Adventures with the Green Van — III

Road Trip

July of 1976 in a run-down motel near Bemidji, Minnesota.

The band had a week-end booking in a resort and a few of us had come along for the experience. The gigs went OK and afterwards there was plenty of time to kill. Poker was popular, at least with those who won:

Frankie had a special gleam in his eyes that night but it really was just the speed:

Mike was in good form too, not real drunk, but never quite sober either:

And Audie, owner of the green van, seemed a little more pensive than usual:

The band was in a state of turmoil, almost to the point of fisticuffs. It was obvious that things couldn’t remain the same. Within a month several of the members had either quit or were ‘fired’, although how you can fire the founder of a band is not easily explained. An early example of a hostile takeover, I guess. I wasn’t working with the band yet, but the seeds had been sown. The green van lived on, to service more gigs, although its life, too, was limited.