I had a chance to hit the road with the boys from Blackberry Smoke for a week while they played shows en route to two sold-out shows with Kid Rock.

I went along to document video footage from the road, backstage, on-stage, etc.This is the tour bus the band calls home. This was my first time on a bus like this, which was pretty awesome! It was tough to get used to sleeping when the bus was in motion, but it was super-comfortable..

The driver, Rusty, was a cool guy that took great pride in what he did. He was always washing, shining, and polishing the bus when we were stopped.

First stop was Indianapolis, for a gig at a HUGE week-long fair. First thing I saw when I looked out of the bus was this equally enormous sculptured likeness of Grant Wood’s American Gothic.

I wandered around the fair until they were slated to be on-stage. I went for a tractor-ride around the fairgrounds that took about 45 minutes to get me back where I started.

There was a huge lot of vintage tractors. The fair had a whole commerce section of the fair revolved around farming and agriculture.

O

ld versus new. There was also an area of the fair specializing in the sale of windmills.

After a brief sound-check, the band had a radio interview on-site with WFMS. My lens was way to long to shoot in the mobile-station, so I shot from outside where you could still hear the broadcast. Richard told me I was number one. He was right! The great thing about shooting this band, is that I’ve known some of the band members for 9 years… so everyone was themselves. No awkward vibes having some random dude wielding a camera in their faces.

They hit the stage and played a great set, despite the scorching heat. I got a ton of great footage from the show.

A mother and son soaking in the music. I always enjoy the family vibe at fairs like this.

You can see it all around you… young and old.

After the show, they had a police escort to sign autographs for the fans.

Afterward, we wandered around the fairgrounds in search of deep fried bacon… and we found it. The lady was kind enough to let us have it for free. She insisted we try it with gravy, but we were all kinda like… enough is enough. Regardless… Kev was pretty excited!rn.

I ate enough to say that I’ve tried it (read: one bite). Once our indigestion settled a bit, it was off to Flint, Michigan for a Machine Shop visit to see the band’s friend Randy Houser… then onto Detroit.

More to come, so stay tuned!