couchsurfing

Golden

Buffalo Rose in Golden

On Friday we made our way out of the Western Slope of Colorado and back to the Denver area. On the way from Gunnison to Denver, we gave our old friend Ty a ride to Breckenridge and walked the town dropping off demos. We have actually had some great luck in the past few days with independent radio stations in CO. In both Crested Butte and Gunnison we were able to basically show up at the radio stations with some CDs and a promo flier and get great responses from the DJs. Both times they were very friendly and encouraging about playing our music on the air and possibly have an on-air interview/show the next we came through time (yeah!).

The drive was easy and after chilling out for a few hours we headed to the Buffalo Rose in Golden for the show that night. The bar had a great stage and sound system which was encouraging, but there weren’t too many people in the room where the bands played. We managed to wrangle some more people from the adjoining bar by dropping the cover for the night, and it turned out to be a pretty good show. Each time we play a small show like this, I just consider the fact that we have made a few more fans and that next time we will have a better crowd for sure!  On the Boulder and the Dark Horse Tavern!

Good ol’ Gunnie!

Pic of the Last Chance in Gunni

Today we are headed from Crested Butte to Gunnison, Colorado. It’s an easy 45 minute drive and it turns out the blizzard didn’t hit Gunnison so we were out of the bad driving conditions in no time. On our way we picked up a couple of skiers hitching their way back to Gunnison. They both attend the university in Gunnison and told us about the “Rail-Jam” going on that night on campus. The campus had set up a couple of big rails and a snow ‘quarter pipe’ so skiers and snowboarders could show off their skills in the middle of campus. Pretty awesome. There were some killer skiers and boarders and they were giving away red bull so we had a high energy good time! Check out the pics I tried to take with my phone to get an idea of what I’m talking about…. I’m no photographer but you get the idea… lol

We also got to meet up with a good friend of ours from couchsurfing Ty who lives in Gunnison. After a few hours of catching up with him and hanging out at the “Rail-Jam” we headed to the venue the Last Chance Saloon to set-up for the show. The Last Chance has a biker/cowboy bar feel but we brought out more of a hippie crowd. Thursday nights are typically not the best night but we brought the funk and people came to eat it up! It ended up being a fun night. I met a musician that went to school at the University of Oklahoma  at the show. We got to reminisce about our times playing music in Norman and talking about our mutual friends. It’s a small world…. So overall our time in Gunnison was a blast as always. Tomorrow we are headed to Golden baby! Keepin’ the funk on the highway!  Hooch over and out!

Pic of Rail Jam unfortunately with my thumb in the way....

Pic of Rail Jam

Albany with a great band called Spaceland

Monday the 8th we played in Albany with a great band called Spaceland. They’re super nice guys, and have a very polished and pleasing sound reminiscent of Coldplay. There’s a little U2 / Keane thrown in there as well. I highly recommend them, especially if you like Coldplay. We were super excited to jam out to them since we see many, many bands. They are at the top of my list for this tour.

Plus they are just really friendly and approachable guys. They also worked hard to bring out a crowd on a Monday night- not an easy feat. Their fans all stayed for our entire show, and some of them even offered us a place to stay. The whole affair just put a big smile on my face.

After the show, we went to the house of Kristoph, a couchsurfer. There was another band called World History staying with him that night too. They’ve been on a relentless six month tour as a duo and it was awesome to talk shop with them. One of them set up a diy site for booking shows called dodiy.org as well.

We started talking deep philosophy, social action, brainstorming ideas, sharing stories, all while playing Megaman on the SNES. It was a great night and it really pumped me up about life. Kristoph and I both lived in Ghana and had many other shared experiences. Good times all around. We’ll be back.

This albany cat is stunningly similar looking to my beloved RonRon

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.

The Wandering Goat in Eugene

The day we played Eugene was a good day. It started with a beautiful hike in the Mt. Shasta area up to some crater lakes. Since we ended up missing the lake we initially intended to find it was certainly more about the journey than the destination. Touring is certainly more about the journey than the destination.

We played at a coffee shop / venue called the Wandering Goat, which was very welcoming. They introduced me to a mocha drink with homemade chocolate which was incredible. We discovered that there was a big festival going on downtown called “Celebrate Eugene” featuring live music and food and all sorts of fun things so our crowd wasn’t huge, but it was very receptive to our music. We also played with a good local band called “On The Tundra,” which was in the style of Explosions in the Sky and Do Make Say Think. They were loud, creative, and one guy designs pedals so they had a lot of specific and unique tones. He’s going to mod and fix my wah wah pedal, which broke a few shows ago (I’ve been substituting a light phaser ever since) so you’ll get to hear his work eventually.

We also played a few rounds of Jenga. I’m normally an ace at that game, but I must admit I knocked over the stack at least three times. I think it was all the vibrations from On the Tundra.

The night ended with Achachay! checking out our couchsurfer’s band at the Celebrate Eugene fest. They were great and it was cool to connect and stay with some other musicians, even though we didn’t play on the same bill. Our host Phil, was incredibly nice and welcoming. Couchsurfing remains the bomb. I hope we play with them next time we’re in Eugene, and get to hang out some more.

His other band, __, is also worth checking out.

In the morning, I got to cap it off by consuming some wild blackberries and visiting an old friend from Spain. All in all, good times.

Flagstaff is a highlight

Flagstaff, AZ was a highlight of the trip thus far, for many reasons which I will now proceed to enumerate.

- The Grand Canyon’s immense and alien landscape awed us like children watching a Disney movie for the first time
- Check out the pics on our FB page!
- The Flagstaff Brewery show was really fun
- There was a decent sized crowd, and everyone got really into the show. I needed to do no convincing to get people shaking their butts to the groove
- the only bad news is we were partly paid with a conterfeit $20 bill. Fortunately our guarantee was big enough that this didn’t put us on the side of the road begging for gas from passersby
- we sold a lot of merch
- after the show we treated ourselves to an impromtu street jam with our cool-ass couchsurfing host Dan, who rocks the harmonica, and his buddy on an old 30′s era side guitar
- Dan then took us to a massive park where we observed twenties of meteors during the Perseids meteor shower
- Flagstaff is the ideal place to bathe in such a shower, because it is the first international dark sky city
- that means no lights are allowed to spill upwards towards the heavens. Incredibly, that doesn’t mean the city is dark at night; the light is just directed towards the ground

For all of these reasons, I have a great affinity for Flagstaff. We will be back, and hopefully we’ll get to spend more time in the Grand Canyon and get Dan to join us for some songs.

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…

4 days in the gulf coast; lafayette, nola, pascagoula, mobile

Facebook event invites for New Orleans and Pascagoula!

Thursday April 15 @ Artmosphere in Lafayette, LA

Friday April 16th @ Coach’s Corner in New Orleans, LA (technically in Metarie), 10P – 2A

Saturday April 17th @ The Celtic in Pascagoula, MS 10P – 1A

Sunday April 18th @ Alabama Music Box in Mobile, AL 9P

I’m really excited that for the first time, someone else made a Facebook event for our show without us even knowing about it! Our friend David, who we met through Couchsurfing and christened Ryan as “Hooch” back on our East Coast tour in 2009, took the initiative to make the Pascagoula show packed. This is our third time there, so it should be charming.

In general we’re pumped to take a little weekend jaunt out on I-10, play some great places in Louisiana and Mississippi, and play in Mobile for the first time. We’ll be seeing old and new friends, and we’ll be playing a few songs that have never been heard in these states. Hope to see you there!

Gunnison

Gunnison was our first show in Colorado that had us driving West from the Front Range into the mountains. We covered some good ground on the way from Denver and saw some really amazing sights: giant frozen lakes, dozens of snow-capped mountains, and some of the coolest vistas of valleys I’ve ever seen. Gunnison itself is a small town just past the Monarch Pass in Colorado. It actually is surrounded by mountains, and can be completely cut off from the rest of the state (and world) if the weather gets bad enough. The Monarch Pass is an amazing mountain pass that stretches for only a few miles, but is truly a sight to see. The road cuts right through leaving huge 200-500 foot drops and nearly vertical rock faces on either side. Oh yeah, also there are little to no guardrails! We considered it lucky we couldn’t see very far due to the amount of falling snow on our way in, because the pass is treacherous, and conditions had us sliding around for a few miles going 25 mph at the most. Hooch, our designated snow driver, already has some anxiety (like any other cautious driver) when driving through frozen and snowy roads, and I think if Hooch had seen just what waited below the road, his anxiety would have tripled.

The town of Gunnison is nice, and we played at the local brew-pub aptly named the Gunnison Brewery. They offered a great selection of their own delicious beers, as well as others. The show was awesome. We hadn’t played in a few days at the time, so we were primed to ‘go-off’ and that’s exactly what we did. Three hours of funky jams, funky originals, and awesome covers kept the place jumpin’ the entire time. The local university supplied most of the patrons that night, and we were happy to play to an energetic college crowd.

Highlight: some dude with none of his front four teeth tried to play harmonica with us at the end of the night. I let him yell in my mic during a stirring cover of “Fight for Your Right (to Party)”. His near halitosis kept me away after the show, but he proved un-shakeable for young Hooch.

Once again couch-surfing covered our asses and I’d like to shout out to our great hosts Ty, Buck, and Natalie: we had a great time hanging and staying with you guys! SO I recommend you go to Gunnison if you are ever in the mountains around Colorado because its fucking gorgeous, the people are really friendly, and they have great beer too!  Cheers!