Up to that point we had been traveling in vans of various sizes — airport runs, hotel shuttles, long drives between cities in a country that felt impossibly big.

Then one morning we walked out of the hotel and saw it sitting in the sun.

A vintage tour bus that could have told us a few stories.

It looked like an Airstream trailer on steroids — long, rounded, gleaming in the heat. The kind of bus you imagined Johnny might have ridden decades earlier.

Everyone was excited.

Johnny loved it too.

In hindsight, that probably should have been the first sign something was going to go wrong. After all the vans and flights, seeing that thing felt like a gift too good to be true.

It turned out to be.

I picked out my bunk and figured out which windows would give me the best vantage for photos while we were rolling down the road.

Somewhere out in the Brazilian countryside the bus shuddered and rolled to a stop.

The fan belt had snapped.

We were parked on a paved two-lane highway with dirt shoulders right along the edge of the jungle. Blue sky overhead. Wispy clouds drifting by. It would have been a beautiful afternoon if our tour bus hadn’t just died.

The smokers stepped off the bus and leaned against the side of it while the driver hitched a ride to the nearest gas station to find a replacement belt.

Inside, a fan kept Johnny cool while he listened to his iPod. As long as we were moving he usually stayed pretty relaxed.

From a distance the bus probably looked like an aluminum can that had spilled its contents on the side of the road.

After a while I noticed birds circling above us.

Vultures. Or some kind of bird of prey.
They probably thought they had hit the jackpot.

Eventually the driver returned with a replacement belt and the bus rumbled back to life.

The belt wasn’t meant to get us very far — just off the side of the road and somewhere safer.

We climbed back on and pulled away from the shoulder.

I remember looking up as we drove away and thinking those birds must have been disappointed.

It lasted about ten minutes.

The bus rolled into the same gas station the driver had just come from and died again.

That was it.

We unloaded everything and waited.

Eventually the promoter’s wife showed up to rescue us.

She pulled into the gas station in a small van.

She was pregnant.

There was a toddler in the back seat.

And there were seven of us.

We piled in anyway. Gear on our laps, guitars wedged wherever they would fit, an amp shoved into the back. I think a second car eventually came for the rest of the luggage, but we had what we needed for the show.

By the time we reached the venue we were already late. The sound was terrible and everyone was exhausted from the long roadside delay. It was one of those gigs where the band couldn’t wait for it to be over.

But the crowd didn’t know any of that.

They had no idea what it took to get there.

That vintage bus had looked like a gift too good to be true.

It was.

We never saw it again. For the rest of the tour we relied on taxis, old VW vans, and whatever vehicles the promoter could scrape together.

That night, after the show was finally over, we rode back to the hotel in a baby blue vintage VW bus.

Johnny rode shotgun.

More from Music and the Road

• Before the Beat
• Put Him on the Same Floor
• The Laminate
• The Black Curtain
• Back of the Bus

The Fan Belt was originally published in Music and the Road: Observations Through the Side Door on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Susan Tedeschi was sitting on the couch at the back of the bus with a guitar in her lap.

The body of the guitar rested against the pattern of her dress as she played a few blues licks, warming up her hands before the show. The bus was quiet. Outside, the Wanee Festival buzzed with thousands of people moving between stages, but back here it felt calm.

I sat across from her trying to look relaxed.

It was my first night on the job.

Earlier that afternoon, Paul had asked Susan if she wanted to sit in with Johnny on Miss Ann. She loved the idea, but there was one small problem.

She didn’t know the song.

Marion turned to me.

“Find the lyrics,” she said.

I grabbed my laptop and headed for a picnic table to log onto the festival Wi-Fi. The signal was dead. For a moment I thought I had already failed my first assignment.

Then I remembered my phone had internet access.

I walked back into the trailer holding a pen and a stack of paper someone had given me.

“O ye of little faith,” I said to Marion. “My phone works.”

Susan laughed.

I sat down at the table and started writing out the lyrics by hand while she, Johnny, and Marion talked nearby. Every so often she would glance over to see how it was coming along.

“Is that legible?” I asked.

“It’s perfect,” she said.

When I finished, I walked across the sandy festival grounds toward Derek and Susan’s bus. I knocked on the door, but she wasn’t there yet. A moment later I saw her walking toward me.

“I’ve got the lyrics,” I said.

She smiled.

“What’s your name?”

In all the excitement, I realized I hadn’t actually introduced myself.

“Lancelot.”

She said it back like she had already known it.

Derek walked up with their drummer, JJ, and the three of us talked for a moment before Derek headed toward the stage to prepare for his own set. Before he left, I asked if we could take a quick picture. JJ snapped the photo and I handed the camera back, still trying to act like this was a normal afternoon.

As I started walking back toward Johnny’s trailer, Susan stopped me.

“Do you have a copy of the song I can listen to?”

“I might be able to borrow Johnny’s iPod,” I said.

“Perfect,” she said. “Bring it to the bus.”

By the time I got back with the iPod there were only 30 minutes until showtime. Miss Ann was the third song in the set, so she didn’t have much time.

Derek answered the bus door.

“Can you give this to Susan?” I said. “I’ll come back in fifteen minutes.”

When I returned, her guitar tech waved me toward the back of the bus.

Susan was sitting on the couch with the guitar in her lap, the same one I remembered when I first stepped inside. She was running through the chord changes, feeling her way through the song.

I sat down across from her and listened.

She played a few bluesy licks and smiled.

“I’m only messing around,” she said.

Then she played another riff.

“Actually, I’m not.”

I must have been grinning like an idiot.

“How’d it go?” I asked.

“I think I got it,” she said. “It’s a pretty straight-forward blues song.”

I didn’t doubt it for a second.

Susan Tedeschi had been doing this her whole life. Learning a blues tune 30 minutes before showtime wasn’t going to stop her.

While I packed up the small speaker and the iPod, she put on some makeup and told me she had forgotten her own and had to borrow some from her mother-in-law.

“Derek wants me to look my best for the fans,” she said. “I like to do it for him too.”

Then she laughed.

“Secretly all women like to take care of their man.”

“When I find a good one,” I said, “I’ll remember that.”

She laughed again and the moment stretched in that easy way she seemed to create wherever she was.

I had met Susan once before after a show in Seattle. Back then I was just another fan interviewing a musician.

This was different.

Now I was part of Johnny Winter’s crew, sitting on a tour bus with a guitar legend who trusted me to help her get ready for the stage.

I hadn’t taught her the song. I hadn’t rehearsed it with her. I had just delivered an iPod. But somehow it felt like more than that.

It felt like I was part of something.

“I’ll see you on stage,” I said as I stepped off the bus.

Later that night she walked out beside Johnny and sat down in the chair next to him. The crowd roared.

She played a sharp little solo over the changes and smiled through the verses as Johnny kept jumping in ahead of her on the vocals.

She handled it like a pro.

I watched from the pit and felt proud of her more than anything else.

Years later I saw Susan again after a show in Prague. She remembered me from the Johnny days.

I told her how much that afternoon on the bus had meant to me.

She smiled the same way she had back then.

Like we had known each other for years.

More from Music and the Road

• Before the Beat
• Put Him on the Same Floor
• The Laminate
• The Black Curtain
• The Fan Belt

Back of the Bus was originally published in Music and the Road: Observations Through the Side Door on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We were parked near the Mississippi, playing a cultural center with classrooms downstairs and a small venue upstairs. There was a model steamboat in the foyer. Kids’ art on the walls. It felt wholesome.

Jeff had advanced the show like he always did. His requests were simple: security at every entrance, someone to watch the bus, someone to escort Johnny to the elevator. He always asked the same questions — How many stairs? How far to the stage?

That night, there was almost no security.

Behind the bass player’s position on stage left, there was a black curtain. Jeff had built what he called the “guitar world” just behind it — guitars lined up in the dark, tuned and ready. It was on the same level as the audience. Anyone could step through the curtain and be standing next to the instruments in seconds.

About two songs before the guitar change, Jeff noticed a man standing beside him.

Full beer in hand. The oversized kind you get at stadiums.

He had walked straight through the curtain.

Jeff remembers thinking less about the man and more about the Firebird resting inches away. In two songs, that guitar would be in Johnny’s hands.

He leaned toward the man and said, “You can’t be back here.”

The man didn’t move.

“Step back,” Jeff said.

The man took one small step to the side. Almost a joke.

Jeff put a hand on his shoulder and guided him back through the curtain.

That’s when the punch came.

His glasses flew off. It was already dark. Without them, he couldn’t see much of anything.

So he swung.

He connected.

They stumbled through a set of double doors into a lit hallway. A stagehand jumped in. It was fast and messy and over almost as quickly as it started.

There was blood on the floor.

Someone found Jeff’s glasses.

Marion, the tour manager, told him to get to the bus.

“Wait,” Jeff said. “I’ve got to do the guitar change.”

He went back through the curtain, handed the guitar to Johnny, and the show continued.

Johnny never knew.

Afterward, there were paramedics. Police. A detective. The man had a reputation. Charges were threatened and quietly dropped.

Jeff doesn’t remember the paperwork.

He remembers the beer near the Firebird.

“That’s it,” he told me later. “I had to defend the Firebird.”

He didn’t raise his voice when he said it.

He was just doing his job.

More from Music and the Road

• Before the Beat
• Put Him on the Same Floor
• The Laminate
• Back of the Bus
• The Fan Belt

The Black Curtain was originally published in Music and the Road: Observations Through the Side Door on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Two weeks to pack, quit my job, drop out of college — one class shy of graduating — and say goodbye to friends and family.

Then I flew back east to meet the band in Florida.

It didn’t feel reckless. It felt inevitable.

My first official gig was the Wanee Festival in Live Oak, a two-day swirl of southern rock, blues, and heat. The Allman Brothers Band were headlining. The lineup stretched in every direction — Dr. John, the Black Keys, Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, Gov’t Mule, Widespread Panic, Johnny Winter.

For years, I had stood on the other side of barricades at festivals like this. I knew what it felt like to crane my neck from the crowd, camera in hand, hoping to catch a glimpse.

This time, the laminate around my neck opened gates without question.

Before heading to the grounds, we stopped at a Waffle House. Johnny stayed in the SUV while the rest of us went inside. Midway through breakfast, someone noticed his door was open.

Johnny had stepped out of the car and was relieving himself in the parking lot.

Marion sprinted outside. We sat there laughing.

“What were you doing?” Paul asked him later.

“I had to pee,” Johnny said. “So I peed.”

The myth dissolves quickly on the road.

The festival grounds were thick with tie-dye, dust, and wandering guitars. Security waved us through and we parked beside our trailer. A red and silver bus sat nearby — Derek Trucks’ rig. I’d seen it the year before from the crowd in Victoria. Now I was unloading gear ten yards away.

Backstage felt casual, almost sleepy in the evening heat. Musicians drifted between trailers. Susan Tedeschi sat in with Johnny that night. Warren Haynes would later step onstage without rehearsal.

But none of that was mine to marvel at.

I had work to do.

As showtime approached, everything moved with purpose. Johnny liked precision. Timing mattered. I moved between the pit and the sides of the stage, camera in hand, trying to stay useful and invisible at the same time.

When Warren appeared in the shadows with his Les Paul slung over his shoulder, it felt cinematic. He stepped into the lights and tore into “Tore Down” with Johnny as if they had planned it for weeks.

It was seamless.

And I was no longer watching from behind a barricade.

After the set, the crowd migrated toward the Peach Stage for the Allman Brothers. Paul told me Johnny was heading over to sit in.

They climbed into a van and disappeared.

For a moment, I considered running after them.

Instead, I turned back toward the trailer.

Gear doesn’t lock itself up.

While the AllmanBrothers roared across the festival grounds, I secured guitars, cases, cables — every piece back where it belonged. When I finally finished, I tried to flag down a ride to catch the tail end of the jam, but it was too late.

I stood by the trailer and listened to the music carry through the trees.

The moon blinked between the mossy branches as the Allman Brothers played us out.

For years, I had dreamed of being inside a night like this.

Now I was.

Not as a spectator.

As part of it.

Not bad for a first night’s work.

More from Music and the Road

• Before the Beat
• Put Him on the Same Floor
• The Black Curtain
• Back of the Bus
• The Fan Belt

The Laminate was originally published in Music and the Road: Observations Through the Side Door on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It was at the Showbox in Seattle. I remember standing near the backstage hallway, trying to look like I belonged there — not quite fan, not quite journalist, somewhere in between. I had done my homework. I had questions. I felt prepared.

Prepared and nervous in equal measure.

Johnny had an aura about him. Even before he said a word, there was a kind of perimeter around him. He wasn’t rude. He wasn’t warm either — standoffish, especially with journalists. You got the sense he’d done this a thousand times and didn’t see the point in doing it again.

I’d ask a question and get a short answer. A glaze would come over his eyes halfway through. The air felt heavy. My questions, which sounded sharp in my notes the night before, now felt like homework assignments read out loud.

That’s when Paul stepped in.

Paul Nelson — his manager — leaned forward and filled in the blanks Johnny left hanging. He expanded on stories, added context, rescued the conversation without making it obvious he was doing so.

When it was over, I thanked them both and slipped back into the venue. I don’t remember much about the set that night. I remember thinking I hadn’t blown it — but I hadn’t landed it either.

Still, I emailed Paul months later.

And then again.

Well over a year passed before I heard from him again.

When Johnny was booked to play a festival in Portland, I reached out one more time. I didn’t expect much. I just wanted my name back on their radar.

Paul wrote back.

“Come down. Hang out. Re-interview Johnny.”

That weekend I drove to Portland without a room booked anywhere. I figured I’d sleep in my car. When they arrived at the airport Holiday Inn, Paul asked if I had a room.

I told him no.

“Put him on the same floor as us,” he told the receptionist.

It felt small and enormous at the same time.

The second interview wasn’t much different from the first. Johnny was still Johnny — auratic, distant, answering just enough. But something had shifted. Interviewing him in his hotel room felt different. Quieter. More intimate than the bus.

Paul had asked me to pick up something Johnny couldn’t travel with. It wasn’t exactly in the job description — not that I had one. I didn’t hesitate. I just wanted to be useful.

I drove Paul around Portland to grab supplies.

I helped unload gear.

I stayed out of the way when I needed to.

I said yes to everything.

Over the next few weeks, I followed when I was invited. Sold merch. Slept on the bus. Drove extra merchandise home and shipped it east when they didn’t want to haul it across the country. Sent a Christmas card into silence.

Then nothing.

Four months. No call. No email.

I was finishing my last class, walking across campus when I checked my phone and saw one missed call from an unfamiliar number with a familiar area code.

My stomach dropped.

I called back. Voicemail.

I remember standing there in the hallway, staring at the screen like I could will it to ring again. It had been seven months since I’d heard from Paul. I left a short message and went home trying not to think about it.

A few hours later, my phone rang.

“Hi, Lance. What are you doing next month?”

Johnny’s assistant had been fired. Their intern had moved away. They needed help.

“Do you wanna go to Europe with us?”

I didn’t hesitate.

“Absolutely.”

After I hung up, I stood there in the kitchen, already packing in my head. My feet didn’t touch the ground again until the tour was over.

It didn’t feel sudden. It felt inevitable — like every small favor, every ignored email, every night spent sleeping somewhere else had been leaning quietly toward that phone call.

The first interview hadn’t gone well.

But I kept saying yes.

And the door opened just enough.

More from Music and the Road

• Before the Beat
• The Laminate
• The Black Curtain
• Back of the Bus
• The Fan Belt

Put Him on the Same Floor was originally published in Music and the Road: Observations Through the Side Door on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Edgar wasn’t at the airport.

The first show was a festival in Ohio — 20,000 people. Jason had the music memorized, but he had never met Edgar.

Backstage, techs moved quickly. Cables tightened. Lights warmed the stage. The noise from the crowd carried backstage in steady waves.

Still no Edgar.

Ten minutes before call time, they were told to take the stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen… the Edgar Winter Band!”

Jason took his place behind the kit.

And that’s when the limousine pulled up.

Two years earlier, Jason was playing R&B and Top 40 covers at a hole-in-the-wall Creole restaurant in Los Angeles.

The gigs were steady. The songs were familiar. Crowds came as much for the food as the music. One night a bass player named Mark Meadows sat in with the band. He and Jason locked in easily. At the end of the set, Mark approached him.

“Man, you’re dope.”

“So are you,” Jason replied.

They exchanged numbers. Another good night in a city that had plenty of them.

Mark started coming around more often. A few weeks later, he brought a guest — a man who did not blend into the room. He sat directly in front of the stage, listening closely. Jason noticed but kept playing.

The next week, the man came back. This time with his wife.

Then a third time.

He placed a small camera on the table and let it run.

Jason tried not to think about it too much. He’d seen stranger things in Los Angeles. Still, the man kept returning, watching, filming, leaving without much explanation.

On his last visit, he brought a guitar player with him.

During a break, the man finally introduced himself.

Dave Lopez.

“You’re a great drummer. Would you like to go on tour?”

When Jason walked into the audition room, it was already full. Drum cases leaned against the walls. Drum sticks pounded out familiar Winter tunes against bent knees. Somewhere behind the door, someone was warming up a double bass pedal at a speed he didn’t recognize from church or R&B clubs. This was different. This was rock n’ roll.

Some of the drummers had grown up on this music. You could hear it in the way they attacked the kit.

He leaned toward Dave and told him they had enough rock drummers in the room. It was probably fine if he stepped aside.

“Just do the audition,” Dave told him.

Jason took his seat behind the kit. He had mapped out every bar of the solo in “Frankenstein,” building it in his head the way he’d practiced it at home. He settled into the groove, waiting for the turn — and then Dave nodded.

“That’s good. Next song.”

Jason moved on.

The solo stayed in his pocket.

A few days later, Dave called. Jason had the gig.

There wasn’t much ceremony to it. Just instructions. Learn the catalog. Be ready in a month. Five or six CDs arrived soon after — nearly 30 songs in total, including “Tobacco Road,” “Free Ride,” and “Frankenstein.” Songs he had heard years earlier riding in his father’s truck, back when it was just his dad’s music.

On a live recording Dave gave him, the former drummer, Chris Frazier, drove the band with force — double bass, sharp turns, no hesitation. Jason listened closely. He understood what the music demanded.

He called Dave.

“I didn’t realize I’d have to play like this.”

“Do what you do,” Dave said. “That’s why we hired you.”

Jason learned the songs his way. Not an imitation. Not a replacement. He worked through them one at a time until they felt lived in.

There was still no call from Edgar. No rehearsal. No introduction. As the first show approached, Jason assumed there would be at least one run-through. A room. A handshake. Something.

There wasn’t.

The band met at the airport. The first show was a festival in Ohio — 20,000 people. Edgar wasn’t there.

Backstage, the noise from the crowd rolled toward the stage in waves. Techs moved quickly. Cables tightened. Stage lights heated up.

Still no Edgar.

They were called to the stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen… the Edgar Winter Band!”

Jason took his place behind the kit. The lights flared. The crowd swelled.

Then a limousine pulled up beside the stage.

Edgar stepped out in an all-white suit, white hair bright beneath the rigging. The crowd reacted instantly. He didn’t rush. He didn’t wave. He simply walked across the stage like he had done a thousand times before and turned toward the drummer he had never met.

“Nice to meet you. Let’s rock.”

More from Music and the Road

• Put Him on the Same Floor
• The Laminate
• The Black Curtain
• Back of the Bus
• The Fan Belt

Before the Beat was originally published in Music and the Road: Observations Through the Side Door on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.