Jeremy Porter Road Blog

Road Blog: Monday October 19, 2026 - Topeka, KS

Road Blog
October 18, 2026
Topeka, Kansas

We left our AirBB in Commerce City, Colorado, just east of Denver, at 9:30am on Monday, with Troy at the wheel, me shotgun and JakeE Jacob in the back. It was our third beautiful Colorado day in a row and we were a bit sad to see the snow-capped Rocky Mountains fade in the distance behind us. We stopped for food at a Love's Travel Stops (the greatest of all truck stops) and the boys got breakfast from the attached McDonalds and me, still making a half-assed (no pun intended) effort to stabilize my guts, opted for a yogurt parfait, cheese stick, and snackables from Love’s. Not that I didn’t want an Egg McMuffin meal with ham and replace the egg with sausage and upgrade to large coffee, just that I thought the other stuff might land better. And ya know, TrooperGirl22 and John might be on to something – I’ve been doing a little better the last couple days.

For the next 8 hours we were glued to I-70 east through eastern Colorado and most of Kansas. While I love the people and cities of Kansas, it’s not my favorite state to traverse, but it’s hard to get from Colorado to Missouri and eastward without doing it. We saw a herd of antelope in Colorado, a big coyote roadkill, and a bunch of hawks circling over harvested, golden corn fields looking for their next meal throughout the day.

We crossed into Kansas sometime around noon to the soundtrack of the next couple Pink Floyd albums – Wish You Were Here and Animals. WYWH was disappointing to me. It’s a great song, there are familiar parts of the record, and the production is top-notch, but it feels like a really drawn-out EP of Dark Side of the Moon leftovers. Animals is a more interesting album, with some new sounds and directions, along with some clearly different (some good, some not) production and engineering choices. I really liked some of it, especially some of the guitar work and tones, while other parts were meandering and indulgent. So far, Dark Side is the clear high-water mark, but tomorrow we’ll listen to the only album of theirs that I actually know: The Wall.

We also listened to Def Leppard (High N Dry), The Stones (Exile on Main Street), a Bottle Rockets comp I made years ago, and a fun podcast interview on What Am I Making by our pal Matty C who had a great conversation with Norman Blake from Teenage Fanclub. We were especially surprised when they got into the UK punk scene and how he would wear a Pink Floyd shirt to punk shows with “I HATE” written at the top as a protest to the bloated corporate rock bands of the day. We’d just read about that exact phenomenon when JakeE did the “tale of the tape” for Wish You Were Here, going over all the interesting facts and stats around the Pink Floyd album we were about to dive into. Johnny Rotten later brushed the whole thing off as a joke, admitting to liking some prog and adjacent bands, but it was a crazy couple of random references to a single very specific thing in history that we were previously unaware of within a couple hours of each other.

The drive was otherwise fairly uneventful. I dozed a few minutes here and there, but the human body just isn’t built for sleeping while sitting upright in a moving van with David Gilmour’s guitar blasting in your face. Troy was focused and attentive, motivated by a stop at Casey's where the bait-and-switch gas prices posted didn’t really match what was on the pump, but the pizza under the heating lamps inside was just as good as he’d remembered from his Iowa days. I got a couple scratch offs, one of which I tried to get into, but the nickel didn't scratch the coating off, it dug into the paper, ruining any chance of winning $2500. I felt about as betrayed as Troy did at the gas pump. Do better Kansas_Lottery.

We pulled into Topeka around 6:15pm as the sun was setting. It’s a new-to-me medium-sized city that was largely quiet and empty as we drove around looking for Iron Rail Brewing that JakeE had picked for dinner on count of the spinach salad with goat cheese and strawberry dressing that caught his eye on the menu. This nice fella Jack was our waiter, asking if we wanted to get started with any appetizers or beers. We got a round of waters and ordered our meals. JakeE’s salad didn’t disappoint, and Troy and I got the California chicken sandwich (same thing I had in Boulder, though that was a wrap), and it was really good, and relatively healthy. Young Jack came over and sat on the bench next to me while we paid our bills, and said something to the effect of “So a bunch of the staff are asking… are you guys in a gang, or a motorcycle club or a band or something? I mean, with the patches and the hair and all.” I could feel the eyes on us when we walked into the joint, but that’s not uncommon in the flyover, Plains and Dustbowl states, just like the Bob Seger song (though we’re directly south of Omaha, not east). We had a nice chat about the band and the show and he was all “Right on dude!” and said that he used to live across the street from the dive bar we were playing at and saw things outside there late at night that no eight year-old should ever see. Keep rockin’ Jack!

The The Legendary Boobie Trap Bar sits a mile or two outside of downtown Topeka on a busy street a block up from a huge hospital. It’s an unassuming from the outside brick building with a back patio, a back pool and slot-machine room, and a front band-room with long, high-top tables and a dimly-lit bar along the side. It’s a classic rock and roll dive bar – stickers from floor to ceiling on every wall, bathrooms that have seen more than a little debauchery, and a bartender that laughed at Troy when he tried to order a Negroni. “This is a beer and shot kinda place, pal.” If I’m being honest, I wasn’t 100% sure that it wasn’t a strip club, though I never said as much to the boys. We met the owner Brian who was audibly questioning his choice to host an unknown band from Detroit on a Monday night, but with a half-smile and the self-assuring knowledge that helping touring bands on off-night is something that really cool venue owners do, even if it doesn’t often pay the bills. Queensrÿche was blaring through the house system and the PA monitors while we loaded in and set up, and the salty bartender turned it down 2dbs (there was a DB monitor across from the stage that I was watching as Geoff Tate screamed in my face) when I couldn’t hear what she was asking me.

I took a walk up and around the hospital, made friends with a little bunny near the bar, and told him he should come to the show. “It’s f’ing Monday. I’m not going to any show.” He said between mouthfuls of grass and clover, and I knew in my heart that most of Topeka probably felt the same way. I sent a photo to the boys and Troy was convinced it was the same fella from the back patio at Surfside 7 in Fort Collins that roadied for us on Sunday and somehow either stowed away in our van or followed us up here. I called TrooperGirl22 and we had a nice chat about things back home and things on the road. Her social calendar is about as packed as mine this week, so time should pass quickly until I see her again on Sunday. JakeE’s aunt Cindy came over from Kansas City, Kansas for the show, and she was enjoying a classy glass of red wine while getting caught up with her nephew. She was very sweet, more than a little out of place in a punk rock/metal dive bar, but a total gamer and happy to support JakeE. She told some stories of her days doing singing telegrams that blew our minds and watched our entire set.

We went on around 9:30 to a crowd that was about 4x as big as the crowd we played to in Lincoln (also due north) last week. You can revisit that blog if you need some context on the numbers. It ain’t rocket science, friends. A few people wandered in later for the nightly karaoke that follows the bands, and a couple dudes were pumping money into the slot machines between smoke breaks out back. Aunt Cindy seemed to dig the set, and we played ok, but we were tired and maybe not at our best. Still, we didn’t, and never phone it in, and had a good time.

We grabbed a photo with Aunt Cindy, had a nice chat with the bartender, who was very sweet and not all that salty after all, even while she mopped up JakeE’s spilled Rolling Rock, loaded out, bottomed the van out on the steep-grade parking out front, and headed east towards Lawrence. I was driving, having imbibed in nothing but coffee and water all day, and JakeE was kind enough to crank Riot – Fire Down Under for me. It’s a cult-hard rock album from NYC in the early 80s that kicks all kinds of ass. IYKYK.

Mondays are not made for rock and roll, but we don’t take nights off, and it was cool to meet Brian, the bartender, Aunt Cindy, and even ol’ Jack, who might just check us out on Spotify after his shift. Today we’ll chill around the AirBB a bit, get JakeE some JakeE breakfast, hit the local record store, and head over to Gaslight Gardens where we’ll play a short set tonight, possibly outside, around 8PM.