couchsurfing

Salida: A last minute show to remember!

Today we are traveling from Preblo, CO to Telluride, CO. We got a late start and didn’t get out of town until about 2 PM. We have a night off so we decided to stop in Salida to see a friend of ours Ty. We met Ty through couchsurfing a couple years ago and have been tight ever since. We also decided since we had the night off we should see if we could find a place to play. We hit up a couple of bars and they were all very receptive to live music but were booked. There was also a place with a patio that we could play on. But playing a show in 20 degree temperatures didn’t sound too appealing… The last place we popped in was the Tenderfoot. Ryan did the talking and the Bartender Mary was more than happy to let us play. We decided to go have dinner and make a decision about whether we were going to play a show or drive across an icy mountain pass after dark. Looking back now, it seems like the obvious decision was to play the show… The show was awesome. We had the bar packed all night. People were dancing and having a great time just like we were! It was another one of those times where we are on tour and randomly things come together for an awesome night of music. We will definitely be back in Salida. A big thanks to the Mary’s at Tenderfoot for having us play. It was such a blast!

Puebloooooooooooo!!!!!

Us and the famous Slopper!

After a few days of R&R spent in Colorado Springs, we headed south to Pueblo. Pueblo is a cool, little town that is famous for a food  dish called the Slopper. A slopper, for all you N00bs, is 2 hamburgers (meat (cheese if you like it) and buns) smothered in green chili sauce and topped with fries. For those of you not familiar with the Souther CO and New Mexico ‘green chili’, this is more of a sauce than a soup and is quite tasty. Sloppers can have as many as 6 hamburger patties and can also have red chili (beans/meat typical chili) on them as well. Our new couchsurfing friend Jenny took us to the Coors Bar, known for the best sloppers in town, and we were not disappointed. I should also mention one  can order a slopper “Christmas style” which is a combo of red and green chili on top (yum!). I think, personally, I need to create a sort of Texas-slopper. Maybe chopped beef or brisket sandwiches, covered in red chili (with more tasty TX BBQ meat), and then with some bacon (because bacon is FUCKING AWESOME) and yeah, I guess, if you want, you can add cheese (I’d be down for queso!).

Anyways, enough food talk (can you tell what my favorite part of Pueblo was?), our concert was also fun. Wednesday nights aren’t typically the best, but this show wasn’t bad at all. we played a place called the Downtown Bar, and we had a good crowd including our Couchsurfer and her friends, some friends from CO Springs that came down, and other locals. We went over well and had a great night which ended with a late night trip to Denny’s, the second in three days (no joke).

Friends and fans with our new T-shirts on!

I’m stoked to come back to Pueblo and play again for our new friends!

BLATTTTTTTT!!!!!!

Motherloaded in Breck Pt. 2

We started our day off right with breakfast out our Couchsurfer Mark’s home outside of Durango. The night before we arrived at Mark’s place and managed to get the van stuck in the driveway… Turns out the tires aren’t as good as they were new! After some slipping and sliding and pushing and well… all that fun stuff that comes along with having a 2 wheel drive van on the snow… We finally managed to get the chains on the tires and drove out of the driveway with ease. Man I’m glad we picked up those chains! So moving on… We had a 6 hour drive from Durango to Breckenridge through some amazing mountain passes including the Red Mountain Pass. Fortunately the passes were clear of snow and it was just a gorgeous drive. We arrived in Breckenridge around 8 pm and the Motherloaded was already hopping. The Motherloaded Tavern is such a fun venue. It’s the perfect environment for funky upbeat music like ours. They have a table that is bolted to the floor so you can dance on the table and people use it! The drinks were flowing and the crowd was dancing and eating up every bit of funk we could cook for them. It was such a fun night. I really can’t say enough about the Motherloaded. They really take care of us(check out the pic of the tip jar, lol)  and this place is just a blast!

Ska Brewery, Y’all!

Another reason I love Ska: the awesome branding!

After our very fun night in Grand Junction, we headed to Durango to play the Ska Brewery. If you haven’t heard of the Ska Brewery, it is an awesome micro-brewery that’s been open almost 20 years and produces a variety of awesome beers. Check them out at www.skabrewing.com.

So the show was an early 5 pm show and we played for a few hours. It was fun, and between our new CouchSurfing friend Mark and the other patrons at the brewery, we got down! Not to mention we also got free, delicious beer!

We ended the night hanging out with Mark and getting the van stuck in the snow outside his house. It made for a pretty hilarious/arduous process the next morning that entailed pushing the van, putting chains on the back tires and praying for traction. I always enjoy Durango, and this time was no exception!

Tahoe: Festivity, Beauty, Music

They say all’s well that ends well, but there’s something to be said for getting off on the right foot. The magnificent drive through the vineyards and rolling hills of central California into the mountainous region of Lake Tahoe was certainly a sunny beginning to the events surrounding and including the Achachay! show at Rojo’s (as in Row-Joe’s).  Our hosts were an ever cheerful group of ski-bums, who tend to move in large packs and almost exclusively on bikes.  They also get seriously amped up for shows, so when their excited state was bombarded with the absurd amount of energy Achachay! puts out during their shows, the basement of Rojo’s broke out into ballistics.

Introductions: Liza

Let’s start with the basics: My name is Liza Mitrofanova and I’m accompanying your favorite Achachay! boys on their 2011 West Coast Tour. Why, you ask, do I have the supreme honor of making this pilgrimage? Well, it’s all quite simple, really. The only cosmic alignment that had to take place was their need to promote and sell merch on the road, my availability and pre-existing plans to forage into the West, and a tiny amount of social network intervention.

This is why there has been a random girl you probably don’t recognize popping up in the later posts by Jordan and the Ryan’s. So let’s get cozy – here are a few factoids about Yours Truly.

I was born in the wintery month of February in Siberia…. As a point of reference, pull up a map of Russia, now point with your index finger to the exact middle of that glorious country, and Voila! You have now, more or less, identified my birth place: Novosibirsk.

Three of the people I consider my parents are either biochemists or moleculuar biologists. Nevertheless, neither my sister or I have (or intend to) follow these career paths.

As is made obvious by my decision to embark on a six week tour in a van with three strangers, I like journeys, people, music, and all kinds of new experiences… preferably the ones you can’t predict. The elements just mentioned have brought me to an appreciation of Peruvian box drums and sharing yerba mate.

I don’t get homesick really ever (though I do love my family very, very much), but I do miss my 120 pound pooch. Home is where your dog is, I say.

All in all, I’m a pretty simple being, and all I want right now is to see the West the way Thomas Moran did… and despite all the domestication of the Wild that’s taken place, I’d say I’m feeling it.

Nice to meet.

-Liza-

Wichita and ‘The Manly Dancer’

We are getting caught up on our blogs from the short Oklahoma tour…. This blog is about Wichita, Kansas. Since I grew up in Northern Oklahoma I have been to Wichita a few times. I’ve been to the Zoo and the Race Track but that’s pretty much it. It turns out that Wichita has at least one pretty sweet bar called ‘The Pumphouse’. ‘The Pumphouse’ has a VERY large outdoor stage for shows and plenty of room inside if you don’t want to hear live music. The funny thing about the big stage is there is no house sound system or lights. The sound is no problem we bring our sound system everywhere we go but we don’t have any lights… So we had to improvise a little and use some lights the bar had used for maintenance inside the building. It worked just fine other than looking a little bit strange….

The show was a lot of fun. There was an interesting occurrence while we were playing… You know sometimes we will have women do let’s say… ‘seductive’ dancing while we play and I think people can deal with that even though it’s a bit embarrassing for the women… In Wichita it was a little different…. During the last hour of our set we had a grown man dancing ‘seductively’ to our set…. There were points where he was actually giving girls (seemingly against their will) lap dances. He would thrust and dance on the front of the stage. Facing the audience thankfully… It was pretty out of control. At one point ‘the manly dancer’ crossed the line and almost got his butt kicked by one of the women. So if I learned anything from this incident… It is that a guy should never go to a bar alone. Had this guy had a friend at the bar this little ‘tease’ would have never occurred.

Even with our ‘sideshow’ the show was a blast in Wichita. It was entertaining for us to watch the crowd respond to ‘the manly dancer’ and the crowd enjoyed watching us play so it was a super fun night. We really couldn’t have asked for more our first time in Wichita. This ends my after tour blog about the tour. Hooch out!

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.

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.

Ft. Collins and a little brewin’

This wasn’t Achachay’s first trip to Ft. Collins. We’ve been to Ft. Collins a couple of other times and always have a great time. Monday night at Hodi’s Half Note is funk jam night so we took full advantage of the funky evening. We got up and played a few of our songs as a full group and as the night went on we rotated in to the jam individually. Over the course of the evening there were probably 15 different musicians that got up and jammed. Made for a very fun Monday night. The next day we headed out to do some promotional work at the radio stations in town and then made our way to a couple of local breweries. First we hit the New Belgium brewery home of Fat Tire and many other tasty hoppy concoctions. New Belgium had a very friendly atmosphere and everyone working the tasting room really knew their beer. I tried several beers but I think I decided my favorite is the Dunkelweiss… I’m not sure honestly… they were almost all very tasty…. After New Belgium we headed to another local microbrewery Equinox. They had some very tasty stouts! After having the sample tray of beer (well I did…) we decided it was time to grab some dinner and head to bed so we could head out at a decent hour. I’d like to give a big thanks to our tour guide and couchsurfing friend Jackie for not only showing us the breweries but letting us flop at her casa (thanks to Sarah, Jackie’s roomate too)!