live shows
Pagosa Springs and the Hot Springs!
We make our way south from Telluride earlyish. I use the word ‘early’ loosely… When we are on the road we rarely get on the road before 2 pm so leaving around noon is early… We get to Pagosa about 5 and the sun is just starting to go behind the mountains. We have a few hours to kill and Pagosa Springs is known for its hot springs. Everytime we mention Pagosa people say, “Did you visit the hot springs?” and until now we always said “no”.. But I can now happily say we have been to the hot springs and it was just what a back that’s been sleeping on floors needed! When I heard springs I expected some sort of rock landing with water spewing out of the ground… But it was really nothing like that… It was a nice resort type place. They had tubs indoors as well as outdoors on the roof. The roof was pretty crowded but it’s still sweet to check out the sunset and stars over the mountains while soaking in the tubs filled with spring water. After a couple hours of soaking our tired bones we head to the venue. The Bear Creek always takes care of us. The staff there is super friendly and the locals are awesome too. We play a long 4 hour set and then we hit the road to head back to Austin. That does it for the Colorado tour. It’s been a blast as always and if we weren’t heading back to Austin it would be hard to leave! 23 hours and we are home! Hooch over and out!
SXSW Show Schedule
Tues March 13th: FireFest Preview Party, Trophy Room, 12PM
Thurs March 15th: Northeast by Southwest House Party @ 1180 Sol Wilson Ave (78702) 1-6 P (Free Beer and BBQ!)
Thurs March 15th: Townhouse, 10P
Fri March 16th: EchoCloud Unoffical SXSW Showcase, Hole in the Wall, Midnight
Sat March 17th: Thirsty Planet Brewery St. Patty’s Day Party, 11A-2P
Saty March 17th: Betsy’s Bar, 10:30 P
Achachay! is staying quite busy this South by Southwest. Keep in touch, and forgive us if times change at the last minute! See you out there.
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!
Commentary on a Fun trip to Junc Town
Grand Junction feels like a small town, yet there are 50,000 people in it. Our show was at a legendary venue called the Mesa Theater, where this month alone Los Lonely Boys and Rebelution are playing. David, owner and self described “one of the last mom and pop venues of this size” is a good guy who really likes to party.
We played a great two set show with lots of jamming and improv. Something about the space made us feel more open and we did some of our classics like “Tour Song” in entirely new styles. A decent crowd came out, partly due to our on air performance either that day on KAFM.
The station is really cool – community / volunteer run and totally solar powered. The DJs are always nice and everyone there liked our music. They all seemed very supportive of independent music in general.
It’s funny how people like to project whatever they like onto us. As soon as we got in the KAFM building, one of the guys started bashing Republicans and Conservatives, assuming we agreed with him- I guess because we’re from Austin and are in a band.
Yet a couple days later, another guy made a few incredibly racist comments as jokes, assuming we’d laugh. I guess he thought, “They’re from Texas, they must be racist too.”
Well, they were all wrong. I don’t think of us identify as Republican or Democrat, and we certainly don’t judge people’s character based on physical characteristics they are born with.
Anyway, we also had a really great couchsurfing host Jodie. All in all it was one of our most fun trips to the crazy city of Grand Junction.
Ft. Collins at Hodi’s
Ahh we are back in Ft. Collins. We have had so many good times taking brewery tours, hosting jams, and playing jams. This is our first real showcase type show in Ft. Collins at a great venue Hodi’s Halfnote. Hodi’s is a great place to hang out as far as just having a good vibe but then on top of that there is a great room with a big stage and excellent sound. We played with another band from Colorado called Able Minds. They are a cool mix of electronic and traditional (guitar, drum, etc.) type music. It made for a great night of upbeat danceable music. We had fun catching up with a friend of ours Liza as well. You may remember her as our merchandise representative for our last west coast tour. It was great to catch up and it was just a great night in Ft. Collins. Hooch over and out!
photos from Friday at Stubb’s
What a crazy awesome weekend! Friday night we played a killer set after Rebelution’s sold out show on the Stubb’s outdoor stage. Check out these great photos from Evan Gilmore. We were thrilled to play for our amazing Austin regulars, always dancing full one in the front row, plus we won over a ton of new fans from Rebelution’s show.
photos courtesy of Evan Gilmore
Video from Houston show
Our show last weekend in Houston was a great success. The whole night was a funky party with awesome performances by Brandon West, the Journey Agents, us, and Electric Attitude. We packed Rudyard’s and look forward to coming back. Fortunately our buddy Hunter caught some songs on video with is iPhone! Check em out:
Still Learning:
Gorilla Run packed and awesome
The Gorilla Run was a huge success. Over 1000 people dressed up in gorilla suits and raised over $50,000 for the second year in a row last Saturday. I’m so proud of everyone who helped make this happen. I love all the participants, fans, and the spirit of Austin. I’m so happy to call this city home.
Our show was super fun. Playing to a crowd of a thousand people dressed in gorilla suits is an unforgettable experience. Hopefully we’ll get some pictures posted soon. In the meantime you can check out photos of the gorilla run at the official site. I never would have predicted this, but what with the Gorilla Run and Voodoo Fest, some of our biggest and most energetic shows recently have started in the early morning – at 10AM!
Big props to Hooch, as we got many compliments on the sound. He’s run festival sized sound before (Applejam’s Sunday jam last year, for example), but this year was a whole different beast.
It will happen again in 2013. We’ll see you there!
Pagosa Springs
Pagosa Springs is a beautiful town in the mountains of Colorado. Because we have been to Pagosa and played at The Bear Creek Saloon several times I totally feel at home there. It’s pretty awesome in that we really didn’t know anyone in Pagosa Springs before we played a few shows and now we have a solid fans and friends that come out to our shows. There is a stange dynamic in Pagosa because it is a small tourist town. You will have a mix of people that are in town for the hot springs or the rafting as well as native ‘Pagosans’. That being said every time we play the crowd is responsive and just a ton of fun regardless of whether it’s tourists or ‘Pagosans’. This time around we met some new friends through couchsurfing. Our new friend Jarrett and his family welcomed us into their home and we had yet another great couchsurfing experience. We had great food and spent time sharing our stories about traveling and playing music. Really great times in Pagosa Springs. This is yet another one of those places that is very hard to leave… That being said we have to keep moving on to the rest of Colorado! Hooch over and out!
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.
