all photos copyright Zach Ehlert
please do not use without permission
April
May
June
Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Marco Benevento/Joe Russo Duo and a dash of Umphree's McGee gather
in the basement of a motel restaurant while interstate traffic whizzes by thirty feet away,
to let off a little post High Sierra steam.
Brian Hass beats on the legs of his Fender Rhodes with a screwdriver, the inner working of the
musical machine, Joe Russo matches him clang for clang on his drumset, whacking rims, poles,
anything within reach. And don't forget about Marco. The man on the opposite side of the stage
pulses bassy rhythms through the B3, tweaking buttons and knobs, banging on the keys like an
experimental and ecstatic two year old. Grown men can't play music like this. It takes a true
creative mind to manipulate and slaughter innocent instruments for the sake of sound. But they do it.
The entire night is a journey through a series of sounds. This is all new and experimental,
purely improvisational. Someone'll pick up a beat or a rhythm, a series of notes strung along
together into a measure or two, then someone else will counter with something completely different,
faster faster. The overwhelming theme of the night is who can bang the loudest and the fastest on
whatever they've got at hand. Add in a crazed guitar for the higher stuff. Balance out (complement)
the throbbing from bass guitar B3 kick drum. Soaring up into the clouds and slicing them open with
jagged riffs, only to subside and let the rain cascade down gentle from the sky, soothe the savage
mountain into false submission and. . . BLANG! KRAZAAM! They're off again.
June 27, 28, 29 - The 2nd Annual Northwest String Summit!
6 sets of Yonder Mountain String Band, Old and in the Gray, Keller Williams,
Larry Keel, Fiddler's Four, Piano Throwers, etc. . .
Click here for pictures of the weekend.
June 21
The first day of summer and Logan pass on Going-to-the-Sun road is closed due to snow.
It opens up later and we twist and turn over the narrow road (testing out the new tires
in the wet snowy conditions), sheer dropoff on one side, water pouring and seeping from
jagged rock on the other.
We spend the afternoon hiking through wet rainforrest to the edge of a breathtaking glacial
lake, then make camp on the shore of Lake McDonald.
June 20
Glacier National Park--hope our extra passanger appreciates where we're taking him.
June 19
Re-emerging into the howling wind we find the cab has become a refuge for moths
(we'll be releasing them back into the wild at an average of ten a day for the next week).
Traveling the northern route on hwy 2, heading for Glacier National Park, we wisely
decide on a motel room for the night. While unloading things from the truck
we discover another stow-away from the shores of Fort Peck Lake;
a small furry mouse living amongst our stores of food, gear and clothes. After an
unsuccessful attempt to flush him out of his new home, we make it inside the room
moments before the sky opens up and unleashes a torrent of rain.
June 18
Ahhhhh Montana, Big Sky country. Our perfect weather takes a turn for the worse.
To escape the howling winds on the shore of Fort Peck Lake we spend the night in the back of the truck.
June 17
Two new tires later, we finally head out.
Eastern North Dakota - We spend a relaxing evening camped on
the shore of Lake Ashtabula. 
June 16
Time to pack the truck up and head west for the String Summit.
Stopped before we can even leave by a flat tire - unrepairable.
June 15
Perfect weather for a graduation party.
June 12
Summer finally hits the midwest as temperatures soar into
the 80s under clear sunny skies.
June 5
Zach's little brother graduates from high school.
June 3
We begin the drive back west and make it all the way to Minneapolis,
where we stay with Zach's parents.
May 28
While taking some time to work, deep in the woods of northwest Wisconsin,
we barely survive an encounter with one of nature's speediest predators:
the Porcupine!
May 23-25
Big Wu Family Reunion! Black River Falls, WI.
Check out pictures in the Photo Gallery
May 21
No road trip would be complete without a stop in Mitchell, SD at the:
May 20
After a week spent hiking high in the mountains and playing with family and friends,
we leave Evergreen and head toward the Big Wu Family Reunion . Our first
night back on the road, we camp under a clear, starry sky near the highest
waterfall in Nebraska, 70 foot Smith Falls.
May 15
In honor of Reanna's birth, 25 years ago today, the moon shows it's appreciation with
a full eclipse; alas the night is cloudy and we can barely see it.
May 12
Zach gets a haircut.
May 11
Wyoming is a lonely place to drive through and for some reason (perhaps it was the constant
billboard reminders) we stop at Little America, a true microcosm of American society.
Well after dark we roll in to the small town of Evergreen, high in Colorado's Rocky Mountains,
and wish Reanna's mom a happy mother's day, in person.
May 10
We find ourselves in a small, smoky bar in Soda Springs, ID where we witness
the hard rock mastery of Exit 69
May 7
Back on the road again, briefly. After an hour on the road we exit I-84 and drive to
Herman Creek Recreation Area. The campground is closed. We park outside the gate and
shoulder our packs for two nights in the Columbia Wilderness.
April 20 - May 6
Holding over Nothwest Oregon
April 15
Our old friends, the telephone poles, return to make straight courses popular.
A fenced farmer's field displays three wire men twisted and melded to hold US Flags,
guns and sit on a white toilet named: UN. Abandoned cabins shed shingles like dreaded hair;
I smile and think of the homemade metal wire head massager a man shared with full dreaded
heads
(a bit painfully) the last night in the campground around the barbecue that fed
every hungry soul in the camping lot, then made more.
April 14 Blue smoke silhouettes of men cycle music into the air on a stage under a yellow
red striped circus tent.
My eyes close. Patches of curved stitch scars, like aboriginal dot painted maps, blink in passing headlights
The music is liquid tinted tornadoes swirling in balloon containers; glass panes made entirely of light hinting at
Two white sheets flash numbers dancing like computer codes or accountant tables at the back of the tent.
A pregnant half moon large and mustard yellow hangs on the horizon, perfectly timed for set break. The crowd thins
April 12
April 11
April 10
We're clams baking in our own shells. The desert spring sun heats our windowed cab, taunting the
April 9
After filling our gastank ($2.14/gallon!?! Are you kidding me?) we leave the warm desert
sunshine behind on the drive back north, to Oregon. Ten miles south of Goldfield, on hwy 95,
it begins to hail. By the time we reach Tonopah, it's a full-fledged snowstorm. Twenty miles further
and we're crawling along through inches of thick snow, giant wet flakes fall from the sky.
Reanna's sun burnt shoulders tingle and burn as hail and snow pummel her tank topped back, half-naked,
searching desperately for more clothes.The snow doesn't make things glow and radiate, covering
the dry death as I thought it would. The oversized black tires, rusted abandoned trailer homes,
broken boards, mustard yellow metal buildings next to cement gas stations in front of mining hill
skeletons and caved in shacks exist in walls and I'm forced to notice them as an end in themselves.
The snow flakes launch into our windshield like small inverted jellyfish. Everything is white.
This is not the desert where we just spent three days sleeping outside, dancing and sweating in sandals.
Area 51
Soundtest 3-D
4/12/03 Latenight
They are scientists of some sort; I haven't identified what they're creating yet but it is certainly profound
(it's somewhere between the realms of a new form of energy tapping into a previously unused area of the brain,
and neon glowing pie filling). Particle's music flows on a blue wave of fire, invisible to the naked eye.
The music, as a thing in itself, is good, but the real power comes from the hint of what it carries; like seeing
the yellow rind of a grapefruit but knowing a beautiful pink fruit changes, grows, lives and dies within. We hear
the outer crust, but in it are all the layers; this detection of more is the music's vein. It's similar
to the philosophy behind the red square paintings of the Modernist era. A single red square encompasses all the
colors of the spectrum, every shape, not copied and altered forms of things that already exist; we see it all
in the red square. Their music experiments in things I cannot define in sounds and instruments, but I feel it
in their collaboration.
across my eyelids. I wonder if this is a common occurrence, as the image's essence is that of a an atom particle.
Music moves like rubber bands turning into metal--not fighting. There's definitely a transformation going on here.
I can taste the change though I don't know what it was before. I feel like Dylan in the chorus of
"Ballad of a Thin Man": something is happening, but you don't know what it is . . .
formation and neon earthworms gliding the air like paper Chinese pagodas. I can fly to this sound. No flapping,
darting through space like a sparrow holding wings tight to its body tunneling into strong wind. It's a fast
violent free ride. The sound thickens and permeates like osmosis; millions of minuscule, quick vibrations give
life to the dust filled air, invisible but leaving a scent. I bounce shake and flail to fast hard jams but also
sway my hips in a gypsy fashion flowing my arms to catch and throw an invisible ball.
Rob and Chuck from moe. join the musical creation on stage. Their addition mellows the music, makes it thick
and easier to hold. The keyboardist, Steve Molitz, plays like it's horribly painful--and he'd die if he weren't
doing it. Charlie Hitchcock, the guitarist, stands hard and sturdy like a thing forcing orgasms. Eric Gould
smiles excited energy over his bass and the drummer, Darren Pujalet, does a bit of it all.
and a light blue sky hints at daybreak. A blue balloon bounces on the heads of the remaining crowd proclaiming,
"It's A Boy!" In the middle of nowhere at Area 51, where the only things they risk disturbing are underground
government alien labs (that don't really exist, of course) nothing is stopping these guys from playing all night--
it seems they intend to. They've been regulars at this festival for all of its three years, starting as a small
experimental band and moving to a cosmic blended force drawing crowds and creating energy. Gravity weighs on me;
their intensity gives no respite. The world is beginning to unfold in shadows of itself. Ocean breezes and rainbow
scents flood my senses and I suspect I need to rest since these are unusual things to experience in the desert.
Particle's sound fills the early morning like crickets chirping their legs together as if they were violins and
owls spreading a call across the land to own the night.
-Reanna
April 13
A few episodes of Fox's newest pilot, "When Hippies Get Mad!" take place in the campground as two
or three rainbow flavored men wrestle in the grass, butting eachother's guts like padded cows,making
jokes amidst the rumble then standing up and giving eachother great big hugs (I don't think it will make prime time).
Day 2 Area 51
It is a joyful, laughing, happy and extremely generous crowd; everyone sharing and
playing together without pretext of strata layer colors of their lives.
To Area 51, land of hidden aliens and government secrets; over boiling pot road, past tumbleweed and
fluorescent lit casinos to a small town huddled against the highway where we camp in a casino parking
lot for three days under leafy trees, on grass wondering how it got there.A friendly excited pink boa,
hiding the young secretary of the LVJBS,greets us at the gate.Inflated aliens hang from the ceiling
in a mass lynching demonstration, warning aliens what happens to their kind in these parts:
Nevada respects no living thing with empty pockets.
A drum circle moves around our camp site at night and I sit lotus style in a hula hoop dancing with a shaker.
How did the circle move here? I dance as if I'm in a vortex, an energy circle; they have all gathered to
perform a ritual and I am the centerpiece; the battery for these bass vibrations. I'm either being sacrificed
or worshipped. I don't care which; my eyes are closed and earth tone rhythms soak me on all sides.
Mike Gordon and Leo Koettke take us through a land of telephone poles and lines coating the road;
they make straight lines seem natural. Small towns crowd the highway every fifty miles or so like
it's a life source. Past Reno we're greeted by a billboard stating,
"Hot Springs on Public Lands: Stay Out and Stay Alive," with fuming lines leading to a crossbones
and skull. What have we done to this desert? Have we boiled underground pools and springs with toxic
waste and chemicals, killing the little water that's here? Or perhaps the "hot springs"
are poorly named and in no way constitute a spring (or water for that matter)
and are just heated pools of chemical carnage.
translucent window panes, "Open!" So it can poke a fork in and swallow us whole (with or without butter).
I crack my window to find the fork is cows, lots and lots of cows.
Leaving the cabin a mountain peaks the distance in true white; it's plaster in sunlight, frosting over
white fudge cookies--I can pick off chunks with my thumb nail. It's grand, alone, pulsing, as if it
just now burst from the earth, standing sure-footed without breath. Along highway 97 down a tree
covered hill, the earth's strata reveals itself horizontal, striped in thin layers of grey between
tangoldenyellowredbrown eras. Thousands of years condense themselves into
less than a foot
of grey ash--waiting for roots to use the minerals of past worlds.
Billboards spring up in different shades of block letters as we approach Klamath Falls, Oregon.
A sea green truck and matching car stand in a private museum along the road in the last place colors
like that exist on machines designed by men.