cops

Little Rock saved

One of the things that I love about being on the road is that occasionally things are seemingly going south, but they some how pick up in the 11th hour and it redeems my faith in people. I know we have written similar posts on how one show gets canceled and then we pick up a better show, but I don’t think I’ll get tired of shitty situations working out positively for us (or writing about them). So for our third show on the tour we were scheduled to play the Cornerstone Pub in Little Rock, Arkansas. We arrived the venue on time only to find…..a dj setting up on the stage where we were supposed to play! OF COURSE A DJ WAS SETTING UP! Now a seasoned road-vet, I took this in stride and sat down at the bar to wait for the owner to come by and clear this up. The owner arrived shortly thereafter and was obviously a tad drunk from the afternoon college football pounding his beloved Razorbacks had taken. He was straight up with us, though, and said that even though we had done everything right, he was going to go with the dj and a local rapper. He did offer us a severance including some cash and food and drinks (which was nice). Clearly he was having an interesting day and this was just one more thing he had to deal with.

So we regrouped and decided to look for a last-minute show. After about 2 hours of Jordan driving around talking to bars and Ryan and I calling all of the others, Jordan got lucky with a place called the Underground Pub. They couldn’t pay us, but they were going to let us play and that was enough for us. So we rushed to the bar and set up as fast as we could to get an 11pm start. I wrote a killer 13 song set list and we got to it. I think we were all just really excited to play and we absolutely killed it. There was even a local band in the crowd that had had similar misfortune that night with a show cancellation due to a power outage. We offered them a set after we finished, but half-way through our set, members of the band decided to pre-maturely throw in the towel after witnessing the awesomeness that is Achachay!. We ended up selling a bunch of merch, making good tips, getting 16 new people to sign up for the mailing list, and just having a really great time. All in all I’d say the night was a success and more than likely better than playing the original show.

We ended the night with some new friends and the cops. After a titillating hour-long discussion on the virtues of poo and stories related to poo, the cops arrived baring flashlights in our new friend Rob’s backyard. POO. Apparently we were being too loud for the neighbors (we were laughing really hard at some hilarious stories). Luckily they were nice and only made us go inside (6 cops showed up for 5 of us). We said goodbye to our new friends Rob and Rafi and headed to our couchsurfing destination for the night which turned out to be wonderful. Our hosts TJ and Grey were amazing! Adventure: Little Rock stylie.

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…