Snippet #2323366

As the band expressed their opinions with what Whitley thought was admirable candour, he struggled forward to his driver's seat. Though not as tall as Mitch, Whitley's unkempt grey hair also brushed the roof of the tour bus in places, particularly what passed for doorways between the rooms. He pulled out a battered AAA road book. 'Tallahassee to Tampa, Tallahassee to Tampa,' he muttered, thumbing through the dogeared pages. Some of the pages were annotated with pink highlighter and green and red ink, but the page he stopped on was clear. 'See, I update the old book with roadworks and stuff,' he called back to no-one in particular. 'And what the cops are like in each town, if I've got a ticket, you know. And look,' he said, flicking to the map of states in the inside front cover, 'each state where it's legal, where it's kinda legal and where its really a no-go. I got a medical marijuana card in 18 states!'

'Tallahassee to Tampa, four hours. Hour for set-up, hour for getting lost. Gig time... What time to you go on?'

'Nine,' one of the girls shouted back from the lounge. Some-one was toying with a guitar, someone else was tapping a staccato beat on a table and window. A grin further creased Whitley's wrinkled features. They were settling in.

'Nine, right.' Whitley turned the key in the ignition. The huge engine coughed once, then shuddered as it roared into life. 'Don't worry,' he yelled back over the din, which had shocked the guitar player into silence. 'She'll pipe down when we hit the open road. Listen, we gotta get going really if we want to start the tour on time, good vibes, you know?'

He looked out the window at the black, oily cloud the backfiring exhaust had expelled into the worried faces of the parents still on the driveway, and waved and shrugged apologetically. A few worried faces had been drawn to windows further up the street by all the noise. 'Hold tight, here we go!' he hollered and depressed the pedal. The old bus lurched forward and Whitley indulged himself with a long honk on the horn. 'Yee-hawww!' The response from the lounge was three parts excitement, two parts nerves.

Ten minutes into the drive, as the bus made its way through light traffic on the US-90 through Tallahassee's outskirts, Whitley once again heard chatter from the band members in the lounge. 'Don't worry, it'll take you a while to find your bus legs. You know, man, bus legs. Like sea legs? Hey, Stevie Wonder - I mean, hey, Francis, come up here, I got something for you.'

At a red light, Francis stumbled up. Whitley reached under his seat and pulled out a battered white cardboard box. 'Those good ol' Followill brothers gave me this couple of years back. It's an internet thing. You get internet on the bus with it. You look like the dude to figure it for me, it's all a box of snakes to me, man. Oh, and look,' he said, digging in his pocket and pulling out a battered Nokia 3510, 'get one of the girls to call that tour manager, tell her we done left already. She's in this phone, Leona, or Ebony or something.' As Francis leaned over to take the phone, Whitley grabbed his shoulder and pulled him close conspiratorially. 'Hey, I got Emmylou Harris's number in there. Wanna ring her? Ah, what a woman, Emmy...'

A horn sounded behind the tour bus, shaking Whitley from his reverie. The lights were green. 'Tampaaa!' he roared.