adventures

Blog catch up: Pagosa Springs

We’re almost done chronicling our last tour… Just about to get into the last week. This is a stream of consciousness post…

On Friday October 14th we woke and drove 7 hours from Denver to Pagosa Springs. We’ve done this drive twice before and its pretty sweet, but this time was more ridiculous since we had already driven 12 hours from Reno to Moab, and eight hours from Moab to Denver the previous two days. Both of those shows were four hour shows too. We’re putting in our 10,000 hours I suppose, although we’ll be better drivers than players at the end of it

The show was fun. The Bear Creek Saloon always has a new crowd of people and we never know what to expect. The funny thing about this time was that we didn’t have a place to stay. Normally, we just drive home to Austin because Pagosa is often our last stop, but this time we were playing Creede the next night, and its only 1.5 hours away.

We only took one break so sourcing a sleeping spot proved fairly troublesome. Luckily Liza saved the day. What would we do without her? She befriended a traveling troupe of friendly dudes traipsing across the US and they offered the floor of their hotel.

The great stories happened at the afterparty, as they are often wont to do.

Ryan and Liza were tired, so they headed back to the hotel. Hooch and I were pumped to check out this crazy after hours secret club run by a peaceful biker gang… that our friend Justine told us about.

The place was really chill. It was kind of what you’d expect: a warehouse with a pool table, music, dancing, and “free” drinks (you are expected to tip). I got invited to play a game of poker, so I got immediately sucked in. It was sweet. I played it really cool and knocked everyone out over the course of the next three hours until I was heads up with the host. At that point it was 6:30 AM so we decided to split the pot and call it a … morning.

Hooch and I managed to find a ride back to the new acquaintances’ hotel. We stumbled around the complex toting a bottle of whiskey, searching for the right room. Upon entering, we were surprised to find that sleeping bodies covered almost every single surface in the room. I managed to curl up in the corner between the wall and the bed, but Hooch would have had to sleep halfway in the bathroom. Pretty funny situation. Last thing I remember before passing out was that he was eating a leftover Subway sandwich, both in the bathroom and in bed since they were one and the same.

Of course it never ends on the road. The party goes on. Our gracious and generous hosts had to check out early the next morning since they were hitting the slopes and moving on, so they awoke us just two hours later. Where was Hooch? We hopped over to the van and found him comfortably clutch the whiskey and a spare pillow to his breast. I suppose the bathroom floor just didn’t do it for him.

Liza and Ryan fared ok, but Hooch and I had stayed up until about 7AM partying. I passed out in the van next to Hooch and we both slept for the next couple hours. I’m not sure what the others did – I think they checked out a hot springs and got some breakfast. I think I ate some oatmeal at a gas station later that day.

Yep. That’s the deal with Pagosa Springs. We’ve never really gotten to enjoy the daytime offerings of the beautiful town. Hooch befriended the friendly biker gang (They are called something ridiculous like the “He-Devils of Grace”) and they offered us a place to stay, so hopefully the next time will be a little more restful. Either way I won’t be surprised if we end

This was not our show at Pagosa Spings, but it captures the essence of the night's energy

up with a good story to tell.

Morro Bay, poo in a bucket

We awoke at 630 am Friday morning to drive a ridiculous 12 hours to Otter Rock club in Morro Bay California. We arrive to a beautiful bar on a beach harbor, play a fun long show to a decent crowd of entirely foreigners, and pop on over to SLO for the night.  The show is brilliant; its a great crowd and atmosphere for our almost a capella song (ryan’s now on djembe). We also sell some Keep Austin Funky shirts to some friendly Arizonans.

Anyway, there are two stories even more worth telling here. The first is about a sweet jacket. The second is about shitting in a bucket.

(1) Flagstaff and the jacket… Ryan already mentioned the jacket but let me elaborate. There is a group of four people hanging out, waiting for us to play. One guy says he doesn’t want to stick around because he’s really cold. I’m heading to the van to warm up vocally anyway, so I grab him my one and only jacket. It’s a stylish, tight green affair from H&M that I got on the last tour. He wears it, they stay and have a really good time. Good enough that he gets drunk enough to walk off with my jacket!

A little cold, and a little bummed. We head home to Dan’s. Dan is about the most generous guy you’ll ever meet. He loves to make people feel good. He’s in the process of getting rid of as much of his stuff as possible to go traveling in a month. As soon as he hears about my plight, his face lights up. “I’ve got the coolest jacket you can have. It’s going to look perfect.” He goes to the closet and pulls out a freakin’ sweet crazy tan cow hide and sheep fur masterpiece. I don it; it fits. “Thanks Dan!” I throw a leathery wooly hug around the man, and have hardly been able to take off the jacket since.

(2) SLO and the poo bucket… Our couchsurfing hosts in San Luis Obispo (SLO) are a bunch of badass dudes. They were totally welcoming, and down to host us after our Morro Bay show even though we’d be getting in late and never met them before. We had a sweet jam with them in the morning (made hooch and I want to buy a banjo), and in general they made us feel like home. More mentions will be made of them as we stayed with them another night. The important part here is that we walk into the bathroom and there’s a red Home Depot funnel labeled “Pee here,” going through a hole in the floor, and there’s a bucket – just a bucket -  with a toilet seat that says, “Composting Toilet. Poop here, cover with sawdust. No pee! Save 1.6 gallons.” Yeah, that was the deal. They poop in a bucket.

I have read about this before, but I had never had the pleasure of getting to participate. It really does save a lot of water, and investments into sanitation equipment and sewer systems (if you properly compost it. Here’s the wikipedia article about it). I’m not ready to jump on the bandwagon, but I’m glad that people are experimenting with more environmental ways of disposing of waste. It wasn’t too bad to use, and it seems to be going okay for these guys (For the record – they’re very normal people. They study mechanical and civil engineering).

Just some savory tidbits from life on the road.

Tour: Night 1!

Hello all of my Achachillians! I write to you from a lovely coffee shop in sunny El Paso. Last night was the first night of the tour and it was a great start to our 2nd west coast (western US) tour. Our first show was at the Deadhorse Saloon in San Angelo, Texas. It was our second time playing there and we were happy/excited to be back. We opened up for a popular local band called Bugota. There were a few familiar faces in the crowd from the last time we played (which is always nice) and we ripped through a 70 minute set. It felt nice to be back on stage after not playing together for about 3 weeks.

So after the show it was time to find a place to sleep. We typically can get away with couchsurfing in most places we play, but unfortunately San Angelo doesn’t have a couchsurfer community, so we were forced to ask around at the bar. This time around we couldn’t find any takers– the most popular response being “my old-lady is really strict about that sort of thing…”. So it was up to us to find some where to sleep. Luckily Jordan brought two tents with him this time, and everyone was game to find a camp ground for the night. After driving through some fairly spooky terrain outside of San Angelo we came across a state park. We decided the safest thing to do would be camping out right in front of the welcome center, so as to not piss any park rangers or other authority figures off. It was clearly a permit only situation, but at 3:00 am we couldn’t give two shits.

I should take this moment to introduce the newest addition to our group: Amanda the merch-girl. That’s right, the three road warriors have welcomed a new member to the fold for this tour. Her name is Amanda Shaftel, and she is a friend of the band who volunteered to come on the road to help us sell merchandise. She’s a trooper as on her first night with us, she was subjected to a night sleeping in a hot tent (and yes it was FUCKING HOT).

Anyways we all tried to sleep the best we could, all of us expecting to be accosted by some random vagabond or park ranger/cop at any second. Personally I slept for possibly a grand total of 90 minutes, finding the heat and my own paranoia unbearable. We managed to make it until about 8:45 am before a stereotypical mustached and southern-drawled park ranger asked us for our camping permits. Luckily we explained that we had arrived too late to register, and he didn’t give us any gruff as long as we would leave or register.

Hell of a first night! I’m running on a ton of caffeine and a giant Mexican torta right now, but I know I’ll be crashing at some point. The fun part is we don’t have a place lined up to sleep tonight either! Yeah! Well, until next time folks…