Day Four: Indianapolis
delsThis was our first headline show on this tour and the first place that was not airport or bus or venue (or zoo) that I had set foot in since leaving home. It is only a three hour drive from Toledo and bus came to rest outside HI-FI Indy early. The club was on Fountain Square which revealed itself to be a designated national historic district and a very cool neighbourhood indeed. Bus driver CJ and I were the first customers in a hipster coffee shop a block away from our resting place when it opened at 7am.
The short walk to Bovaconti Coffee in the chilly morning sun past the record stores and bars in the two storey red brick buildings of Virginia Avenue felt like a luxurious pleasure and a return to a kind of sanity after the grim utility of the back lots of Ohio amphitheatres.
And hard to imagine better company for breakfast. So many US citizens reveal themselves to be self obsessed to a degree that implies a kind of madness: they are unable to talk about anything other than themselves. CJ is not made in that mould. He revealed himself to be mindful and considerate of those around him and circumspect in his conversation. I did discover that he was from a Pennsylvania mining family, and that his grandfather worked every day in a mine that he owned until he died at the age of 82 and that CJ learned to operate the trucks at that mine when he was a kid. Now he drives country music stars and, occasionally, obscure Scottish rock bands around the USA. I hope he writes his memoirs.