If you follow Nothin’ Fancy’s newsletter, you will have noted the sad story they told in the March ‘09 issue. It was a tale of vehicular woe, in which a wheel from their long-suffering van came rolling off and passed them on the highway.

Mandolinist Mike Andes relayed the events that transpired on February 22…

Within 20 minutes of our trip, Mitchell says, “There are flames coming out of the back wheel.” Mitchell was driving so he pulls off the road and Gary puts the fire out with ice from our cooler. We stand around for a while and decide to try and limp the van up the road to an exit ramp. Everything is going quite well; we stop a couple of times and check the wheel, its OK. We keep going.

Tony is riding shotgun, he is glued to the mirror watching the passenger side rear wheel when he says “there’s sparks coming out of the trailer wheel.” Mitchell stops immediately; we check the wheel and agree to keep going as far as we can. Finally we get off the interstate and pull into a service mart. We are trying to come up with a game plan. We check the wheels, they’re not overly hot, and so we decide to go further.

While leaving the parking lot, Tony says, “The trailer wheel is really wobbling.” OK, so we drop the trailer and put everything we need into Chris’s vehicle. Chris is following the injured Nothin’ Fancy van.

Now back on the road, I really thought we might make it since we weren’t pulling the trailer; I was wrong. 15 minutes into the journey, I had just fallen asleep along side the bass and all kinds of luggage, KA BOOM the van is listing starboard. My first question was, “Did Chris run over our wheel?” Tony answered, “no, our wheel passed us.”

Here we sit.

Everyone will be glad to know that the boys made it on time for their next show – thanks to a taxi service – and are now driving their own tour bus, recently acquired from David Parmley. They even sent along a few photos of their new ride.