Hooch

Voodoo Video!

The Voodoo Music Experience was incredible. Please enjoy these videos!
We’ll be back soon with a recap of the weekend.

Achachay! – Tour Song – Voodoo Experience 2011 from Voodoo Experience on Vimeo.

Achachay! – Let Go – Voodoo Experience 2011 from Voodoo Experience on Vimeo.

Weed Loves Boobies

After our show in Eugene we trekked back down to Weed, CA to play a breast-cancer benefit concert for some of our friends. The Weed/Mt. Shasta area has been very welcoming to us in the past, and we were happy to perform at their benefit. Breast-cancer research and awareness is important to us, as well, so all around this was a good concert for us to play.

The show was fun and everyone was in good spirits. There was a photo-booth and some where out there in the nether-regions of Middle-Earth there are some fairly incriminating photos of us playing in ours and other people’s underwear…I’ll leave it at that. In the end we helped raise money and we had a great time doing it.

I also want to give a shout out to my dear family friend Nikki Boscia Durlester who’s inspirational book Beyond the Pink Moon continues to give hope for those fighting breast cancer. You can buy her book here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=beyond+the+pink+moon&x=0&y=0

Paso Robles: It’s my birthday!

The day started off with a free birthday burger at Sylvester’s in Atascadero on our way to Paso Robles. Sylvester’s has awesome huge burgers so it was totally awesome to get a huge mushroom burger for free… After stopping by the club to set up we head over to our buddy Ruben’s place to chill before the show. After a short nap at Ruben’s place we head back to the venue for the show. This time we played at the 463 Club in Paso Robles. The 463 Club is a sports bar/music venue. We ended up having a pretty small crowd but the few that were there were our good friends and we had a blast playing for them. After the show we let Ruben show us downtown to do some birthday partying. The first bar we stop into has one of my favorite pastimes going on…. Karaoke… To say that I have a good time singing Karaoke would be a bit of an understatement. So Ryan and I sang a few songs and Liza even ended up singing a couple of songs. It was a ton of fun. After the karaoke we headed back to Ruben’s place and finished the night with a few drinks and a lot of laughs. Great food, great friends, a fun show, and Karaoke. All and all it was a great birthday!

Babylon in Fresno

Unfortunately sometimes a show will get double-booked and one of the bands ,or even an entire group of bands, will be dropped from the show. A week before we left on tour this happened to us for a Saturday night gig we had in Sacramento. I thought to myself that we were pretty much SOL, but I wasn’t going to take it lying down. So I got on the ol’ interweb and emailed 20 or so places in the region just north of Paso Robles all the way to the Sacramento area. I was sure to lay it on a little thick with the “we got dropped from our show” bit to see if we couldn’t get a last-minute show, and sure enough we lucked out big time! Within days I heard back from the booker of a cool club in Fresno called the Babylon Club. They were happy to let us jump on the bill and they even offered me a guarantee. Needless to say I was ecstatic.

The show went really well too. We played last to a smaller, but very energetic crowd that hung around after the local bands played. Also all of the other bands who played were great, and actually brought out people (believe it or not this is rarely the case). So from having a show canceled we ended up making a new contact with a booker and promoter who, I feel, really appreciate good music and aren’t afraid to do some work to promote a show. Can’t wait to come back!

Lompoc ‘N’ Around, What? What?!

Lompoc, pronounced Lom-poke, is a midsized town of California’s central coast, and scattered throughout are dive bars and sports bar-n-grill sort of places. One such bar was our venue for the night; the name was The Wicked Shamrock.
As the name implies, the Shamrock is a hybrid between an Irish Pub and a club that caters mostly to the punk/goth/darker-side-of-rock genres. Needless to say, Achachay! funked ‘n’ rolled all night and made the place their own. Like they do.
There was dancing and drinking, as much on our part as on the part of the audience. I guess that’s not exactly true, the crowd was definitely boozing a bit more. A particularly drunk group of boys comes to mind. They were pretty on fire about the show- bought merch, chatted about the band- and really brought the house down. By which I mean, one of them fell victim to gravity, and toppled himself, a table, and three of the four chairs around said table onto the floor. On the other hand, other folks were more suave, like the New Yorker named Boston who broke into various swing routines with her friend.
All in all, the show was a blast and the bar was good to us- buying us a round of Patron when the clock struck twelve and Hooch began the festivities of yet another birthday.
The Lompoc post would not be complete without mention of our hospitable host Brian. He was generous with his his time, energy, and home. We went out for dinner before the show (delicious!), he hung out for most of the show, and then invited us to breakfast in his kitchen the next day. We found out that he was a fellow Texan and preparing to move back home. He shared stories about his experience in the air force, which had an almost uncanny semblance to passages from Catch-22, so conversation was never lacking.
Good show, good company, and we hope to see Brian back in Texas!

-Liza

SLO Times

First let me say that the tour is going splendidly! We haven’t had too much time on the internet, though, and we apologize for not being better about our blog-posting. If you’d like to file a complaint, please contact your local funk-rock-band-complaint center. Thank you.

After we left the San Diego area we played a show in San Luis Obispo, or SLO. SLO is an awesome town in my opinion: it’s picturesque, the people there have been very nice and very cool to us, and it’s home to what some say is the best tri-tip in the Central Coast. A little aside here: WTF is up with Californians and tri-tip? They can’t get enough of it, and it seems like if it’s not on the menu, then the restaurant is shit! As a Texan and meat-connoisseur, I found my tri-tip experience to be very enjoyable, but nothing too special (sorry guys).

Any who, we once again played the Frog and Peach in SLO, but this time it was pint night. Pint night is where patrons can bring in their own Frog and Peach pint glasses and get beer for super-cheap. We had a great crowd for most

Playing at the Peach

of the night, and over all the show was really fun. We also stayed with Myles and his friends again and it was great to finally get to play for them.

I look forward to my next time in SLO!

Good times

O’Sullivan’s: Down with the Sickness….

I should preface this post by saying that I was suffering from food poisoning for the 2 days leading up to this show and a day or so after… so the things I remember from the show are minimal. We played an Irish Pub.  What you wouldn’t expect from an Irish pub is for the majority of the staff to actually be Irish. But O’Sullivans is different in that way. The bar staff was awesome and like I said mostly Irish. Everyone was friendly and there was good food (even though it was really hard to eat being sick and all). We had a great crowd that danced and kept the energy high to help me through a rough night. We also ran into an artist by the name of Sid who meshes together hip-hop and several other genres to create some awesome music. I haven’t been able to track him down online but once I do I will post some links to his music. After this show we had a couple days off for some much needed rest. I have recovered nicely from my little bout with food poisoning and all is well! That’s pretty much what I’ve got from that show. Hooch over and out!

Chilin in San Diego

Pic of the Pub

Random pic of Liza

Stubbs

We pull up to Stubbs running late…. I’m not going to say as usual… But well… It’s pretty usual. But anyway I’m a little bit stressed about being late and then I see the line of people out the door and down the side of Stubbs. It’s such an exciting feeling to see a line outside of a venue that you are getting ready to play! So after a moment to take it all in I have to start the pre-show agenda. Get the merchandise together for the merchandise person… Get all of my equipment together to go on stage. Run back to the van to get more CD’s, go pee, tune my bass, etc…. After all of this then we get to step on stage and that is the best part of the night (and week for that matter). Looking out to see our friends, family, fans, and soon to be new fans in front of us. It’s funny because I normally don’t have any nerves before a show. I’ve played well over a thousand shows. But when I play in Austin for the hometown crowd the butterflies are there. It’s a welcome feeling that reminds me why I do this. Why I sleep on floors and spend half of my year in a van. I love playing music. I especially love playing with Achachay! ‘my own band of brothers. So needless to say the show was awesome. The crowd was full of energy and fantastic. Full Service rocked our faces and The Rafiki Project was tasty as always. It’s only a few days before we hit the road again for a few weeks and I have to say that this was one of the best feeling shows yet. Thank you to all of our friends, family, and fans for making what we do worth it! Hooch out! (There are a few pics below and check out FB for more pics!)

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!

OKC and the Wonderous Belle Isle Brewery

The Friday after Norman we played a really awesome show in Oklahoma City. The show took place at a brew-pub called the Belle Isle Brewery, which had a kick-ass stage and great sound, as well as some really amazing beer. We shared the night with a local band called the Aguilar Brothers and they were also great.

It was our first time in OKC and we couldn’t of asked for a better show. The place was packed, and we had a good crowd of friends show up too. I thought we killed the show, and I can’t wait to go back.

The night finished in true style. After partying some with a few members of the bar staff, we headed back to our friend’s place just outside the city. We were staying with our friend Autumn and her family, and it was her son’s girlfriend’s birthday the next day, so we stealthily drove to her house and decorated her yard with paper hearts and the like to surprise her. From what I hear, it was a hit! The gesture definitely took me back a few years. OKC was fun…off to Wichita!