Thursday 17th March

Today is St. Patrick’s Day and what better day to start it than to have a plate of rubber eggs with Lunasa who were playing in Minneapolis the night before. Pat, Alasdair – who has just arrived this morning – and myself embark on the journey to the suitably titled Grand Theatre in Wausau, Wisconsin while Rob and Alan go to the airport to retrieve our bags. Jim O’Connell is the boss here and he is responsible for refurbishing this lavish theatre and extensive bar which is now an excellent venue. The show is sold out and there is ample green beer and corned beef for the 1100 audience so a fine way to start the tour.

Friday, 18 March

As we exit our hotel, bags and instruments in hand, striding into the Wausau snow, we are met by a stout Wisconsin man. “Hey, you guys the Polka Band?” says he and somewhat flummoxed we reply in the negative, which in retrospect was possibly the wrong answer. Perhaps this was a crossroads in our careers indeed our lives and had we just been the polka band we would have entered into a whole new realm of society: Dances from Philly to Madison full of beer-swilling Pennsylvanians and farmer’s daughters with scarcely a vowel in their names. Look out folks, The Battlefield Polka Band is coming to town to polka you into submission.

Tonight we are playing at Luther’s Blues in Madison, Wisconsin, which, as the name states, is a blues venue named after Luther Allison. A highlight for me is seeing our picture next to King Sunny Ade, the undisputed heavyweight champion of Nigerian juju music who is playing here the following week. After a storming gig to a die hard crowd who have braved the snow we return to our hotel – a Jacuzzi in almost every room.

En route Rob spots a great piece of Midwestern Americana: An institution bearing the name “Steak and Lube”. No, this is not the marquis on the local erotic cinema but a place to which you take your car to be “lubed” and while you wait you can have a steak – yum yum.

Saturday 19th March.

Back to Minneapolis and the Cedar Cultural Center. This is a great gig we have played many times and tonight the crowd is even more enthusiastic than normal. We are well looked after by Raymond the Techie and Brian who is a geneticist from New Zealand who finds himself here of the banks of the Mississippi feeding beer to the Batties: Itself a proof of the evolutionary process.

After the concert we are off to the Old Town Tavern for a pint with Tina and Michelle – local pals we have known for some years. The “Steak and Lube” comes up in conversation and Michelle informs me that Minneapolis, not to be outdone, sports a petrol station which sells food called “Pump and Munch” – class.

Today we fly to Baltimore in order that we can drive closer to tomorrow’s concert in South Carolina and play a live session at WNCW - a public radio station in North Carolina, which plays all kinds of music and whose transmission area covers six states. For those unfamiliar with American broadcasting, There is technically no state radio however increasingly, the majority of radio stations are owned and administered by networks who are essentially corporations which in turn pay for themselves through advertising.

Public radio is a series of stations of differing sizes throughout the country whose expenses are paid largely by subscriptions: Donations from the listeners. And as such they broadcast no advertisements and are able to play what they wish, free from any state or corporate editorial intervention. This extends to the spoken word – i.e. news – as well as music.

Such diversity of programming was clearly displayed on WNCW when after our live, thirty-minute set and interview, we heard Ricky Skaggs and Frank Zappa singing “The Illinois Enema Bandit” all in the same set. (I should point out here that Ricky Skaggs wasn’t singing with Frank Zappa but in the previous song.) These stations used to receive some grants from the federal Government but apparently these have been substantially cut recently. A cynic might claim that this was an attempt by the neo-conservatives to gag any dissemination of information which challenged the paranoid world view so vehemently put forth by the myriad of U.S. cable news networks: We couldn’t possibly comment.

After the radio interview expertly chaired by Martin Anderson we continued onto The Handlebar in Greenville South Carolina.(“Chaired” sounds ever so intellectual but it was really just talkin’ baby.) This is a great venue which always gets a good crowd but best of all, the sun was out. This is the first day in any country this year when the sun has been out for us and after the five-hundred mile drive to get here we had no recourse but to sit in the beer garden for a couple of pints before the sun went down. The night was great – a big house and good techies especially the aptly named Herb who sorted out the lights and the cough medicine.