September 12th, 2025. 9/11.

September 11th, 2025 is happily divorced from “9/11”. It’s long enough that I don’t even lay heavy significance on the date or think twice about booking a show. Thursday night, after spending the day clambouring on the rocks of Sioux Falls, SD we came back to our host’s house and set up for Live from the Lair from their gazebo under lights where he and his wife got married years ago. Surrounded by his chosen family and neighbourhood children, we don’t even talk about the events of the day till we’re breaking down and winding cables, and it’s not till our new friend Amber says “and on 9/11, too” that the date hits me like a lead weight.

Driving north through northern South Dakota would be confusing enough without being human on top of it. Trying to get into the minds of cows as we pass the herd, wondering why they gather in the shade of THIS dilapidated billboard and not THAT dilapidated billboard. We’re listening to Girl Blue’s new album, the music that moves us and avoiding cow puns, because we’re strong like that.

Sue and Carolyn… perhaps not their real names… it’s been a couple of days. We met them on the walks of Sioux Falls taking photos of a zebra – which is apparently a medical nickname for a rare disease with outwardly common conditions. A sister was dying in Texas and they are on the roadtrip she can’t take. I think they were a little taken aback to be addressed by me, and then they seemed grateful to be talking to someone, so far from home.

America is roiled by the assassination of a right-wing troll somehow come beloved martyr and I’m not surprised by the pile-ons of self-righteous anger of the manosphere on anyone who DARES imply Charlie Kirk was a racist muckraker who incited violence and died a perhaps more poetically-just death than most – but I AM somewhat surprised to see just how quickly companies and corporations are willing to dump anyone who’s expressing a negative opinion of him online. For years I’ve felt that the crossing of personal and professional statements on social media was destroying the division between protected personal speech and a firm public statement, but the world’s been okay with it for decades. And now we reap the whirlwind as news corporations throw their commentators under the bus for anything other than bent-over glowing adoration of the man.

It turns out that the lyrics inscribed on the assassin’s bullets are the chous from an Italian protest song that got sung at an open mic we recently visited. That feels… too real. [Later it’s all shitty video game meme references? We Live in a dystopia where even our dangerous revolutionaries are just wannabes that seemingly hit their target by luck]

You can walk the whole of downtown Sioux Falls walking from sculpture to sculpture to sculpture. They have an event every year and then choose a number of the pieces to be permanent additions to the city’s Sculpture Walk.

Follow the rabbits…

But I’m trying not to think about it as we roll north through the north of the southern Dakota.

Sioux Falls was beautiful, clean, idyllic. There’s a sense of history but it feels carefully curated. Their main streets and shopping districts have been reimagined in the past decade and they are filled with art and music pavilions, coffeeshops and construction. The people we met were smiling and raising smiling families. Kind and giving. Our host in Sioux Falls was giving and obviously a community builder in a quiet, enthusiastic way. He took us on a tour on his obviously-beloved town like he was wrapping it up and giving it to us as a gift and I doubt his knowledge of this city could’ve been matched by any professional guide. Snippets of history and opinion and personal story. Sioux Falls feels as if it would be an ideal place to settle down and raise a family or a cat, but our host’s wife tells us she insists on knowing where he is at all times because though born in America, our host is a person of colour and Sioux City’s cooperation with ICE is 110% with enthusiastic helicopter support and manly code names.

Our host Lives at the heart of over half-a-dozen outreach centres focused on rehabilitating ex-convicts and aiding the homeless, and everything about his Life of giving and care seems the antithesis of Project Prairie Thunder and it’s masked, gun-toting proponents.

We have breakfast at a local coffeeshop and beer tappery (?) surrounded by smiling, beautiful people and their smiling dogs, and then a 444 Warrior Christ sword tattoo goes by like it owns the place.

And maybe it does.

I wish them well as we hurtle north.

Live from the Lair from the Bun House in South Dakota. We were surprised to have the Buns invite their local community group and we played a hybrid concert, checking off South Dakota! ND, MT and AL left!