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Wednesday, April 6 (4 am). Capitol Limited between Toledo, OH and Rochester, NY
I gotta say, Detroit is pretty awesome.
We got up at 5 am to take a train from Chicago to Detroit yesterday. Josh Johannpeter picked us up, bless his heart, and he and Jenny drove us to Chicagoâs Union Station. Iâm realizing that the hardest part of moving our gear is in the train station itself. In Union Station, we found an empty Amtrak service cart, and piled on the keyboards, amps, drumset, merch, clothing and bedding to make the trip to the ticket counter with more bags and saxophones on our backs, to check our bags for the six-hour trip to Detroit. In talking with the agent, we quickly learned that...there is no checked baggage in or out of Detroit. Oh.... Luckily, we found Moses, a Red Cap who went to bat for us. He got it all cleared with the conductors and we loaded up our gear onto his cart, which he used to shuttle us out to the train. At the top of this post is a sound clip of us loading our equipment onto the Wolverine train in the Chicago Station. What Iâm learning about Amtrak is thatâeven though it is a somewhat bureaucratic systemâif you find the right person to talk with, everything will be fine.
As we made our way through Indiana and across Michigan, I was able to fall asleep, waking up near the outskirts of Detroit, in time to see the looming, burnt-out carcasses of abandoned manufacturing plants, houses and apartment buildings that have become a symbol of 21st Century Detroit. A friend of a friend at our show who is an art collector said that artists have begun to flock to Detroit to set up collective studio spaces in the large, abandoned warehouses. He referred to the many images coming out of Detroit as âruin porn.â According to recently released census figures, over the past decade, Detroit has lost something in the realm of 1/4 of itâs population. Time magazine recently published a chilling series of photos of the ruins in downtown Detroit. Abandoned buildings have become such a problem that an organization called Object Orange began organizing clandestine midnight painting brigades to cover abandoned houses in bright orange paint, in an attempt to get the city to follow through on tearing them down. Apparently it has been very effective.
We were met at the Detroit station by Joeâs amazing friends Holly and Jean, who shuttled us and our gear in cars and a horse trailer out to their houses for well needed showers and naps. The show that night at Club Bart was our first time performing on a stage that is perched behind a bar. Dangerously easy access to drinks served by Melissa, who also set up the show. It was a warm homecoming show for Joe, who grew up in Mt. Pleasant and studied music at Wayne State University in Detroit. It was obvious how much he has been missed during the past 15 years since he moved to Portland. After the show, we played pool and foosball at the bar next door, listening to Portland DJ Mike McGonigal, who happened to be playing that night, spin some amazing stuff.
The next day, Holly and Jean took us on a tour of Detroit. It was pouring rain. Holly prepared a notepad full of tour guide info from the internet, and pointed out points of interest from the driver seat of her big truck. We got out and stood under the giant statue at the Detroit Tigersâ new stadium (Joe was in heaven), and went to a store filled with Detroit paraphernalia.
Detroitâs original train station was called the Michigan Central Station. It's no longer in use. The majestic, ornately constructed building from 1913 stands in stark contrast to the small, prefab box where the train dropped us. At the height of train service in Detroit, over 200 trains departed from Central Station everyday. As train travel declined in the mid Twentieth Century, the station gradually fell into disuse, ticket windows closing one by one until the last Amtrak train left the station in 1988. Since then, the old building has been encircled in barbed wire and left to decay. Its broken windows, rusty metal and stained concrete are a ghostly reminder of how much both Detroit and U.S. passenger train service have changed in the past century.
Before leaving town, we met back up for food and drinks with Holly's generous mom Barb, who had put us up the night before. I was sad to leave.
—Reed
Friday, April 8 (1 pm). Lake Shore Limited between Rochester, NY and Boston, MA
Our journey to Rochester, NY began at 10pm two nights ago, with us loading our gear into a filled-to-capacity bus at the current Detroit Amtrak station. There is no direct train service from Detroit to the East Coast, so Amtrak shuttles passengers in a bus to the train line. There were no seats together so we spread out throughout the crowded bus. After an hourlong ride, we loaded our stuff into the Toledo, Ohio Amtrak station and prepared to wait through the night for our 3:30 am train to Rochester. This was enough time to set up a few instruments and play for the bored and sleeping group of people waiting for the only two trains that pass through Toledo, both of which stop in the middle of the night. This was also enough time to play a long dice game (10,000), which Casey won in a last minute landslide of luck.
We arrived at the Rochester train station at 10 am and sat outside in the warm sun, dazed from a night of travel, waiting for our wonderful host Mary Jane to pick us up. We picked up a paper and saw our photo on the cover (thank you, Matt). Several times this trip we have taken advantage a website that helps connect travelers with inexpensive home stays in cities across the country. Staying at people's houses has been a good experience so far in terms of affordability, meeting great people, and getting help with local transportation. Through an intricate method of sardine packing, we managed to shuttle the six of us and all of our gear in two station wagon trips to Mary Jane's house, where we got to meet the mild-mannered basset hound named...Rumpole.
Derrick Lucas from WGMC 90.1 FM picked us up that afternoon to do a quick radio interview before the show. Derrick turned us on to a retrospective mix of Brazilian music by the artist Madlib, which I am enjoying as I write this. He also connected us with Jacob Dalager, a trumpet player in the masters program at Eastman School of Music, who helped us with transport to and from our show later that night.
The show was at a Rochester rock club called The Bug Jar. They have an entire living room / dining room / bathroom set up upside-down on the ceiling of the club. Before our set, we got to hear a great quartet from Eastman led by saxophonist Wills McKenna. It was neat to hear them cover songs I love by Jim Black and Bill McHenry, but I was most moved by their original material. They were great people, and helped us out getting our instruments home after the show.
We are currently on an all day train from Rochester to Boston, going through the snowy hills of the Hampshires.
—Reed
More photos:
Links:
WWeek 2015