ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Thanksgiving is the official kickoff to this season of eating - probably eating too much.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Also, too much travel. And touring musicians - they tend to know a lot about both.
SHAPIRO: Now, I can attest that working and eating on the road is not always a rock star experience, especially for some indie bands.
LUKE PYENSON: Some folks use tour buses, but you're more likely to be in a sprinter van or - my band often toured in a minivan. There's a lot of different less glamorous ways of moving around the country and the world.
SHAPIRO: That's drummer Luke Pyenson. He recently retired from the indie band Frankie Cosmos. He spent a lot of time on the road where good food can mean everything.
PYENSON: Having a really special meal that roots you in the place that you are can be kind of a make-or-break thing for a day.
KELLY: True, but playing a different town every night means finding a delicious meal can be tricky.
SHAPIRO: Alex Bleeker is with the band Real Estate. He remembers a show in Austin, far from home, one Thanksgiving. The promoter had promised Thanksgiving dinner plus hotel rooms, which was a very big deal for them at the time.
ALEX BLEEKER: We were sleeping on people's floors. We were on couches. We couldn't afford to be in a hotel room. That was, like, a serious luxury, right?
KELLY: Yeah, not quite. The arrangements were not what he hoped for.
BLEEKER: We pull up to this fleabag motel. You know, it was bad - the type of place that you want to sleep on top of the covers and just hope that nothing goes wrong, you know? Promoter - very nice person - shows up with a bag of food. And it's very clearly, like, kind of meager portions of somebody else's Thanksgiving dinner, you know? Like, he tried. But it wasn't this lavish, you know, like, beautiful care-filled moment that I had been dreaming of.
SHAPIRO: Bleeker said the energy of the crowd they played for made up for the hotel and the meal. Now he makes a point not to tour on Thanksgiving.
KELLY: Adam Bleeker (ph) and Luke Pyenson are the authors of "Taste In Music: Eating On Tour With Indie Musicians," stories from their indie band friends who dish - I had to say it - about their good, bad and ugly food adventures.
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