old friends

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

Getting started in Norman

Later that night, they fixed the sign

Exactly one week ago we played in Norman Oklahoma, home of OU.

Hooch went to school here for a while, back when he thought he wanted to be a weatherman (yeah, Anchorman is one of his favorite movies) so it was cool to see the town and hear his stories. I even found a healthy, locavore place with Free Range turkey to get some grub (somewhat rare in OK).

Our show was sparsely attended. This wasn’t unexpected, since it was our first time playing there. Luckily we impressed the bookers, staff, and everyone in the bar so we’ll be coming back. We still filled up a page of emails on our signup sheet, and sold some CDs. I consider that a big success. The bar wants to set us up with a big name local so we can start building a bigger following. This is great! It’s how we start, every single time.

Since everyone was really supportive, digging every song, and we played for a couple of hours, we got a chance to test some new stuff out. We played one song that is sort of afro-beat influenced, and everyone gave us very positive reviews.  We’ll definitely be playing it again.

Another big positive was that we got to spend some time with Autumn and her family. They’ve been huge fans since Hooch joined the band, and are always very welcoming to us on the road. They make us feel so at home that I don’t even mind raiding the fridge for leftovers.  Here’s a pic of the kids – Rayann, Gunner, and Barak. We always love spending time with them .

All in all, a solid night with a big foot in the door to a new market. Great stuff.

Hooch promotes via text message before the show

Willie’s, where Garth Brooks got started

Our show was killer, as usual. Willie’s is the bar where Garth Brooks got started playing in the early 80′s so its a cool historic venue. It has an intimate feel because of the really shallow stage. I was excited and honored that a lot of people came back to see us again after catching our show Monday – both new and old fans. We didn’t repeat a single cover that we played on Monday, so it was a very different experience.

Side note – at the VFW on Saturday we pulled Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Sangria Wine” out of thin air. Even without having ever done that before, it was apparently good enough to warrant being requested at Willies.

Oklahoma is a non-stop party. Wednesday is “free beer night,” at a lot of bars on the Strip, which means you pay $7 and you get all you can drink draft beer all night. Basically everyone wants to drink and be social all of the time. Seems like no matter what day of the week, you’ll find people looking for fun in a college town sort of way. This makes for enjoyable shows, rowdy crowds, and after-parties that last until dawn or beyond.

Wednesday at Willie’s was no exception. A crew went back to Jared and Megan’s where the band stayed, and I was the first to go to sleep at 5:30 AM. Thursday we had a “rest day” but lo and behold I ended up out again, with a bunch of new friends who at dawn started talking about getting tacos and 40s now that it was early enough to buy beer again. Stillwater is like Vegas, just less ritzy, a lot cheaper, and much more genuine. Therefore, I have more fun in Stillwater.

We’re all glad to hit the road and head on, but we’re all looking forward to being back soon.

The Spider Dome

This is a bar that is seriously about 7 miles down a dirt road off the highway, about 7 miles outside of any major town. You’re literally drinking on some farmland. It used to be a crazy little dome structure, but then it burned down. I can’t even fully explain it.

This place is unlike any other. We went there after another show about a year ago, and the bartender randomly threw on hard-core porn on the TV behind the bar. What?

We were booked to host an open jam night on Sunday. Or, so we thought. Turns out they normally have an acoustic jam. The crowd was not expecting the all out funky madness of our straight improv. On top of that, Hooch was expecting a lot more of his musicians friends to come jam. Everyone was confused. We pulled it together, it just ended up being a weird mix of achachay and jam and just having musical fun on stage, in front of strangers.

Some of our best buddies like Dom and Andre and CJ came, and we had a really good time playing with them.

All in all, it was a night befitting of the Spider Dome. To be honest, I was a little disappointed that the rebuilt bar is not a dome, and being new, has a distinct absence of spiders.

As we packed out, I looked back at the TV behind the bar. Lo and behold, a giant cock…

Halloween in Cincinnati

For Halloween, we dressed up as Pac-Man and two of the ghosts that chase him. These are home-made costumes (assembled in the coffee shop where we played, as well as in the van while driving to Cinci) and they are hilarious. Hooch’s Pac-Man is huge (I’m talking about the costume here people) and therefore hilarious. He couldn’t really even play bass in it. I just kept laughing in the middle of the first couple of songs.

The show was good. There was a decent crowd and the staff was very chill. A couple Rice friends were able to come out, and we played well. Sitwell’s is a chill place and surprisingly good venue for being a “coffee shop” – they also have a full bar.

Afterwards, we went to my old friend Neil Narayan’s house where we were staying and he was throwing a ridiculous Halloween Party. It was awesome – fully decorated up with spider webs and lights and fog machines and multiple story beer-bongs and strobe lights. Neil’s house is sweet and has an amazing view of the city. Most people may not think of Cincinnati this way, but the way i saw it was beautiful. He showed me the all the headquarters and famous historical sites from his balcony.

Also, the night before, the dusk light showered everything in orange. The shades stunned me. The clouds strung out across the sky like mandarin cotton candy, while the leaves shouted their allegiance to autumn. Even the buildings bricks hinted at Halloween’s hues. Truly terrific.

We’ll be back to Cincinnati for sure.

Memphis: Coffeeshops and BBQ

After a short drive from Little rock we pulled into Memphis and headed to The Java Cabana.   The Java Cabana is a cozy coffee shop.  A very inviting atmosphere and friendly staff gave us a great start to the evening.  We had a mocha then we set up and played a low key show for a nice size group of our friends. Later that night we went to a bar where we had to become “members” of the bar to hang out. This is how bars can allow smoking by making the clubs exclusive…. So we are now officially members of the ASIS Hooka Lounge and Cafe… Pretty funny stuff. We spent a few hours playing Apples to Apples with a group of friends and then called it a pretty early night. The next day we didn’t have a show so we started off by having lunch at a local barbeque joint Central BBQ. Talk about some awesome food. I had the brisket and it was amazing. The spicy sauce was perfect… After lunch we spent some time doing band work at another coffee shop ‘The Otherlands.’ ‘The Otherlands’ is becoming our home away from home in Memphis or so it seems. The last time we were in Memphis we hung out and did a few hours of band work at the same coffee shop. Speaking of home away from home… I’d like to thank my buddy Mike for letting us flop at his apartment for a couple days. We really appreciate the hospitality bro! So overall it was a great trip to Memphis. Spent some time with friends, played a great show, and got some bad ass BBQ! Yaya!

Enid Musings

Our second show of the tour was at Hooch’s hometown in Enid, OK. This was the third time we had played there, and it was a great show as usual. It’s always great seeing Hooch’s old friends, some of his family, and we always have a good crowd. We sold a ton of merch, which makes it an even better show.

Shows like this are a good reminder that you can never judge a town, or how a show will be in that town, by your expectations. The life lesson could be said many ways, including, “judge not, because you’re not very good at it.”  (As a side note, a wise quote once mentioned that ‘judge not that you not be judged’ assumes that you’ve screwed up and have something to be judged for, so its not the ideal reason to not judge others). For example, if you didn’t know better you might think that Enid wouldn’t enjoy a funk band like ourselves, or that it might not pay well, or that a tiny metal barn with no beer on tap and no liquor wouldn’t be a great place for us to play. You’d be dead wrong. Even looking at it monetarily – it’s always one of our highest grossing nights. Somehow, we also often end up quite inebriated. This time, we ended up at iHOP instead. I would have gone for the $4.95 neverending pancakes, but having eaten earlier that day at Sirloin Stockade (which I absolutely do not recommend to anyone).

I’d like to thank all of Hooch’s friends for giving us great food, shelter, and friendship during our time in Oklahoma. They always treat us well. I like to make fun of it for being “smokelahoma,” and I might have a warrant out for my arrest since I have an unpaid traffic violation, but it now has a special place in my heart.

The end of the West Coast tour recap

Hey everyone we got caught up with the end of the tour and coming back to austin and getting Kickstarter out there and getting our next tour up and running and . . . so on . . . and so on . . . so for now I’ll sum up the last few shows in a few sentences. They deserve more attention, of course, but alas ce’est la vie.

Sept 14, Carbondale, CO:
Awesome to play for my sis, garrett, and friends.

Sept 15, Gunnison, CO:
Love this venue (The Gunnison Brewery), because everyone dances and gets into the show immediately. It’s always packed. Lori and crew take care of us with delicious micro-brews, and Ty hosted us again couchsurfing style. He then took Amanda and I out to go bouldering, despite all of our slight hung-over-ness, and we nailed a cool overhanging climb.

Sept 16, Telluride, CO:
Bubble Lounge gave us free oxygen which is cool. Never done that before. At the show a decent sized crowd loved our originals and old funk and soul covers. Crazy thing- we took a 5 minute break and the whole, drunken, fun loving, sing-a-longin’ crowd ghosted by the time we got a beer and bathroom break. Telluride is a beautiful town, and a bonus is that our friends/multi-show/multi-state acquaintances run a SWEET coffee shop in town, the Steaming Bean. Downside: didn’t get to hang with our hosts.

Sept 17, Grand Junction, CO:
Great support from the bar and staff. Crazy how most of the time no one danced or came close to the stage, but people would walk by and tell us how awesome we were playing. Very friendly CS host. Hear that GJ is the meth capital of the world, which augmented Hooch’s methhead paranoias.

Sept 18, Durango, CO:
Jack, Jess, the Leggetts in general, and Kat were awesome hosts. Bar was fun and show rocked. People danced. We made a possibly very useful connection for future musical possibilities. Bonuses galore:
- Kenny was in town for a mountain biking race and we got to catch up
- Experienced Mesa Verde Nat’l Park
- Saw a deer gutted for the first time (nuts!)
- I helped tan the hide a TINY bit
- Rode a two -story bike
- Food not bombs is cool
- the Ground Up Art Collective our friends hang out at is badass, and very welcoming
Played Settlers of Catan for the first time and loved it.

Sept 21, Amarillo, TX:
Show got moved from the historic Nat Ballroom to the 806 – a coffee shop across the street. This turned out to be AWESOME because we met and listened to the amazing, powerful, emotional, stunning music of Jenny Wood. Check her out if you get the chance to see her live. You will be happy you did.

Sept 22, Lubbock, TX:
Played with my old bandmate and good friend Nathan Glenn. That alone made it just lovely. Recorded the show and will put a track or two on the bonus live CD for Kickstarter. CP brought a crowd.

Sept 24, Austin TX EP release:
Technically not part of the tour, but being only two days later, should be included. How sweet to play at home! So many familiar faces, so many lovely people. Knowing the words, singing and dancing along, telling us how we’ve improved so much, glueing googly eyes on their hands.

Check out the pics on facebook by clicking here, and forgive all my run on sentences and lack of proper punctuation, like semi-colons.

Boulder, what a show!

I don’t like to play favorites, but Saturday September 11th in Boulder might have been my favorite show of the tour (so far). Here’s why:

- People danced the ENTIRE time- all three hours!
- They sang along to the words, of our covers AND our originals!
- We gathered the most diverse crowd- all ages, types, sexual orientations. For example, here’s the quote of the night:
“Yall are so hot you’re gonna make me straight!” (from a lesbian chick)
- A ton of friends came out to see us, like my wonderful girlfriend Jane (who got to see us three nights in a row!), the all-stars Kenny and Julie, Katie an old friend from Camp Olympia and her friends, Kate an old friend from Austin and her friends (who are now friends with our other friends since they met the last time we played in Colorado), my old roommates’ younger brother, a bunch of Ryan’s good friends (including Aaron who saw us in Denver too)
- Some of Hooch’s friends (who are now our friends too) came all the way from Oklahoma! Shout out to Autumn and Jackie, badass fans
- The bar, called “The Dark Horse” was really cool. All these old chariots and buggies hang suspended from the ceiling.
- Everyone played along; I even got to do my first call and response with the crowd. I got a little carried away and tried to get everyone to scat sing. It actually kind of worked.
- We were very on musically, and the sound was good.

I wish I could capture the energy of the show and share it with you all online. It was just so positive, uplifting, joyous, and carefree. It was all the more special as a contrast to the 9/11 events nine years earlier. I didn’t even mention it on stage, because what better way to honor the dead, than by celebrating life to it’s fullest?