Sasha and Digweed’s truckstop gig

Sasha and Digweed’s truckstop gig

25 April, 2008 | 4.57PM

• Section: Music News Topics: Sasha & Digweed Tour 2008
• Written by: Industry Boy

America is the land of dreamers and chancers, with opportunistic, optimistic Joes and Bobs on every corner.

No clearer was this fact demonstrated to me on this tour, then when we awoke at this truck stop in a place called Wee, in California (I’m not making this up).

Last night Sasha and John Digweed played at Roseland Theatre in Portland, Oregon and straight after the show we hit the road, with everyone snoring in their dark, warm human cubby holes.

The exciting and quite disorientating thing about touring is that you go to sleep in one part of the world and wake up in another part.

Yesterday it was cold and rainy in Portland, but when I stumbled out of the bus this morning the ground was parched dry, with a blue sky and a powerful sun glaring down.

The bus was parked at a truck wash; “We can’t roll into Coachella festival with a stinky old bus,” said Blake, the bus driver.

It looked like the bus was going to be there for a bit, so I looked across the truck stop at the various small shops and restaurants and spotted a sign for ‘Pizza. Spaghetti. Burgers’, above a shady looking, dilapidated building.

Spaghetti sounded like breakfast, so I wondered over to the restaurant which was called ‘Grandma Roses’ Kitchen’.

The front door was open so I walked inside but found the restaurant empty.

Just as I was about to turn and leave, a guy wearing a trilby hat came out of the kitchen and introduced himself as ‘Captain Rich’, “the new owner of the place”.

“Howdy sir, what can I do you for,” he said.

“I saw the sign for spaghetti, can I get take out?” I asked.

“Sure, here’s the menu. Hey your accent, you’re from England, right? Am I right?” he said, grinning through his crooked, stained teeth.

I nod. “You ain’t on that crew bus parked at the truck wash, are ya?” he said. I nod again.

“You from a band or something?”

“I’m with some DJs actually.”

“DJs huh,” he said, stroking his stubbly chin. “Yeah we got DJs in here sometimes, doing karaoke and whatnot. Hey don’t suppose you guys want to play in here, do ya?”

I looked around at Grandma Roses’, at its rickety old tables, at the ceiling fans spinning in the tin roof and the American flag hanging in the corner and replied politely: “To be honest, I think this may be a little small for them. They usually play in venues a bit bigger.”

“Well everyone has to start somewhere,” he continued. “Those Beatles guys, they started playing in small little pubs, right? Well if you boys want to play ‘ere and help a fella out, here’s my card,” said Captain Rich, handing over a white business card that has his name on it and contact info, plus the title ‘President’.

I ordered chicken alfredo pasta, and ate it watching our tour bus get scrubbed by moustached men in wife beaters.

I told Sasha and John about Captain Rich and his kind offer, and we all laughed at the thought that if Sasha and John Digweed’s careers every take a turn for the worst, they could always call up Captain Rich and play at Grandma Roses’ Kitchen in a truck stop; in a place called Wee, California.

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