My Summer 2026 tour is underway. I played shows in Columbus and Caledonia the past two days, and I have four shows spread out over the next two days. As in previous years, I try to freshen up my show and match the Summer Reading Program theme. This year’s theme is “Unearth a Story” – with a focus on dinosaurs . . . not exactly in my scientific wheelhouse. That said, I do teach some geology as part of my PH1023 course so I’m calling my show this summer, “Stormin’ Bob’s Rocky Road Trip.”
The tour name was a happy accident — I initially intended to call the show, “Stormin’ Bob’s Rockin’ Road Show,” but my eldest son, Daniel, misunderstood when he was working on my poster board for the show. Turns out I liked his version better. My title was too much like last year’s “Stormin’ Bob’s Rockin’ Rainbow” — plus I just love Rocky Road ice cream.
If you come to one of my shows this summer, you’ll hear not one, but two new songs I’ve written for the tour. One utilizes the fiddle tune, “Turkey in the Straw,” to compress 4.5 billion years of geologic time into a 90-second tune called “Turkeys in the Miocene.”
The song that opens the show borrows song structure from “Rock this Town” by The Stray Cats. If you are familiar with the tune, you may know that it is in the style of early rock and roll music — a form called “rockabilly.” My version focuses on the rock cycle and is called, “Geology Rocks!”
Since I mentioned ice cream earlier, the cherry on top of summer touring (I love playing for live audiences and getting kids excited about science) is that I get to bring my boys along for some of the tour stops. Nate and Henry helped me in Columbus and Caledonia this week, and Daniel will be my traveling companion tomorrow in Aberdeen and Amory.
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