The Bones of J.R. Jones - BUS INVADERS Ep. 1822

Hey, it's J.R. from The Bones, J.R. Jones, out here on tour, in support of our upcoming album Slow Lightning, and this is our Taco, our Toyota Taco, that's how we get around from A to B, just pretty trim and low profile, and I'll show you a little bit about it. So this is kind of the setup here, there's just two of us in here, it's just Daniel, my drummer, and myself, and generally speaking I do a lot of the driving, Daniel sleeps, I don't know, maybe I'm just a control freak, but that's kind of the dynamic, it's a total mess, but we try to keep it tidy as much as we can. So when we're on these long trips, honestly, we'll listen to a few playlists that we create, but truth be told, we're both a little bit of a sociopath, I don't know, we like silence, so for, like today we had a four hour drive, and for 90% of it, it was just quiet, just dead silence, it gives me a chance to rest my voice, Daniel can listen to his podcast if he wants, and, you know, zone out or whatever it might be, but we just usually sit quietly, which is a little weird, I know, for a band, but we're around loud music all night, every night, we like to give our ears a rest. Yeah, so you know, this is obviously my work vehicle, and we try to give it a little bit of life, but usually on my travels we collect, or I collect, my wife collects, little artifacts, so we have a lot of things here, like seaweed, this is from the shore near Malibu, we have some creosote up here, from the Saguaro National Park outside Tucson, these rocks, I think, are from Utah, yeah, and this pine cone is definitely from the Pacific Northwest, but you know, it's just little bits like that, little bits of memorabilia, I guess, for lack of a better word, of our travels and tours and things like that, while we're on the road that we kind of keep adding and subtracting depending on how long they last, like, so these are, these probably have run their course, honestly, but yeah, we'll see, you know, next trip we'll bring a, we'll get a new set. Beyond all that, you know, like, we have kind of your basics here, like, I'm a, being a touring musician, I don't go out much at night, so coffee is a big part of my life, this is, well, I try, I usually try to bring coffee with me to brew, today was an exception, because I'm a bit of a coffee snob, and it's like the one joy I get while I'm on the road, but you know, obviously coffee, and you gotta have your charging station for your maps and crap like that, but you know, it's just a regular little truck, this is how we get around. So this is the crew cab, but really it just becomes kind of a storage space for all our belongings, we have an extra camping mattress down here that I'll throw on the floor sometimes, and you know, we try to keep our dirty laundries from our clean laundries, and usually the back side of this just becomes a dirty laundry pile, you know, so we know which one's clean and dirty, and yeah, you know, it ain't pretty, but it does the job. And so, you know, beyond, like, dirty laundry, like, on that side, we'll, like, usually just for convenience sake, we'll throw our backpacks or suitcases back here, just so we can grab them and go in the venue real quick, and, you know, happily, it's what we grab when we go into hotels or wherever it is that we're crashing for the night, and don't need to worry about people breaking in because there's nothing left, unless they want my dirty underwear. All right, guys, so this is where all the real magic happens, honestly, this is where we throw all our gear in at the end of the night, and obviously right now, it's empty because we're loaded into a venue, but I got this cap put on the back of my Tacoma last year and had it rigged with some lights, which is, like, probably the high-end aspect of what we do here, but I got a spare kick drum back there that I'm dropping off for a buddy that's traveling with us. But other than that, you know, it's, we have a system to it, which is great, it usually takes us two or three nights to figure it out, but, you know, kick drum first, then my guitar amp, and all the heavy things kind of go in the center of the truck, and we get lighter and lighter as we build back out, and finally, at the end, you know, all the miscellaneous, like, drum stands and crap like that, where nobody knows where it goes, honestly, you just kind of fit them into the corners where you can. Amazingly enough, I've toured as a three-piece with a bass player and a full kit, merch, guitars, you know, I travel with basically four instruments of my own, myself, and then the drummer, and it all manages to fit back here somehow, so, I don't know, we do pretty good, we're pretty economical, so, it's good. Thank you so much for taking a look at my little taco truck, yeah, it's not fancy, but it's home for too many months out of the year, honestly. You can find me at thebonesofgrjones.com, I do have that new record coming out on Friday the 13th, Slow Lightning is the name of the record, you can find it probably anywhere, on your digital streaming services and all that good stuff, or at a show, and, you know, I have a show, next tour starts in the middle of October, November, I'll be in Europe, and then all across country next year, early next year, so, I hope to see you out there. Thanks for coming out.