I know Sick Chirpse covers a lot of Vice stuff now but they are really safe to us (and sometimes give us free stuff) and most of their documentaries/spoofs (Rose Boy, Dalston Superstars) are actually really funny and interesting so I don’t feel too bad about it. This new series is probably even cooler than those we’ve covered before to be honest, at least for me because I just love being on the road and touring (see Let’s Wrestle Tour Photo Blog). There’s just nothing like hanging out with your buddies and the open road and visiting weird places and eating cool food, you know?

Anyway, this series is called On The Road and is presented by Marshall Headphones. It follows Tim Harrington from Les Savy Fav as he drives around America and checks out the backstage/behind the scenes action at various gigs and visits weird places and eats cool food. The series has actually been going for a while now and there are about nine episodes available but I’m just going to embed the ones from season 2 here and tell you about them as I haven’t had time to watch season 1 yet.

These three episodes are pretty great and it gives you a fairly decent insight into life on the road and some of the stuff that goes on behind the scenes. In the first episode Tim meets some this dude Pyro Pete who does pyro and explosions for a bunch of bands like Kiss, AC/DC and Iron Maiden and is recognised as the best pyrotechnician in the world. He’s even blown his face off in the name of rock n’ roll. In the third episode he travels to Psychefest in Austin Texas and hangs out with a bunch of hippies at a psychedelic music festival. Both of these are pretty fun but my favourite episode was episode two though.

In this second episode of season two, Tim travels to Oklahoma to meet the world’s oldest roadie who is a fricking dude and has roadied for Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash amongst other people and still manages to score more chicks than you! Jesse catches up with him working for the Randy Rodgers band who are performing at the Calf Fry, which is some big event in Oklahoma where  calves’ balls get fried and people stand around and eat them and watch country music. That sentence pretty much sums up the series, you get to see a bunch of cool stuff behind the scenes at gigs and also get to see a bunch of the weird stuff that goes on in small weird American towns. Kinda like a Louie Theroux based around gigging. Oh yeah and in case you’re wondering the calf’s balls are apparently really good and taste like chicken.

You can check out the first three episodes of On The Road below. Keep checking back to Vice as I’m sure more episodes will be released pretty soon.