets to go home happy... at least for the moment. So, there you go. I will sound one note of alarm, however, and that note is that this is likely to be the second-to-last episode of The Road Crew to be posted in these pages. I have encouraged you (and by 'you' I mean YOU) to get off yer duff and let me know if The Road Crew has been of interest to you... or not. That's what the Contact page is for. As of yet, it has been crickets. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Therefore, as of Part Ten I shall be pulling the plug on this little experiment. Unless you convince me otherwise. I'm not holding my breath, but I done tole ya. But forget about that for the moment and enjoy Part Nine of The Road Crew.

When I walked in the door last night my first thought was that they were having me on. Katia and Wolf were sitting there at the end of the bar grinning at me and, other than the two of them, the Place. Was. Empty. It wasn't my birthday or anything so it didn't make any sense that everyone would be hiding in the back to spring a surprise party on me—there simply weren't no one there.

It has been a weird winter in Santa Fe, Gentle Reader(s)—more like The Winter That Never Was in actual fact. Here we are in mid-March and temperatures are headed for around 85 degrees over the next few days. That's not just odd—it's bizarre, freaky, unheard of. I've been living in this town for 36 years and I've never seen anything quite the likes of it, and it's got me a bit rattled I don't mind sayin. But what's that got to do with Part Eight of The Road Crew? Well you might ask: Absolutely fuck-all, that's what. I just wanted to get that particular observation off my chest. On with the matter at hand then. Part Eight of the Cretins saga finds the boys recovering from a night out on the 'town' and heading further into deepest, darkest Middle America for their rendezvous with the Big Time in Omaha, Nebraska. Ink relates his unsuspecting trial-by-fire initiation into the crew on a previous tour and the band prepares to enjoy the perks of their all-too-brief association with the Tom Kindler Band. Extra points to those who can suss out the identity of this thinly disguised Bay Area five-piece of early '80s MTV fame. Keep those cards and letters coming in (yours would be the first, actually), and don't hesitate to share The Road Crew with your family, friends, enemies, fellow ICE detainees, or whoever else you're hanging out with these days.

Part Seven! At last, Gentle Reader(s)—here it is! I have relocated to Ink South for a break from chilly Santa Fe, though seeing as how it has been The Winter That Never Was out West it's actually a bit redundant. Yes, it is warmer in New Orleans, but not by a whole lot. We do have that nutty carnival thing going on at the moment though, so that's something. This installment of the TRC saga finds the boys launched into the unknowable mysteries of post-gig nocturnal Wichita—sort of a Lynch-ian type late night scenario... minus any backwards-talking tap dancing dwarves or mysterious teen queen murders or anything like that. Actually, there's no Twin Peaks resemblance whatsoever, but hopefully you'll read it anyway. Until next time...

A bit late, perhaps, Gentle Reader(s), but here at last is Part Six of the TRC saga. I've been somewhat distracted of late, I will admit, by the distressing state of both world and national affairs and it requires some effort to restrain myself from spending half the day poring over the newspapers (I typically peruse five no less than five). Here, perhaps, is a bit of welcome distraction for both of us. Chapter Six steps aside, briefly, from the Cretins tour schedule for some philosophical musings on the road life and the penurious state of Ink's affairs at home in the Dook City. I hope you enjoy and please, don't just look at the damn Contact page (I can actually tell when you've been looking!) and use the damn thing to tell me that I am delusional and should hang up this misguided project forthwith. Or otherwise. I await with bated breath. Check back in a couple of weeks for Part Seven.

‘History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.’ - James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922