Volvo Tour

Ivan and I have romanced the idea of doing a two-piece tour in the fall in the old Volvo. We used to be able to tour in anything. We did a tour in the Volvo three years ago and when we played Detroit, there were around 9 people there and Meg White was one of them. We were hanging out after the show and she walked out with me to put the records in the car. I said, this is the tour bus. She said, "Yeah, when we started we toured in Jack's old Escort so I know all about it." She was so fun and we just got along so well and had so much in common. I'd been so proud of touring "small" and if there's ever been a success story for making something "small" into something kick-ass, it's the White Stripes.

Then we moved into a mini-van and I felt like that was big.

Then our little family grew and on our last tour we were five people on stage plus Josh and Tim L. And so we needed a big Sprinter. It was huge but it's a diesel engine so we got excellent gas mileage and, since we ran it on biodiesel, I didn't feel too bad about it. And, for me, it's a lot of fun being in a van with a thousand men.

But then we started talking about the fall and some last-minute shows that are coming in right now and how we should do them... and we're really in love with the idea of doing them as a bad-ass two-piece, in which case we could maybe take the old Volvo. Now the main question is, whether or not it will make it around the country again. So we decided to do some road testing...