live funk rock

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!

Boulder at the Darkhorse: Part III

The night before last we played in Pagosa Springs and tonight we are in Boulder, CO. The only downside is that these towns are 7 hours apart… So we drove all night last night and arrived in Boulder at about 9 am yesterday morning. I did all the driving so I was spent to say the least. After sleeping all day we headed to the Darkhorse to have some dinner and get ready for the show. Boulder is an awesome town. There is such a great energy and people are totally ready for great music. This makes our shows in Boulder crazy fun. It is finals week this week so people were in and out all night because of studies. That didn’t change the fact that the dance floor was still full and oh man was it a good time. We have tons of great friends in Boulder and they always show us a great time and this time I had my first run in with a breakfast treat called “Saddlebags”. “Saddlebags” are pancakes with sausage in them and two eggs on top. It’s basically the most delicious thing ever. So if you are ever in Boulder you should go to the Buff for some brunch. It was sooo good. That pretty much does it for Boulder. Now we are off to Utah to Arches National Park! Adios Colorado!

Fugly’s

This is our last night in Oklahoma and we are doing it right at Fugly’s in Enid. Fugly’s is 3 bars in one. There is a live music room, a karaoke room, and a room with pool tables. It’s all soundproofed and really just done right. Fugley’s is a newer bar in Enid but they have made a name for themselves quickly. Because a close friend of mine owns the bar all of my close friends and their families were out to see the show. It’s always nice to catch up with old friends and let them see what I’m doing these days with music and travel. Overall the show was great. Good friends, good venue, and just a fun night.  It’s been a great week in Oklahoma but now we move on to Colorado.  Good-bye waving wheat hello Rockies!

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!

Everyday Joe’s in Ft. Collins!

Everyday Joe’s is a great coffee shop/venue in Ft. Collins. It’s definitely not your average coffee shop. There’s a large stage with a full PA but in typical coffee shop fashion it has that cozy atmosphere that is conducive to creativity. Because the venue is all ages we played with a couple younger bands. It was a nice change from playing in 21 and over venues. They gave us free coffee drinks so before the show so I had a ridiculous mocha with 4 espresso shots… In the future I will limit my espresso intake to a 2 shot maximum at any given time…. I was feeling pretty weird on stage honestly. I guess I still played well because the boys from Yettie asked me to play with them when their bass player fell ill. Jordan decided to jump onstage as well and jam it out. We had some funky jams and played a couple cover songs and well helped saved their show. It was a lot of fun. I felt bad for the bassist but I had a blast!

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

Portland!

Portland is one of my favorite cities.  This is mostly because it has a very “Austin” feel to it.  There’s a very laid back vibe and people are friendly and well maybe just a little bit crazy.  People often move from Austin to Portland and visa versa for just this reason.  We had some time to kill in Portland so we visited the Hawthorne area.  The Hawthorne district is where I would hang out if lived in Portland. There’s about a mile stretch of small independently owned restaurants, shops, and pubs.  There’s a very free spirited vibe and it’s always a breathe of fresh air when I come across places like this.  We stayed with our friends Brad and Lois again and as always they were great hosts.  They kept us fed and just really make us feel like we have a home away from home.  Our show at the Ash Street Saloon was fun and well we couldn’t have asked for a better time in Portland!

Mt. Shasta… It’s not just a landform….

After a late night at the Weed Brewery we woke up at a reasonable hour so we could attempt to find a pick-up gig. The show we had booked got cancelled because the bar had been sold and was being renovated. So we went to The Vet Club downtown Mt. Shasta just to try our luck. Turns out it was our lucky day. We picked up a show for the night. With that out of the way we had some time to do some hiking and rock climbing.

When you go hiking around Mt. Shasta it’s pretty funny because people don’t really use maps. We got a sheet of paper with directions to a particular trail and climbing wall that basically said find a random parking lot and a random trail and follow it…. Pretty funny. It’s even funnier that we only took one trail that was wrong and ended up actually finding the climbing wall without too much trouble. After the climbing and hiking it was time to head back to town to play our show. The Vet Club was a blast. There was a great crowd that was up to get down and well we couldn’t have asked for a better pick up gig.   We ended up making friends with a percussionist and he sat in on a few songs toward the end of the night.  Nothing like

some auxiliary percussion to aid in the funk.   Between beautiful scenery and the awesome people it couldn’t have been a better day in Mt. Shasta.

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.

Achachay! @ Stubb’s May 19 (buy online & we plant a tree for you!)

Grab a ticket online before they sell out, and encourage your friends to do the same. http://achachayatstubbs.eventbrite.com/ Doors are now at 9 and we start at 11 The lineup changed, sorry for the confusion. We will be done before midnight so you should still be able to get some decent sleep before work the next day.

The Lineup is:

Achachay!

Bob Floyd Band (10 p)

Auroravore (9 p)

This show is going to be ridiculously awesome. We have new songs and we will be giving away special Achachay! merchandise at the show. We’re also going to record it and send everyone there a free copy. Also check back soon for a link to buy a ticket in advance. When you buy online, we’ll plant a tree in your honor!

Plant a Tree