love

Puebloooooooooooo!!!!!

Us and the famous Slopper!

After a few days of R&R spent in Colorado Springs, we headed south to Pueblo. Pueblo is a cool, little town that is famous for a food  dish called the Slopper. A slopper, for all you N00bs, is 2 hamburgers (meat (cheese if you like it) and buns) smothered in green chili sauce and topped with fries. For those of you not familiar with the Souther CO and New Mexico ‘green chili’, this is more of a sauce than a soup and is quite tasty. Sloppers can have as many as 6 hamburger patties and can also have red chili (beans/meat typical chili) on them as well. Our new couchsurfing friend Jenny took us to the Coors Bar, known for the best sloppers in town, and we were not disappointed. I should also mention one  can order a slopper “Christmas style” which is a combo of red and green chili on top (yum!). I think, personally, I need to create a sort of Texas-slopper. Maybe chopped beef or brisket sandwiches, covered in red chili (with more tasty TX BBQ meat), and then with some bacon (because bacon is FUCKING AWESOME) and yeah, I guess, if you want, you can add cheese (I’d be down for queso!).

Anyways, enough food talk (can you tell what my favorite part of Pueblo was?), our concert was also fun. Wednesday nights aren’t typically the best, but this show wasn’t bad at all. we played a place called the Downtown Bar, and we had a good crowd including our Couchsurfer and her friends, some friends from CO Springs that came down, and other locals. We went over well and had a great night which ended with a late night trip to Denny’s, the second in three days (no joke).

Friends and fans with our new T-shirts on!

I’m stoked to come back to Pueblo and play again for our new friends!

BLATTTTTTTT!!!!!!

Back in Boulder!

After our 16 hour drive from Austin to Boulder we had about two and a half hours before our show in Boulder. We took our time, set up, ate some dinner and drank some coffee. We were playing back at the Darkhorse, at least our 4th time. But this show would be different.

Us and the In Due Time Guys

I felt surprisingly well, even though I was running on only a few hours of sleep. I didn’t even get energy-drink’ed out. Boulder is always a fun show, but tonight we were bringing a surprise with us: a horn section. Two of our friends from the band In Due Time, Kyle and Tony, brought their Sax and Trombone and ripped through about 15 tunes with us. It was fucking AWESOME! I really can’t stress enough how well it went. Sometimes we manage to get all of our Boulder and Denver friends to bring out their friends and come party with us in Boulder, but this time only a handful of our friends were able to make it. The horns took care of the rest: we had people dancing, moving, grooving, and LOVING the music. It was fun, and re-energizing just when we needed it.

So if you haven’t checked out In Due Time yet, please go to their website here: https://www.facebook.com/induetimefunk and give them a listen…you will not be disappointed! Til next time Dark Horse!

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

Playing at Pub tonight!

Tonight, Thursday January 28th, we have the great fortune of playing my favorite bar in the entire world – Willy’s Pub at Rice University. Sure, I’m a bit biased considering that I worked there for three years and managed the place. But most everyone that has ever spent more than a few hours at Pub will concur that it is a magical place. We’re so excited to play there. The last time we were there was over a year ago, and I’ve sure missed the place.

We were asked to do an interview for the Rice Standard, which will come out the day after the show. Hopefully they won’t mind I’m going to give you a sneak preview right here on the site, because I talk about Pub and how much I love it.

P.S. give RPC and Meredith Buchberg some mad props for working us into their Spring Concert Series schedule.

Rice Standard: How does it feel, as a Rice alumnus, to have a show at Pub?

Me: I absolutely love Pub. It is one of my favorite places on Earth, so it feels like coming home and spending quality time with an old friend. There is no other bar or community center like it anywhere else. It brings all the colleges together in a neutral ground, it provides entertainment for drinkers and non-drinkers alike, can be a place to study and hold group meetings, and fills the void of late night food options. It’s safe, and keeps Rice kids on campus, under the care of their peers, and off the roads when they’re intoxicated. There are even salsa classes at Pub!

Seriously I rave about the place all the time. I still get the emails and FB messages for events there. I undoubtedly learned more at Pub than any classroom at Rice. Man I’m pumped about the show now.

Good Show, Bad Show: Rant!

We have been on the road for about 2 and a half weeks now and I have come to the realization that as a band we must play any show offered to us while we are on the road.  I have come to this realization because every show that seems like it is going to be lame or not worth playing ‘on paper’ turns out to be an awesome show (and many of the shows I thought would be good have turned out to be the worst).

This guy bought a shirt at the Worcester show

This is not the first time this has happened: the show in Fayetteville was the same way. Fayetteville, NC is not even close to being a great place to visit. It has more strip-clubs than restaurants and its not particularly pleasing on the eyes. But Fayetteville on a Tuesday night at the Rock Shop was bad-ass. Out of nowhere showed up 50 or so people and everyone really dug on our music. Another great part about this show, and the show in Worcester, was that the other musicians playing that night (and hanging around) were all really cool and talented. It was a pleasure to share the stage and talk with them.

These shows are great and even better because expectations are so low going into them. On the other hand it just really sucks when shows you think are going to be good or at least OK turn out to be shit. Namely the show in Springfield, Mass. at the Rock Cafe (notice a trend in the bar names?).  Don’t get me wrong, the show itself was great: we played for my family who came out from CT and we actually played well. The bad part was that the club owner gave us the run-around and, in my opinion, took advantage of us because we are young and from out of town. He promised us a set amount of money before we began playing, but once we were done he avoided us and insisted we stay to listen to a cover band (which he was playing in) until the end of the night so he could pay us. Then he proceeded to give us some shite story about how “the bar didn’t make any money” and he could only give us $20. Alright, so the bar didn’t do well that night (there was a good crowd there, drinking fairly heavily for most of the night but…) you can at least throw us enough for a tank of gas. The guarantee that we had before the show was only $50, and I think that would have been doable. Then he brings up that he has to be pay the cover band too which is a BS excuse because we are on tour and they are a group of 40 and 50 something weekend-warriors who definitely have day jobs (the lead singer told me he owns his own landscaping business).

OK well I think I have ranted long enough, and thank you for sticking with me this long. The tour has been awesome, and I feel very thankful to be able to do this.

I love you all

-Ryan

Day 2: Becoming electricians + Joy in New Orleans

messing with fuses

Today we got up, ate breakfast and went straight to O’Reilly’s Autoparts. I worked on fixing our portable veggie oil filtration pump, while Michael and Ryan jimmy-rigged a system to get power on the bus (The cigarette lighter doesn’t work, of course). 

Before this morning if you’d of shown me a flat fuse versus a round one, and told me to wire it in to something, I’d have stared at you with consternation and asked for more directions. Now I can be the one directing. The pump works. 

Michael and Ryan devised a clever system for accessing the battery – necessary for the inverter- using jumper cables and duct tape. It just reminds me that musicians, at least the kind trying to get famous the way we are, cannot just be musicians. You can’t just play your instrument and walk off stage. You have to don gloves, grab a screwdriver, and start splitting some wires. You’ve got to get a copy of Photoshop and Illustrator, download new fonts and watch videos about how to make the old T-shirt effect. You don’t just see a flyer; you see layers, you see opacity, you see hours at Kinko’s, you start calculating costs, you wonder if you could utilize the same color scheme, you critique the size and readability of fonts and laud simplicity.

I keep forgetting to take pictures, so here's a stock photo

Yeah so the show was great. The other two bands, Fallen Trees and Dirty Bourbon River Show, were all nice guys and great musicians. I’m sure we’ll be playing with them again. The show went crazy late – and no one cared cause that’s how it goes in New Orleans apparently. When we were setting up at 10 (the time the show was supposed to start) the sound guy complained that he shouldn’t have taken that bong hit right before work. He also told us about how he had to bail to Mexico because some people tried to kidnap him to get to his landlord a couple of years ago. 

 Anyway . . . Julie, my girlfriend’s older sister, brought a posse to the HI HO ready to party. They felt the groove and started the dance party before we even finished “I Feel Fine.” They catch on quick and were singing along as we played. Eventually the whole crew ended up crammed together in this cage right by the stage. Ryan’s buddies seemed pretty impressed too. It was awesome meeting them, meeting Julie’s friends, catching up with my old friend and meeting her girlfriend. I love that about playing – I love the people. I love seeing my friends in a such a positive space, meeting their friends, and sharing my feelings and passion with them.

Another positive side note – the booking agent who made this show far and away the most difficult and time consuming one to nail down wasn’t there to sour the mood. He should be happy because I guarantee you they made money at the bar. Hell I even paid for a couple whiskey cokes.

Also – got to see another sunrise.