Day 44: Abiquiu, NM
Welcome
Yesterday we played at the Blossom and Bones music festival at the Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico.
6.45am was the time chosen to assemble in the lobby, that would get us to O’Hare International Airport with enough time to check in for our 10am flight. Our rugged old van served us on one final stint, a bumpy drive along I90 in rush hour traffic and at the end of this journey we weren’t sorry to see it go. We were very sorry to see our tour manager Immy go, as she would be returning the van and then flying back to her home in LA. It was only a little more than a week we had her on the team and during this time she made things operate very smoothly and worked hard to make our lives easy and comfortable.
Our check in process was one of the classic Beths dances we all knew very well, shuffling items between suitcases and equipment cases to try and get things under the weight limit as this flight carried a very severe penalty for every extra pound. Once this lengthy procedure was completed, we headed for the gate, stopping to grab a breakfast from Chicago Style Hot Dogs in Terminal 2, an establishment that had brought us a great amount of joy during a tired and hungry stopover earlier in the tour. I ordered a dog which featured a Vienna beef frank, Chicago style relish, a pickle spear, diced onion, sliced tomato, pickled peppers, and mustard on a poppy seeded bread roll.
We took off twenty minutes late, but the pilot was confident that we would still get to our destination on time, and he was right, managing to set us down right on schedule I assume by lighting the afterburners for a good portion of the flight. Our journey had taken us southwest to the state of New Mexico where the city of Albuquerque lies at the southeast end of the Colorado Plateau. As we taxied to the gate Liz enthusiastically announced ‘it’s mountain time’ to let everyone know we were now in her favourite of the four United States time zones. The airport’s terminal building was in the classic New Mexico Pueblo Revival architectural style, brown adobe construction with soft, rounded features, but the airbridges hadn’t followed the brief and were ordinary steel and glass tunnels.
We disembarked through one of these tunnels and made our way to the baggage claim, stopping for a few seconds so Liz could meet a very large hound that was enjoying the comfortable leather seating in the arrival hall. The festival had sent a driver to pick us up, a burly man named Julio who arrived in a van that very similar to the one we had ditched in Chicago, albeit a bit newer. Julio was a classic hustler and seemed to love his life and was enthusiastically telling us about some of the jobs he works such as set dresser for Better Call Saul, as a runner for festivals and touring artists, and as a roof repairman, the latter of which he fielded a phone inquiry for as he drove us along.
He was keen to get us fed before starting this 2.5-hour drive and we pulled into a Burger King which turned out to be as good a place as any to kick off Tristan’s New Zealand birthday, the initial phase of Tristan’s birthday, the entirety of which will stretch ambiguously out over the remainder of the tour and probably some of the next tour. We filled our bellies and Tristan received his birthday crown and we were all in good spirits when we started our journey north towards the southern end of the Rocky Mountains.
New Mexico is some of my favourite scenery to drive through. Jagged mountain ranges, snaking canyons, towering mesas, and the sprawling shrublands of this arid high desert make for sublime viewing from the window of our van. It was one of those journeys which is incredibly beautiful to begin with and only continued to get more beautiful as we left the populated areas and headed further into the mountains. By the time we were approaching the Ghost Ranch we were beginning to understand why Georgia O’Keefe had chosen to spend so much time out here, the wildness of the terrain, the incredible shades of colour that define the landscape, and the unique shapes and silhouettes left by millions of years of erosion for us to ponder and enjoy.
We left the highway and entered Georgia O’Keefe’s Ghost Ranch, heading up a gravel driveway that passed by her old log cabin on the way up towards the festival. We passed a large collection of tents and vehicles and then pulled in behind a truck stage that faced up a shallow hill and a wide lawn stretching up to a collection of cabins and other buildings. Behind the stage was a marquee which served as the green room, and we unloaded into this space and sat around awaiting instructions. The Breeders were on stage sound checking and it seemed like they were experiencing some difficulties, though they were handling it positively and professionally.
Once it was our turn to get up on stage, we found out why. In an episode that felt eerily like a rerun of the previous day’s events nothing could be made to work. The difference this time was that the problems were caused by user error, and the users in question had a self-inflicted cognitive impairment. It took some creative problem solving by Jon and Gabe to understand and fix the mistakes that had been made by these twerps and by the time we were making any noise the festival had already opened and people were beginning to spread out chairs and picnic blankets on the lawn.
Blossom and Bones festival’s hospitality team were the thing that held this event together. They drove us a couple of miles to Casa del Sol, an adobe house situated beneath an impressive cliff wall that that looked out across the flat desert to the Jemez Mountains. We ate dinner in this very special location and enjoyed the view for as long as we could before it was time to head back to the stage and prepare for our set.
It’s not often that you experience the feeling that you might be in the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen. Standing up on stage and looking out the incredible sandstone cliffs as they are bathed in the warmth of golden hour is not something we will forget in a hurry. For the second night in a row, we played in the sun’s waning light, enjoying the most beautiful hour of the day, and finishing just as the Ghost Ranch succumbed to darkness and the stars began to shine with an intensity we rarely get to witness.
Nicki from the hospitality team had been hard at work while we were on stage and we returned to the green room to find that she had created a birthday shrine, a table adorned with candles with a birthday cake and a chilled bottle of champagne. We took our time to celebrate with Tristan, singing a fantastic rendition of Happy Birthday over the top of The Breeders who by this time were getting stuck into their set.
Cake was enjoyed and then we headed out to watch the rest of the show. The Breeders were fantastic and brought a genuine warmth to the stage as well as being thoroughly rocking. Closing out the night were Japanese Breakfast, a Philadelphia indie pop band who had a diverse palette of sounds and a captivating lighting show to match. We were lucky enough to be staying on the ranch where the festival had put us up in a suite of rooms up the hill from the stage. Julio dropped us off and we enjoyed a rest and looked forward to seeing this place again at daybreak.
