Tour 6: Summer 2011, Western US Tour (3)

leapin’ at the frog and peach

monday we played in san luis obispo (forgive the failure of the shift key on this computer, there will be no capitals) at a place call the frog and peach. san luis obispo (heretofore known as slo) is a college town – cal poly –  and a perfect crowd for our style of music, so we were excited to get our foot in the door, impress some people, and get a better night for the next time we are in town. we did just that.  we had a lot of fun even with a small crowd, and we’ll definitely be back in late september – playing a weekend or possibly frog and peach’s 1 dollar pint night on tuesdays.

after the first set we took a break and most of the crowd left. i suppose college kids do have to study sometime… thats good i want the world full of educated interesting people. we like that kind of crowd. anyway we started the second set and quickly played “sad sad city” by ghostland observatory. a couple guys that are show promoters heard the sweet phase shifted notes from down the block and were instantly drawn to our show like starving men to a free buffet. they stayed and danced for the entire rest of the night, even running out into the street and convincing people to come and see a song.

comically, every fifteen minutes or a so a huge group of 20 people would come in for some girl’s (always a girl, i dont know why) 21st birthday, take a shot, and leave. we would pick a good danc-y tune and get them to groove for a song or two, but they had their list of bars to take the lady on her first legal day, so they went off on their journey. it kinda felt like we were back at the dizzy rooster, thirsty nickel or chuggin monkey in austin. fun times.

another good aspect of slo is that we got to be the first time couchsurfers for our buddy nelson111 (pretend those 1s are exclamation points). he is a great guy and a great host. in his initial message he said something really funny about us being the first at his house. it was something along these lines, ‘my roommates are all cool with it, except one who is worried that you’ll be really messy, but even if you are i dont mind.’ needless to say we were immaculate. nelson came to dinner with us and then stayed up a bit to chill after the show, so we got a chance to know each other a little better. couchsurfing is so wonderful. it always makes me happy about the state of the world we live in. i dont think something like it could have existed that long ago, because people just didnt have as much trust for strangers, or openness about their lives. even now most people think that the idea of couchsurfing is crazy, and they cant believe that it works, that there arent more horror stories. there is an evolution of culture over the course of history, and this couchsurfing is one positive manifestation of a more inclusive, egalitarian sense of self and other. pretty sweet.

Grover Beach

We are back in the California central coast area hanging out and playing with our good friends Nada Rasta. We have played with Nada Rasta as many times as any other band which is funny because we are based out of Austin not California. Nada Rasta is definitely a good group of guys to have as our friends. They are well connected in the central coast region and we just have a blast hanging out with them.  We played 50 minute set at Mongo’s in Grover Beach then the Nada Rasta guys finished the night. It was a great night of dancing, making new friends, and fans. The blurry pic below is Blatt beating the cowbell during one of Nada Rasta’s songs.  Pretty hilarious.  I can’t thank Reuben and the rest of the Nada Rasta crew enough for their help and hospitality in the central coast area. Reuben has helped us book shows and has given us a place to stay both times we’ve been in the area. If you want to check out some good reggae/rock music check out Nada Rasta on the interweb http://www.facebook.com/nadarastaband. We are in the central coast area for several days so there will be more stories about Nada Rasta and of course Achachay! in the central coast to come. Hooch over and out.

Silliness in Flagstaff

The Flagstaff Brewery has two stages – one indoor and one outdoor. Yet for some reason they wanted us to play in this small corner: (pic on twitter, i’ll link to it eventually. just imagine a very small space).

Right next to the bathroom.

I couldn’t stop laughing. Their reasoning made sense – the indoor stage is too far away and no one would watch us, and the staff wasn’t prepared for an outdoor show. But still, that corner is small. Last time we played a killer outdoor set where people heard the music walking by and came in to jam.

We rocked a great set anyway.

The guys that run the place are really nice, and the beer is great. Another funny thing is that last time they accidentally paid us with a counterfeit $20 bill. Ryan was pissed, because they refused to reimburse us with real money. He wrote a pretty negative review on indieonthemove, a booking site we use. Fortunately, this has been a bee in their bonnet, so this time they gave us an extra $20 to make it right! Praise the power of the internet. And props to them to rectifying the situation.

Another really great thing about Flagstaff is Dan, our couchsurfing host. We stayed with him last time, and had a great time jamming afterwards. He plays some mad harmonica so we got him on stage and jammed out for a while on “Fever.” It was a great time. He’s an amazing host and really takes care of his guests. Even though we only get to spend a small amount of time with him whenever we’re there, we’re kindred spirits and I know we’ll be hanging again in the future. If you get a chance, check out his musical project “2 BUKU”

All in all Flagstaff was a good time. We plan on coming back.

Tempe !

Our friends Darkness Dear Boy rockin'

Tempe

I am a big fan of Phoenix and Tempe. This time of year the dry heat isn’t yet stifling, and with a nice breeze and the mountains in the foreground the vibe is just about perfect. Phoenix is also great for us because we have a great place to stay with my family friends Gary and Angie who are just awesomle and have an amazing house.

The show itself was in Tempe at a place called Long Wong’s. It’s a cool venue and we got the show through our friends Darkness Dear Boy who also played a helluva set before us. There was also another cool local band that played with us called What’s Left who had a cool sound with a guitar and violin dynamic. Our set was killer and we definitely won over some new fans. Our bartender was f’n awesome too. His name was Tony and he’s actually the manager for a pretty kick-ass band named Stuff Laura Says. Tony took really good care of us.

Overall I enjoyed playing Tempe a ton and I can’t wait to come back and rock it next time!

Blatt

Boulder at the Darkhorse: Part III

The night before last we played in Pagosa Springs and tonight we are in Boulder, CO. The only downside is that these towns are 7 hours apart… So we drove all night last night and arrived in Boulder at about 9 am yesterday morning. I did all the driving so I was spent to say the least. After sleeping all day we headed to the Darkhorse to have some dinner and get ready for the show. Boulder is an awesome town. There is such a great energy and people are totally ready for great music. This makes our shows in Boulder crazy fun. It is finals week this week so people were in and out all night because of studies. That didn’t change the fact that the dance floor was still full and oh man was it a good time. We have tons of great friends in Boulder and they always show us a great time and this time I had my first run in with a breakfast treat called “Saddlebags”. “Saddlebags” are pancakes with sausage in them and two eggs on top. It’s basically the most delicious thing ever. So if you are ever in Boulder you should go to the Buff for some brunch. It was sooo good. That pretty much does it for Boulder. Now we are off to Utah to Arches National Park! Adios Colorado!

Pagosa Springs a great success

The drive from Steamboat Springs to Pagosa Springs takes a band 8 hours. For the same band to return to Boulder for a show the following night requires another 6 hour drive. Naturally this places high expectations on a venue and a city to make such a trip worthwhile.

Luckily, we already knew we were getting a great monetary guarantee. For me, a show is worth playing if it gives us one of three things (the more the better); 1. A chance to play in front of a lot of people, 2. A lot of money, or 3. A good opportunity for a future relationship. (Note that I didn’t include the givens, such as the chance to inspire people, make a positive impact on someone’s life, get practice, and share our message. These happen no matter where we play.) So we had the money part taken care of. That’s why I booked the show. The rest, was in the cards.

We drove with the delightful vision of this beautiful valley. It also clued us into the surprising size of Pagosa Springs; 1500 people. Less than my high school. How could the bar afford to pay us what they were? Does 10 percent or more of the population go to this one bar every Friday night?

We kicked off the show playing for about 20 people. This is not too good for Friday night; it certainly doesn’t meet my first requirement. We still rocked the hell out the first few songs because we always give it our all. A group of Apaches in the front loved what we brought, and bought merch during our first set break. Cool.

Then, the show really took off. A crowd that had been watching some sort of boxing match made it to the show around 10 and we had just the right grooves to get them shaking. The bar staff later told us they hadn’t seen such dancing at the Bear Creek Saloon in at least six months! People loved our originals, and they loved our selection of covers.

It hit 1 AM and we mentioned that we only had a song left on the set list. Everyone went so crazy, so we kept playing until last call. We played our Deadmau5 song on a whim, and the crowd absolutely loved it. We got tips, we got show offers, and places to stay seemingly just from that song. Pretty cool because Hooch had just been practicing it that day to perfect it.

In the end the show was a huge success. Its very exciting because we’re going to play there again in just a month. The friends we made guaranteed us that the place would be packed now that they know who we are.

The view when driving to pagosa springs

Sidenote:
Another cool thing is that one girl saw our flyer, checked us out, and watched all of our video updates. This is cool because (1) Flyers work! and (2) She had a feel for our personalities.

Steamboat Springssssssssss

We played our first show ever in Steamboat Springs recently, and it was awesome! We played a really cool venue called the Ghost Ranch Saloon. The room itself has a sort of ‘ski-lodge’ feel with game animals mounted on the walls, but it also has one of the best stages and sound-systems we have ever used. The coolest part about the Ghost Ranch, though, is the apartment they provide for the bands to stay the night. It was really nice, and clean, and well furnished…even the bathroom was super-nice. I guess my expectations were just really low, since I feel most venues are trying their damnedest to squeeze every penny out of everything, and I figured this apartment would be anything but nice, but it turned out to be amazing!

The show was great and we won over a lot of new fans. Right now in the mountain towns it’s “mud-season” so the only people around were locals, but I feel like winning them over is even more important because they will definitely be around next time to help spread the word for the show. I can’t wait to come back to the Ghost Ranch Saloon!

Blatt

Ft. Collins Round 2 “The Vault”

We had a day to relax between our Ft. Collins shows. So we hung out at Blatt’s family friends’ place. I’ve gotta give a big thanks to Debbie and Adrian for their hospitality. Especially Debbie for cooking for us and letting us raid her kitchen!  We also spent quite a bit of time watching music DVDs in Adrian’s man cave.  Good times.  After our day off, Blatt and I spent the day touring and hanging out at a couple of the local breweries. First we took a tour of the New Belgium brewery. You might know New Belgium for their Fat Tire and Ranger IPA beers. New Belgium is a really cool self sustaining company and if you haven’t tried their brews you should! I recommend the Ranger IPA. So tasty! There are a few pics from New Belgium at the bottom.  After New Belgium we headed up the road to Odell brewery. We were there too late for a brew tour so we just tasted a few of their brews and made some new friends. After a day of tasting the local beers we headed to The Vault for the show. The Vault is named appropriately because it’s an old bank and you can actually hang out in the vault. The Vault has a great room with high ceilings and wood floors that makes sound really come to life even without amplification. The only down side is we have to play a much quieter in this type of room. We still made the most of it and had people movin’ and groovin’. We had several familiar faces from our Monday night at Hodi’s. It’s very cool to see fans coming out again and again. Makes it feel like we are starting to achieve our goals of establishing fan bases through out the US. It’s been an awesome 3 days in Ft. Collins and it gets harder and harder to leave every time we come back. Unfortunately (for Ft. Collins) we have 4 more weeks of shows! Hooch over and out.

Hosting funk jam at Hodi’s

We had the distinct honor of hosting Hodi’s Halfnote’s funk jam for our first night in Ft. Collins. We got to know the Nu Classics, the usual hosts, the last time we rolled through town and became fast friends. Some of you may remember – we even had them play at our house party during SXSW.

This jam is a really good time. We kicked it off with about 45 minutes of original music to set the tone, and then invited different players to come up and switch out. I recognized a few of the great guitarists from the last time we jammed there – Josh, Nick – and some of the horn players that stood out. The talent that shows up at these jams is quite impressive, and a lot of non-musicians come to just dance and groove.

People dug our music, and we made friends just like last time. We even got another show offer. We also got to get back up and improv with some of the guys later on in the night. We exchanged numbers with a few of the guys and hopefully we’ll get them to play some horn parts with us next time we come through town.

All in all it was a highly enjoyable night. If you’re in Ft. Collins on a Monday I suggest you check it out. We’ve been talking about how cool it would be to do something similar in Austin. I’m not sure we’re around consistently enough to build up the scene, but who knows it might be something we do in the future. We got to build the skills this time- we hosted in every sense of the word, with the different people who wanted to jam talking to us to find out the order of when they want to play.

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This picture is one I took with a new friend Sean who took me and some of his buddies out to rock climb in Poudre Canyon on our day off. It was really fun, and really beautiful. I’m extremely grateful to get the opportunity to take advantage of the natural beauty surrounding us on tour. We move so quickly from town to town that when we do get a chance to do something like this I tend to appreciate it even more. It’s also great to make new friends, and then be able to hang out with them again when we come back a few months later. I’m looking forward to climbing with Sean and company again one day!

Ryan and Hooch took good advantage of Ft. Collins as well, going on a brewery tour of New Belgium, Odell’s, and maybe even one other. They might tell you about it in the next post.

Denver

After fugly’s Friday we immediately left for Denver. The ride up was boring in geographic feature but a tad interesting because of some “tainted” pizza. We eventually made it to Denver by around noon Saturday and all of us went to bed directly.

The show Saturday was at the Lions Lair: a small dive bar located in the heart of Colfax Ave. We feel right at home here (and in most dive bars). I, personally, love a good dive bar. The show was good and we played well for a small but rowdy crowd including one random cross-dressing flame-haired guy who wandered in for our set, rocked out and left. It was a sight when I looked up and saw this guy freaking out on the dance floor.

I want to shout out to my friend Aaron Segel and his crew that he brought out, as well as my friend Jen Wolchanski who also came and brought some people–y’all made the show for us!

Blatt

Yes, this is actually a picture from Fugly's. We didn't take any Denver pics