Tour 4: Fall 2010, Western US Tour (2)

The end of the West Coast tour recap

Hey everyone we got caught up with the end of the tour and coming back to austin and getting Kickstarter out there and getting our next tour up and running and . . . so on . . . and so on . . . so for now I’ll sum up the last few shows in a few sentences. They deserve more attention, of course, but alas ce’est la vie.

Sept 14, Carbondale, CO:
Awesome to play for my sis, garrett, and friends.

Sept 15, Gunnison, CO:
Love this venue (The Gunnison Brewery), because everyone dances and gets into the show immediately. It’s always packed. Lori and crew take care of us with delicious micro-brews, and Ty hosted us again couchsurfing style. He then took Amanda and I out to go bouldering, despite all of our slight hung-over-ness, and we nailed a cool overhanging climb.

Sept 16, Telluride, CO:
Bubble Lounge gave us free oxygen which is cool. Never done that before. At the show a decent sized crowd loved our originals and old funk and soul covers. Crazy thing- we took a 5 minute break and the whole, drunken, fun loving, sing-a-longin’ crowd ghosted by the time we got a beer and bathroom break. Telluride is a beautiful town, and a bonus is that our friends/multi-show/multi-state acquaintances run a SWEET coffee shop in town, the Steaming Bean. Downside: didn’t get to hang with our hosts.

Sept 17, Grand Junction, CO:
Great support from the bar and staff. Crazy how most of the time no one danced or came close to the stage, but people would walk by and tell us how awesome we were playing. Very friendly CS host. Hear that GJ is the meth capital of the world, which augmented Hooch’s methhead paranoias.

Sept 18, Durango, CO:
Jack, Jess, the Leggetts in general, and Kat were awesome hosts. Bar was fun and show rocked. People danced. We made a possibly very useful connection for future musical possibilities. Bonuses galore:
- Kenny was in town for a mountain biking race and we got to catch up
- Experienced Mesa Verde Nat’l Park
- Saw a deer gutted for the first time (nuts!)
- I helped tan the hide a TINY bit
- Rode a two -story bike
- Food not bombs is cool
- the Ground Up Art Collective our friends hang out at is badass, and very welcoming
Played Settlers of Catan for the first time and loved it.

Sept 21, Amarillo, TX:
Show got moved from the historic Nat Ballroom to the 806 – a coffee shop across the street. This turned out to be AWESOME because we met and listened to the amazing, powerful, emotional, stunning music of Jenny Wood. Check her out if you get the chance to see her live. You will be happy you did.

Sept 22, Lubbock, TX:
Played with my old bandmate and good friend Nathan Glenn. That alone made it just lovely. Recorded the show and will put a track or two on the bonus live CD for Kickstarter. CP brought a crowd.

Sept 24, Austin TX EP release:
Technically not part of the tour, but being only two days later, should be included. How sweet to play at home! So many familiar faces, so many lovely people. Knowing the words, singing and dancing along, telling us how we’ve improved so much, glueing googly eyes on their hands.

Check out the pics on facebook by clicking here, and forgive all my run on sentences and lack of proper punctuation, like semi-colons.

Boulder, what a show!

I don’t like to play favorites, but Saturday September 11th in Boulder might have been my favorite show of the tour (so far). Here’s why:

- People danced the ENTIRE time- all three hours!
- They sang along to the words, of our covers AND our originals!
- We gathered the most diverse crowd- all ages, types, sexual orientations. For example, here’s the quote of the night:
“Yall are so hot you’re gonna make me straight!” (from a lesbian chick)
- A ton of friends came out to see us, like my wonderful girlfriend Jane (who got to see us three nights in a row!), the all-stars Kenny and Julie, Katie an old friend from Camp Olympia and her friends, Kate an old friend from Austin and her friends (who are now friends with our other friends since they met the last time we played in Colorado), my old roommates’ younger brother, a bunch of Ryan’s good friends (including Aaron who saw us in Denver too)
- Some of Hooch’s friends (who are now our friends too) came all the way from Oklahoma! Shout out to Autumn and Jackie, badass fans
- The bar, called “The Dark Horse” was really cool. All these old chariots and buggies hang suspended from the ceiling.
- Everyone played along; I even got to do my first call and response with the crowd. I got a little carried away and tried to get everyone to scat sing. It actually kind of worked.
- We were very on musically, and the sound was good.

I wish I could capture the energy of the show and share it with you all online. It was just so positive, uplifting, joyous, and carefree. It was all the more special as a contrast to the 9/11 events nine years earlier. I didn’t even mention it on stage, because what better way to honor the dead, than by celebrating life to it’s fullest?

Everyday Joe’s in Ft. Collins!

Everyday Joe’s is a great coffee shop/venue in Ft. Collins. It’s definitely not your average coffee shop. There’s a large stage with a full PA but in typical coffee shop fashion it has that cozy atmosphere that is conducive to creativity. Because the venue is all ages we played with a couple younger bands. It was a nice change from playing in 21 and over venues. They gave us free coffee drinks so before the show so I had a ridiculous mocha with 4 espresso shots… In the future I will limit my espresso intake to a 2 shot maximum at any given time…. I was feeling pretty weird on stage honestly. I guess I still played well because the boys from Yettie asked me to play with them when their bass player fell ill. Jordan decided to jump onstage as well and jam it out. We had some funky jams and played a couple cover songs and well helped saved their show. It was a lot of fun. I felt bad for the bassist but I had a blast!

Tonight’s Amarillo show moved to the 806

Tonight’s Amarillo show moved to The 806! Just down the street from Nat Ballroom, on Georgia. Nashville singer songwriter Jenny Wood opens at 9, we go on after her.

Denver from Blatt

Driving at sunrise

We arrived in Denver around 10:00 AM after driving from Park City the night before. The drive took about 8 hours and we were pretty fried by the time we got in. Hooch and I decided we needed food more than sleep, and so we set out for IHOP almost immediately. IHOP is IHOP is IHOP, but I have to say NEVER ORDER ORANGE JUICE from IHOP! Seriously for a 12-14 oz glass of OJ it’s $4. Four fucking dollars! That’s like a gallon at the grocery store and then some–but I digress. After stuffing our faces, we passed out for most of the day. After all we needed to be rested for the show.

The show itself was great. We played at the Lion’s Lair which is a great little dive-bar on the famous Colfax Avenue. We played with 2 awesome local bands, The Riot and In Due Time. Both bands brought out a ton of fans and packed out the bar. The Riot were a funky band featuring a few horn players and In Due Time were almost a musical-theater-like rock/ska band. Both bands were great and it was a very fun night. I was also really happy to hang out with my friend from Tulane, Aaron, who lives in Denver these days. Onward and upward!

BLAAAAAAATTTTTTTTT

Inspiring story in Park City (how things went from bad to great)

We had a show scheduled for a bar in Park City with a modest guarantee. I even confirmed it in person when I was there with my family six weeks ago.  We show up at 630P, and there is another act scheduled. Turns out the guy who booked us got fired and all his bookings got canceled, but none of them got notified. They wouldn’t budge, but they did give us a couple appetizer pizzas and a beer a piece as a consolation prize.

I actually found the guy who booked us and asked him to get us a show. He tried but couldn’t get it worked out. So we went to every bar in town, explained the story, and asked if they needed a band for the night. The all said no.

We resolved to just drive on to Denver, but on the way out I saw the very last bar on the strip, the only which we hadn’t tried yet. I said, let’s stop and try one more time.

We walked in and I could tell the place was different. The vibe was relaxed, fun, chill. The owner was there. We told him the story, and he said, fuck yea, why not. We’ll throw you some gas money, and if you really rock it, we’ll cover your bar tab.

Great.

So we played, and the show was phenomenal. The bar, Lindzee O Michael’s, loved us, and the bartenders texted all of their friends and brought out a crowd. Everyone was dancing, and one guy even tipped us $100 to join us on a song. In the end, the bar covered our tab and paid us more than we were guaranteed at the original venue. They also loved us so much that they want us to come back in the winter when the city is crazy packed with tourists, and book us shows for a whole week. There could not have been a better ending to a story that seemed so screwed.

This is actually the third time something like that has happened on this tour, and each time we’ve made it work out for the better in the end.

These are some of the great life lessons we learn on the road. Persistence and optimism pay off, even if if doesn’t seem like it until the very end.

And if you’re ever in Park City, go to Lindzee O’ Michaels, it’s the best bar in town.

Salt Lake City!

We pulled into Salt Lake City late Monday night and after a good nights sleep we headed out to the great Salt Lake to see what it was all about. From what I can tell it’s a big lake with salt water. It wasn’t the prettiest thing I’ve seen or smelled…. Later that afternoon we headed back into SLC and made a stop by Sam’s Club to get a cheap slice of pizza. We then had a few hours to kill before we headed to the venue. So some more site seeing was in order. We ended up ata hidden park called Gilgal Sculpture Garden. It’s a little known park in the middle of a neighborhood. The only way we found about it was by doing a Yelp search for the area… Thanks Yelp! There were 12 rock sculptures and over 70 rocks that were engraved with scriptures. The rocks were carved using an acetylene torch . Pretty crazy stuff as you can see from the pictures. The artist Thomas Battersby Child, Jr. went to the trouble of moving up to 62 ton boulders for the garden and it’s pretty incredible really. There’s a funny quote from him that goes “You may think I am a nut, but I hope I have aroused your thinking and curiosity.” I have to say that he did make me think about spirituality and well moving rocks… so he was right! After the Garden we headed to The Bar Deluxe to get ready for our show. We played with a rock band called Little Black Pill. They brought out a good crowd and we made a bunch of new fans and had a blast. I’d like to thank the guys from Little Black Pill for letting us flop on their couches and making us feel at home. So many great people in so many cities! Awesome times!  Check out more pics at our facebook pics page for the west coast tour. http://www.facebook.com/#!/album.php?aid=208452&id=45765158606&ref=mf

Twin Falls: Couchsurfing, Pizza, Waterfalls

We spent a day off couchsurfing with Jake and Danielle Migler in Twin Falls Idaho. They were awesome hosts! Here’s a couple things that were amazing.

1) We ate at a delicious pizza buffet – called Gertie’s. It’s one of those places where they bring the pizza out to each table, kind of like a Brazilian Barbeque churascuria type place except with pizza. This was a joy for the famished (the four of us), and even though I don’t normally like desert pizza, these were the best I’ve ever had. You could also request pizza. I requested various vegetarian option. Others got the idaho special: Pizza with bacon and hash browns on ranch sauce instead of tomato sauce.

2) They’re setting up an “urban homestead” and use a lot of the same techniques I’m employing in Austin – because we get our info from the same book! Check out “URBAN HOMESTEADING”
- This means that they have they’re whole backyard transformed into a garden, including self-watering containers. They raise chickens and eat their eggs, they’re xeriscaping their front yard, they compost regularly and with vermiculture, and have a lot of other cool things in the works.

3) We visited Shoshone Falls, “The Niagra falls of the West.” Once again, pictures are worth more than words.

4) We got to go rock climbing again, which was sweet. There we met some other climbers who also couchsurf, and hooked us up with a guy to climb with in Salt Lake City!

5) Amanda and Hooch watched “Star Wars: A New Hope” *the original* for the FIRST TIME. I know, Ryan and I couldn’t believe it either. What’s worse – Amanda fell asleep in the middle of it!

6) We learned some secret computer hacking techniques that I can’t tell you about.

7) You won’t believe this – the water from the city of Twin Falls is poisonous. It has unsafe levels of Arsenic in it – over EPA standards. They don’t change it because it costs more to fix than to deal with the lawsuits from cancer patients and their families (once they die). HOW SCREWED UP IS THAT! To me, the problem is that they don’t tell anyone. I think that the city should either (a) not provide water for their citizens, or (b) fix the problem. If they’re providing water, we in the US have the assumption that it won’t kill us. You can bet I’d be involved in local politics if I lived in Twin Falls.

All in all it was a great stop, and a wonderful place to take a day off after a long drive and a bunch of shows in a row.

In Boise

In Boise, Boise is pronounced Boy-See. Not Boy-Zee. Remember that. Saturday after our amazing Seattle show, we drove 8 hours to Boise to a show at the Bouquet. The Bouquet is a cool place that we played last time we came through town. It has a great stage, awesome sound equipment, and a massive selection of mixed-whiskey drinks. I don’t really drink whiskey of late, but the other guys in the band were trying concoctions all night. We played a good show to some very receptive fans.

Boise is home to one of our favorite couchsurfers, Michelle. She hosted us last time and we were stoked to hang out with her again. We also made a new friend at the bar that night, Lauren the bartender. After the show we all went back to her place and had a hot-tub party on her roof-top deck. It was awesome to relax after the show with friends in the hot tub. The night was capped off with a 5 am trip to Beto’s for burritos. These burritos are extremely cheap and extremely big. I’m talking $3.50 for a massive, arm-sized burrito of your choosing. Good times.

Ryanaayahanananababalalalattttt

Seattle and The Central Saloon

We have been in and out of Seattle several times the past few days because we had shows north and south of Seattle in Olympia and Everett so the city was teasing us each time we drove through. There’s just something about Seattle that makes me want to stay. Maybe it’s the coastal feel, maybe it’s the people, maybe it’s just that I really like space needles? I don’t know. But I always love coming to Seattle.

We played Seattle last time on a Monday night and had a decent crowd so we were expecting a great show on a Friday night. The bar we play in Seattle has a ton of history. It’s called The Central Saloon and it’s the oldest bar in Seattle.

A bunch of bands that have gone on to be huge have played this bar including Nirvana and Soundgarden. But I digress… So we show up at the venue and find out that we are going on an hour earlier than expected so only a few of our fans get the message and end up making the show. This was a total bummer for us. Fortunately the other two local bands did their job and brought out a great crowd. So we made a bunch of new fans and just had a blast playing for a big crowd of new people.  You might be able to tell from the pictures it was so friggin’ hot in that bar!  But other than sweating a lot it was a great night. Tomorrow is Boise, ID so stay tuned!