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On Tour with Pixie Saytar and the Sunshine Three in the USA. Notes from a small DIY tour of a large country in a time of anomie from the man who put the sunshine in The Sunshine Three - Bernard Keenan. Part Two...

Friday 7th September, Richmond, Virginia
Although we've only played four shows in the last week, it's still striking me as funny that we've only once stayed with strangers. Instead it's been a succession of old friends and family members, and today is no different as we roll into Richmond and arrive at the home of an old friend of Ciaran's. It's hard to remember there's a gig to play later as we go shopping for old records and crates of beer with our hostess, Cary.

It's a bit of a relief to have a fairly normal show too, where both the other bands and the audience seem completely sane and adjusted. There's a singer-songwriter before us, and afterwards a pair of twin sisters called the Bowmans, who play Americana folk music. Sarah Bowman is essentially homeless, dividing her time between touring with her sister and touring with a cello based goth rock band called Rasputina. So if you're into cello based goth rock, look them up.

Sunday 9th September, Greenville, North Carolina
Greenville is a small town with a rather large college population, but you wouldn't have guessed it from the street that we pulled up at. A row of empty shops was bookended on either side by run-down antique stores. We were definitely at the venue (the Spazzatorium), but there was definitely no one around. As we sat in a vacant car park wondering why our host wasn't answering his phone, three cops drove past and stared. It's 2007, but we'd started the day by watching Easy Rider, and I was all for packing up and driving straight back to New York by the time the phone finally rang.

Thankfully there is a population in Greenville, they just don't live beside the Spazzatorium. An old shop converted into a punk rock venue, it was all graffitti'd and dirty. Brilliant. There was no bar and no air conditioning, but a lot of people came out to drink from cans and sweat their asses off. We shared the stage with another touring band, this one from Philadelphia, and a local rapper and his drunken friend Davey, who programmed heavy metal loops into an Akai sampler while MC 主播大秀less (for it was he) rapped in a solemn tone about how terrible the American government is. It seemed a little facile at first, but in the South it really is a big deal if someone jumps up and down on the American flag, and quite a few members of the audience seemed a little uncomfortable. Hard to believe, but this is a town in which some of the younger people continue to support George Bush, simply because "at least he takes a stand".

Luckily for 主播大秀less, no one was taking it seriously, least of all Davey, who drank more and more beer before telling Pixie she's like Portishead, only Portishead are down here, and Pixie's way up there on an invisible scale of excellence.

Monday 10th September, Charleston, South Carolina
Six hours on the road and we arrived at our southernmost destination, Charleston. It's the total opposite of Greenville, an old genteel Southern town with beautiful colonial buildings and a tree-lined Main Street, crawling with students. Nothing in the South is ever simple though, because Charleston is where slaves arrived in America, and as much as you can admire the old houses and their intricate craftsmanship, it's impossible to forget that whoever built it was never paid, and wasn't even considered a human being.

Our gig in Charleston is in an old Communications museum - this means it's full of old radios, phonographs, wax cylinder players, the original film projectors, stereographs, and old record collections - it's an audiophile's paradise, and the curator is so excited to have people come and be interested, he gives us a free tour that night and follows it up the next day. It's part of the Univeristy, but the kids who politely sit in front of us during the set don't seem to be aware of, let alone excited by, the collection. Which is a shame.

By now we've perfected the set and for the second night running receive a huge donation and sell a few hundred dollars worth of tshirts and albums. So far all the cliches about the South are holding true - the people are warm and friendly, the racial divisions are stark and entrenched, and you only have to step outside the door for a minute, at any time of the day or night, to break into a sweat. The humidity is so heavy it feels like you're dragging it behind you.

Tuesday 11th September, Greenwood, South Carolina
From the sublime to the ridiculous, Greenwood is small town with an active punk rock community, who happen to be not speaking to one another at the moment. So we end up playing in a very, very small house party, in the home of a nice woman and her daughter. Our hostess is very kind, but has a strange and slightly disturbing obsession with Harry Potter. Surrounded by posters of Daniel Radcliffe and friends, I have a strange and disturbed sleep.

The next day after she leaves for work a small platoon of stray cats arrive at the door looking to for food. It's all getting a bit too weird for me, but as we are about to embark on the longest drive yet, we don't hang around long.

Wednesday 12th September, Charlottesville, Virginia
After an eight hour drive that took us through the beautiful Appalachian Blue Ridge mountains we pulled into Charlottesville, a small but historic city; home to Thomas Jefferson, William Faulkner, and the Dave Matthews Band.

Our venue for tonight's gig was the Tea Bazaar, a caf茅 in the style of a Morrocan bazaar that served - yes, that's right - tea. All the staff seemed to be invovled in dance and drama, and they talked about their yoga classes in between serving up bizarre blends of tea and various flavours of tobacco in hookahs. I felt like Jabba the Hut puffing away on my apple tobacco hookah, not a bad analogy because three solid weeks of non-stop beer consumption does tend to give you a bit of a jelly-belly.

The music suits the venue perfectly and it's a shame that one of Charlottesville's biggest bands are playing just across the street, but those who do stay to watch are, as with everyone else on this tour so far, attentive and (more importantly) generous.

Thursday 13th September, Richmond, Virginia
Back to Richmond then, for the final gig as Pixie Saytar and the Sunshine Three. As always, it's completely different from what's gone before. A roadside bar, complete with neon signs and pool table, two rockabilly bands playing honky-tonk, and then us, drunk as all hell and trying not to worry about the new fan who drove all the way from Greenville to say hi. That's a long way, you know.

The fact that Ciaran's itinerary prevented him from making the last two shows and the economics of keeping the van dictate that this will have to be the last gig. And it's good. It doesn't feel like the end, but it is. Pixie and Ricki are carrying on, by the way, but Ciaran and I are finished up. Which is shame, because I was just getting used to it. From here we headed north, back to Pennsylvania, then onto New York for a day, and finally home.

Bernard Keenan