Duff McKagan’s column runs every Thursday on Reverb. Check back on Monday when he writes about what’s playing on his iPod.Here we go again. For those of you who are uninitiated with the trials and tribulations of my band Loaded, well, then, welcome to a new (to you at least) phase of my writing: the Tour Journal. For those of you who have been here before . . . well, you probably have already stopped reading. You see, things get pretty damn silly around this band when we go on tour.Here’s the deal:1. I have been touring from my punk-rock halcyon days in the early ’80s, when it was all so innocent, to the present. This is how fortune saw best for me to earn my way financially.2. As we all know, work can suck sometimes.3. As of late, I have tried to surround myself with musicians that make work less sucky while trying to push the envelope artistically. 4. My passion is and will always be music. 5. Passionate music doesn’t always fill the coffers to the level you may like. 6. Life is short.7. Loaded has a blast.8. Loaded tours like I used to tour in my “punk-rock halcyon days”:a) few showers.b) little sleep.c) play every night.d) eat like crap.e) close proximity to other stinking men who reek of non-human smells.f) full-on glamour.We leave for the UK and Ireland on Monday for 20 days, and will be bringing new drummer Isaac Carpenter. You may know Isaac as that monstrous drummer from Loudermilk a few years ago, but I know him as a real nice dude with a wicked sense of humor. I hope he maintains that humor once we get a few days into touring and those aforementioned smells arise. I will be giving a weekly update on how it is going out there.What is even more entertaining is that our guitarist, Mike Squires, will be tour-managing us AND editing our award-winning Loaded Webisodes on this trip. I have no doubt there will be a tipping point on this tour with Mike. He is an odd mixture of crazy artist, mad scientist, and wound-tight guy. I hope to exploit the wound-tight guy as much as possible and get a lot of this on video. It always makes for good TV. Check out our Webisodes at http://youtube.com/loadedlamf . Our newest edition, “Summer Tour,” features Mike’s new hit song, “Suck It.”For this week, as all of us live in different places, we are at our undisclosed rehearsal place somewhere on the Columbia River. This is a place we can come before a tour and really just sequester ourselves and do nothing but music. There is no TV or Internet, providing a much-needed break from the constant news cycle we humans are barraged by. We are going to play a show this Saturday at Chop Suey to put Isaac to the live test before we go. Come on down . . . I may have some new jokes.Give a Little . . . Last Saturday night in Los Angeles, I was honored to take part in a benefit concert for Gutter Twins bassist Scott Ford at the Roxy Theater. He, like many of my musical brethren, goes through life without basic health insurance. Along with the other necessities like rent, food, and schooling for his child, the weight of his financial burden has caused some wobbling in a few places. Scott got very sick this year, and was forced to take out a loan to pay for the first in a long series of surgeries that will hopefully get him better. Like me, Scott has a 12-year-old daughter, and has a lot to live for. He is one of the good guys.The show featured a wide range of uber-talented musicians, and was a blast to be a part of. Among the highlights was watching Greg Dulli and Wayne Kramer do the Stooges’ “Down on the Street” and AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells,” and Deep Purple alum Glenn Hughes doing “All Right Now” by Free. Fans and friends filled the venue that night, and I am continuously delighted by how generous people can be when they see that someone needs help. Rock fans are the most generous I have ever seen. But we have only scratched the surface as far as what Scott needs for further lifesaving medical needs. If you can help, please go to HYPERLINK “http://fordradio.blogspot.com/”http://fordradio.blogspot.com, where there is a PayPal account set up. Thank you!AhmadinejadWow. I’m not sure any of you caught the CNN/ Larry King interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but it was very interesting to me with respect to how smart and prepared the Iranian President is. Now we all know that many or all of Larry’s questions must first be approved by high-ranking political figures such as Ahmadinejad, but man . . . the dude knows how to answer a question with another question like nobody’s business! It got very scary for me when the interview headed toward the Israeli/Iran nuclear arena. It seems that this conflict is indeed heating up, and I sure hope cooler and smarter minds somewhere are thinking of proposed resolutions. Scary stuff, indeed. May I suggest that we all read Kris and Brad Cox’s comments on this very subject in this very column. The world NEEDS intelligent and enlightened people like these two. Stay tuned for that . . .