life on the road

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!

CockStrong in Colorado Springs

Hooch drank the "CockStrong" Drink, and then we got three for the road. Gotta stay up for those long drives

Sunday night we played in Colorado Springs. We haven’t been there in about two years so it was almost like our first show. The venue is a cool place called the Zodiac bar that features music, comedy, and even burlesque shows. Although it began as a sparsely attended and mellow affair, by the final few songs we had a rowdy crowd up in front dancing and singing.

Highlight: There is an energy drink manufactured in Colorado Springs called Cock Strong. Yep, it is also supposed to be a male enhancement thing. Pretty hilarious. We had a lot of fun making up taglines. It’s almost as good as “That’s what she said.” For example, when we were talking about pancakes at the end of the night, our Denny’s server said, “The cooks always make the pancakes different sizes. They’re supposed to be six inches, but everyone’s six inches is different.” CockStrong: Everyone’s Six Inches is Different.

Other random thoughts: Presidents’ Day
Why do we celebrate the presidents? Is it for their leadership? The things they’ve accomplished? What about the congress and the voters and the cabinet and judges and supreme court? What about Democracy? I guess that’s what Independence Day celebrates. I don’t know it just seems like a strange thing to celebrate. There are so many good things to celebrate in life, most of them small and everyday. I celebrate the smell of good coffee (I’m in a coffee shop right now), bright sun on a snowy day, waking up late, waking up early, the brilliance of technology, the soreness of muscles after a hard run or a tough climb. I celebrate deep conversations, catching up with old friends, making new friends, discovering something new about yourself or someone you love. These things don’t need holidays, of course. Maybe the presidents need a holiday… do you think the president rests on Presidents’ Day? I hope so.

You might think, “What does this have to do with Achachay!?” This thinking and discussion is one of the things our band is about. Plus, it’s part of the luxury of the road. Traveling the way we do, constantly interacting with new people, new geographies, and new situations, you get the opportunity to reflect on yourself and the world around you in a way that isn’t always available in a more stable setting. You’re shoved into new perspectives. It’s our job as a band to share these experiences with the you. It’s our job to offer you the same insights we receive from these perspectives when you join us in song and dance.

Overcoming with Optimism on the road to Winter Park

The booking game is a crazy world… we finally confirmed the show that was supposed to happen on December 10th exactly ten days before it was to occur. On December 9th, I got a call from the booking agent saying that their email account had gotten hacked and he never confirmed the show, so we were SOL.

Luckily, we have been through this before and applied the Achachay! spirit. Focus on the solution, see the opportunity and make the most of whatever is in front of your face. After a few phone calls, it became apparent that nothing would happen that night. I’d have to wait until the morning.

We woke up at the usual time and I started calling all the bars in Winter Park. At first I got the usual run-around, but when I mentioned “We’re an awesome Austin TX funk rock band that got our show cancelled, do you want us to bring you an awesome show TONIGHT?” or something similar, they get things moving.

The Winter Park Pub came through in the 9th inning and opened their arms… not just a place to play, but a decent last minute guarantee, free food, free drinks. The show ended up being packed and well received. The staff was cool, and we’ll definitely be back! Even though Hooch and I both felt a little sniffly and hoarse, we played a top notch performance and had a great time busting out some covers we haven’t done in a long time. We closed off a three day weekend of 4-hour-a-night performances with gusto and energy.

We’ve been shown time and time again to keep the faith. In spite of whatever circumstances life throws your way, maintain an optimistic outlook while working hard to achieve whatever your objective is. Almost every time we’ve done this, the result is better than what we expected from the original plan. Even if it isn’t better, the experience is beautiful.

To top it off, we all three got to sleep in individual beds at the family place of a buddy I studied in Ghana with. We got to meet some of his family and catch up on six years of traveling, craziness, and life. All in all, a phenomenal day.

College Bar not just for College students….

One of my best friends Coleman and I

What can I say about The College Bar in Stillwater, Oklahoma?  Well for starters it was my favorite bar in Stillwater when I lived there... We always have a great crowd even on a Monday night which is amazing. As far as this time at the College Bar it was business as usual. We had a fun crowd including a big group of my friends. Playing for old friends always makes a show more fun for sure. The show went great aside from a moment when I was playing Jordan's guitar on 'Fight for Your Right' and it decided to stop working. Jordan and Ryan kept going with the song while I tried to get the guitar working to no avail. After the song ended Jordan figured out the issue (only Jordan knows how to fix his set up...) and the show went on without a hitch. It was once again just a great time with old friends and new friends in Stillwater and it is always a pleasure to come back to another home away from home!

Angry Ryan

Jordan and Coleman

Achachay! on a small couch

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.

Gameday in Eugene with a funk jam twist!

It’s gameday in Eugene, OR and we are pulling into town from California on a Thursday afternoon. We are set to play at a sports bar, The Maize Lounge, following the game and it looks to be a fun show. Phil a friend of ours from Couchsurfing has set up the show for us. Phil plays with a funk/jam/awesome band in Eugene and he has been booking for the club for a few weeks now. The Maize Lounge is pretty much a standard sports bar. A few TV’s, decent bar food, and of course beers. On another couchsurfing front… Todd a good friend of ours we met through couchsurfing who was living in Austin for a bit ends up meeting us in Eugene to hang out. Anytime Todd is around you know it’s going to be a good time! After waiting around for Oregon to beat Cal we get to start the show. We have a small crowd of dancers that makes the show fun and we make a great impression on everyone at the bar. Following the show we hear that there is a funk jam at another bar downtown. We pack up our stuff and head to the funk jam. The funk jam was a blast! Jordan ended up jumping on guitar for a bit. I ended up getting on the microphone for a long song. Every once in a while I have to get the “front man” out of my system and jump on the microphone to do some singing. It was such a great time and such a great release to just go crazy on the microphone for a while. After the jam we headed back to Phil’s place to hang out. It seems like everyone that lives with Phil plays music and that makes us all kindred souls at least to some extent. So needless to say we had a great night of hanging out and playing music. Couldn’t have asked for a better day on tour!

Los Angeles / Tarzana

When i think about our time in Los Angeles a few Wednesdays ago I think mostly of the great people we spent time with.

• Our gracious host James Leffler was hilarious as usual (check these vids for examples of his humor)
•  Ben Carson threw a pre-party and is now the only person to make it to all of our LA appearances.
• Surprise Rice friends I did not realize live in the area including Lila and Will
• I saw Marty who I studied in Ghana with for the first time in a couple of years
• Joe – one of our Ashland buddies we met through Karrgo Bossa Jova -was an absolute hoot to hang out with. We had some lively and engaging discussions about the purpose and character of higher education, with many references to Harry Potter. Nothing more can be said that is fit for print.

We played an awesome show, as usual. Los Angeles really reminds me that when it comes to my life, it often comes down to this: I love people. I used to hate the city because of the traffic, the pollution, and the superficiality. But the fact that there are so many people I love there – cousins with babies in the belly, old camp friends, comedian advisors – I can’t help but enjoy myself.

The intensity of travel and the nonstop social interaction of our tours challenges the psyche. Yet, I get so much energy from the good people surrounding us, that even a week of sleeping on the floor can’t suppress my almost constant giddiness. I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to stay connected to these people distributed across the world.

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.

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!

Tilapia at IHOP?!?

Enid is where Hooch grew up. Fugly’s is one of his best friend’s brother’s bars – so when he heard we didn’t have Saturday booked he offered us the night. Even with only one day’s worth of time to promote, we got a decent crowd digging our grooves. We tried out some experimental new songs. They were received well. We also really enjoyed the high quality PA. It was possibly too loud because the room is a brick and tin box, but man the vocals sounded awesome.

Tilapia at iHOP?

For months, I’ve been saying I’d get the tilapia at either iHop or Denny’s. Everyone looks at me like I’m crazy. They assume I’ll have gastrointestinal issues for days. But it actually looks good to me, and its probably the healthiest thing on the menu. I like to eat healthily, finding protein on the road can be difficult since I only consume free range meat, and if I extend that to cage free eggs there’s almost nothing I will put in my belly at those all hours diners. Friday night, I finally ordered it!

The waitress gave me a horrified look. I immediately doubted my choice. “What – is it bad?” I asked. “I don’t know, no one’s ever ordered that before” she responded. The rest of the guys laugh maniacally. I mention something about fish and the waitress responds, “Tilapia – that’s a fish?”
OK i think, she really just doesn’t know what she’s talking about. My resolve is bolstered, and I stand by my decision.

Turns out, the Tilapia at iHop is good. I recommend it to anyone. Not only is it tasty, but it’s been over 48 hours and I’ve had completely normal bowel movements.

Enid, which is “DINE” backwards, I’ll always remember my for my first fishy late night diner experience.