Tour 3: Spring 2010, Western US Tour (1)

Olympia, and Pancakes

The bassist of the other band we played with, "As the Devil Dances," was a nat'l beard competition champ

Our gig in Olympia was great. We played a really cool venue called the 4th Avenue Tavern. After the show we decided to eat at a local diner that features unlimited pancakes on their menu called Shari’s. Now we don’t typically eat very much on a daily basis so unlimited pancakes is pretty much the best deal ever, and Hooch and Jordan set out to get their money’s worth. The restaurant will give you another order of pancakes, either one giant one or two small ones, each time you ask for more. Hooch and Jordan each ordered 3 extra orders of pancakes, and I even took advantage by eating an extra order. Even though the show was great, I think I might have had more fun at the diner afterwards. Maybe I’m just really hungry…

Port Townsend, the Boiler Room

First off, I can’t stop calling this place “Port Townshend” with an “sh.” I don’t know why.

Cool little spot. Apparently there are 25 coffee shops in this town of  8334 people. Wow. So of course we played at a coffee shop called the “Boiler Room.”

It has an amazing history- it’s much more than a coffee shop. It’s actually a non-profit. The whole purpose of the place is to be an all ages venue with no alcohol, no drugs, no harassment, community involvement, empowerment place for kids and adults alike. It lives us to the goal, and has been around for 17 years despite being forced to move twice. Also, don’t think it’s fairy land – there’s plenty of cursing and existential questioning decorating their walls – basically they’re in tune with the real problems people face, as we grow up and beyond.

It is a cool town, beautiful. On the lake. Nice shops. Fun to walk around. Good pizza. All in all the show was a ton of fun and the small room was packed thanks to Ellie’s distribution of flyers and our opening act’s Facebook invitation. Plus we got free drinks – all non-alcoholic, and all good.

PT’s Inferno, Friday! Discount Coupon

Tonight’s (May 12th 2010) show starts at 10P sharp. If you print out this coupon, or show it on your smart phone, you’ll get a $3 discount off of the $10 cover charge. You can also text your phone number to 512-626-7898 and I’ll text back a code you can show at the door for the discount.

PT’s has had some incredibly bands in the past, including The Doors and Cream. It may or may not also be a strip club; rumors abound but no one can confirm personally. One thing we know for sure is “PT’s Club Inferno is known for being a pretty wild place to party.” Plus, Achachay! is known for bringing the party. So it’s going to be a kickass time. See you there!

Hello Portland!

Today we got to visit a city I’ve wanted to visit for quite some time… Portland, Oregon!  We had a day to hang out in Portland and check out the city.  We spent some time in the most amazing book store.  Powell’s Books is a huge bookstore downtown Portland.  There are multiple floors of what seems like miles of bookshelves.  It was really incredible checking out the book selection and of course enjoying some coffee (the NW is proud of their coffee).  We stayed with the Kanagy’s and they were awesome.  They fed us and made us feel like we were at home away from home.  We played a show at ‘The Twilight Room’ near The University of Portland campus.  There was a decent crowd and as always we played a great show.  After the show we watched the worst movie I’ve ever seen.  It’s called Robot Holocaust. We expected it to be bad… but it turned out to be the worst movie I’ve ever seen… But other than the terrible movie everything was amazing in Portland.  Oregon is beautiful and Portland is no different.  The trees, hills, and friendly people make it a great town.  All that’s left to say is good-bye Oregon! I can’t wait to see you again. Hello Washington!

Salem – should the only other band on the bill stay for a your show?

Hooch at the capitol in Salem, Oregon

We continued our tour of Oregon by playing a show in the capital, Salem. The town itself is a little small and quaint. Everyone we encountered along the way told us that many people work in Salem and commute from Portland or other nearby towns. We spent maybe 5 hours total in Salem, so I’m not going to act like I really got to know the town, but from what I saw I thought it was cool enough. We played at this small venue called The Space. It was a independently owned venue, purely around to support live music. The cool thing about The Space is that even though its a very small venue, the stage was not small by any means. I always enjoy a venue that puts the music-needs ahead of most everything else. The venue was run by a guy named John (Jean?)- Paul who was dubbed “the Pope of Salem”.

Originally we were slotted to open the night for a local-ish band (I say local-ish because I think members from the band lived all over that part of Oregon) called Jamalia, but they insisted on going first and we obliged. This ended up being a very selfish move on their part. Most of the people who came out to see them, or just to see music, left by the time we started. This was a direct result of Jamalia ending their set late– they fucking played for around an hour and a half. I typically don’t care about this sort of thing, and I didn’t at the time, until all of the people left before our set (almost all at least) and even every member of Jamalia left long before we finished. I don’t know, maybe I live by some higher-code which I’ve fabricated out of the Rock-Lore in my brain, but out of respect to the other bands I think one should hang around for their set unless absolutely necessary. Whatever. For those who did stay, we rocked it as if there were thousands in attendance. We sold a few cds and a t-shirt so I can’t really complain.

I ask you, the reader, musician or not: Is there an unwritten law that says out of respect you should stay for the other bands playing that night? Discuss amongst yourselves…

Eugene – Keyboard jams, friends, reflections

We show up to the Muse Lounge (which made a sweet flyer for us, by the way)
Desire, the owner, told us to just set up right around him. So naturally I started jamming along a little bit after I set up. He dug it, and encouraged me to keep playing. Soon Hooch joined in. We jammed for a few songs while sparks flew. Everyone dug it.

Finally Ryan joined us, and it was an all-out funk jam with some of the best keys I’ve heard. Chris was a monster, knowing when to accompany and knowing when to go all out. He was creative, playing some crazy space-age sounding solos when the song called for it. It was fun! And our show hadn’t even officially started.

We all had a good time. Afterwards Chris came up to us with a suggestion – we all work on a cruise line together. Sure, why not? If we can earn some dinero to support ourselves when we’re not on tour, and have some extra to get some more promotion and more recordings, let’s do it! So we exchanged numbers. Who knows what the future will bring? Hell I’d bring Chris on tour with us any day. Maybe we will when we can support another body on the road.

Eugene was very sweet for another reason: I got to catch up with two old friends. One from studying abroad in Spain whom I hadn’t seen in three years, and another who lived in the room above mine freshman year at Rice. Both were very exciting; Nicole from Spain because we spent a lot of time together there, and Miller from Rice because she was a Senior when we met so I hadn’t even really talked to her in 5 years! Both seem to be doing great but alas our time together was far too short.

Unfortunately the first half of the show itself was pretty rough. I broke two strings, Hooch’s bass was peaking and going nuts through the monitors, and aside from our friends there was essentially no crowd. As a result the energy was low and we really weren’t feeling it.

After we took a break, we decided to just let loose. If only Chris were still around to join us! Or our friends to hear us! We just had fun on stage; jammed out extra long, gave each other more space to solo, improvised a little more. Barely anyone around to listen? Barely any reason to care. As a result, the second half was awesome.

Interestingly enough, there were probably about ten or fifteen people scattered about the bar – outside, in another room, etc., and they were all very complimentary at the end. We just didn’t know they were listening because they weren’t in front of the stage.

I was reminded of another thing Martin Atkins said in our interview – all we need to focus on is making one more fan. More on that later. This article is already pretty long.

Great day for a funk band… Let’s have two!

beautiful Ashland

It’s a beautiful day for a funk band. Let’s have two!  Ashland is such a beautiful town.  If I didn’t know better when driving around I would think I was in the Swiss Alps.  The town just has a lot of character.  People are very friendly and make you feel at home.  The Caldera Tap House was no different.  Dave went out of his way to make sure we had everything we could need.  Everything from lodging to food to brews.  We stayed with the guys from the band Karrgo Bossa Jova.

They had a house on the out skirts of town so we could jam late and enjoy ourselves. We had a couple great nights hanging out with the guys from the band. We got to make some great music and just had a great time hanging out. I love Oregon!

That night's set list went over well

Eureka was great!

Hooch hula-hoops on the edge of the continent

Our last show and last few days in California were spent in the beautiful town/area of Eureka, California. We played a show at a bar called the Little Red Lion, which was a cool dive bar that catered to locals. Everyone we met there was great. In a last minute turn of events, we were joined by 2 locals bands for the night. It turned out their original gig for the night was canceled abruptly.  The bar tender at the Red Lion asked us if they could join and of course we were more than happy to help them out! The addition was a win-win for everyone: more people in attendance for us and a show for them.

The night ended with us heading across the bay to Arcata, which is a town only a few miles from Eureka, but which is more of a college town and has a large population of college-age kids. Arcata was cool because we more or less just showed up at this random house party and were able to get down with the rando kids at the party. With some friends from the show in tow, we hung out, danced out, got a stomp-sesh going on the dancefloor, and met some locals before heading to our friend and host’s house for a night-cap.

That feeling

We spent one more day in Eureka before heading to Oregon. The day was spent driving from one gorgeous beach-forest to the other. Our guide was my friend Timothy, who is an old Echo Hill friend and Texan who has relocated to Eureka– T was also our gracious host. He took us to several cool beaches, many of which were obscured by lush forests containing the famous redwood trees commonly found in northern California. We probably walked around 3 to 5 miles from beach to beach and forest to forest. It was all really amazing.

I always get the feeling when I’m on the coast that I’m at the edge of the continent. That realization, that I am at the farthest point (west in this case) almost always envelopes my psyche as I reflect in the wake of nature’s beauty. I have talked to several locals during the tour in the various coastal towns we have played, wondering if they feel the same way, and I have come to the conclusion that only as a person who has grown up in the interior of a country, does one experience this. I would argue, however, that like anything else, appreciation diminishes over time and with increased frequency. Strangely, I typically do not get this feeling when I visit the Gulf Coast. Perhaps there is a sort of ‘curve’ that relates  distance traveled to the location appreciation.

Eureka was great, and I’m glad we got to explore the wondrous wilderness of the area.

Hiking through the verdure

T, our gracious host

Loving it

San Fran: The joy of seeing old friends

One of my favorite things about touring is catching up with old friends. I have a lot of them scattered about the country (and world at this point), from a few trips abroad and from Rice’s cosmopolitan population. I think it’s such a gift to be able to see people who live thousands and thousands of miles away and usually don’t have plans to come to Texas any time soon.

I plan to see many people, and solicit their couches a few weeks (or days) ahead before we reach a city. This was the case with Andy and Megan, some very close friends from Rice. We stayed with them in San Francisco, as Hooch mentioned in yesterday’s post, and had a great time. They cooked us incredible food, we went to the Farmer’s Market, we traded music and stories, we played frisbee, we talked politics and love and economics and religion and bio-psycho-social developmental theories (you know all the usual stuff). We all had a wonderful time.

I also got to catch up with one of my old roommates and very good friends Brian Chek. Awesome.

Wish I had a pic of what I was talking about, but this happened on Friday night after the show. There was a lot of graffiti already in those practice rooms, so we added to it. We like to leave our mark I guess.

Some of the most exciting times are the ones that are totally unexpected. We show up at the Brainwash two Fridays ago in San Francisco. It’s a sweet place – food, coffee, beer, laundry, and live music all in one. The show was fun, we played with the same band as Wednesday plus another, we jammed afterwards with them and some of their friends at a crazy warehouse practice space with grafitti everwhere. This alone would have been worth a blog post. Everyone we hung out with was incredibly generous with their instruments, booze, and northern Californian specialties.

Back to the show – there was this moment during our first song when I glanced over the counter at Brainwash only to see two friends that I had not seen in three and a half years – since I studied abroad with them in Ghana. I did a double take, and for a few moments, maybe even a few minutes, I had to make sure I was not indeed dreaming. First I saw Rachel with long hair, even though the whole time I knew her she had a buzz cut. Standing right next to her was Kristen, another friend from the same Ghanaian Urban Ethnomusicological drum and dance fest. What! Last I knew one was in St. Louis and the other was in New York. How’d they end up San Francisco? This alone made the night amazing, because I love these girls!

We got a chance to catch up; I got to meet one of their boyfriends whom I had heard about back in the day; we ate burritos. The time was of course way too short (it always is isn’t it?) but it was so sweet. And I love surprises.

Being able to reconnect with people like this always spreads my grin so wide that my mouth muscles hurt. It was almost too much – catching up with Cole on Wednesday and Thursday, Andy and Megan the whole time, Chek, plus Rachel and Kristen. There wasn’t even enough time for it all.

Achachay! The San Francisco Treat

San Francisco is really an awesome town.  We played at Grant and Green with Fuzzbuster a local band who was a lot of fun.  The Grant and Green is a very cool music bar.  The staff was very hospitable and we had a great crowd.  San Francisco just has a great vibe.  People love music and really made us feel welcome.  Ryan and I wandered around the city the day after the show and did the stereotypical touristy things.  We went to the fisherman’s wharf to have clam chowder and we got to see a crazy local guy singing perched on a trash can…. Good times.  We went to golden gate park because we thought it would over look the golden gate bridge, but it turns out it’s about 3 miles from the bridge…. But it is a beautiful park!  We did finally make it to the bridge just after nightfall but it was still pretty awesome.  I’d like to thank Andy and Megan for their hospitality and for the great food!  Overall San Francisco rocked and I can’t wait to go back!