old friends

Update on the NOLA rebuild

Great great great news. With only 17th days of warning, the New Orleans Rebuild program that we asked you guys to support raised $54,470.03, 91% of the $60,000 goal which would allow them to finish rebuilding eight destroyed homes. That is awesome! What’s so impressive is that it was hundreds of small donations that brought them so close to their goal. Just thought you all would be interested in knowing that.

From Kenny:

“This means that seven families will be moving home after almost five years of displacement by Hurricane Katrina. I’m astounded by what good can be accomplished when people work together toward a goal of this magnitude. I am so thankful and proud of everyone!”

If you did not get a chance to donate and would like to, click the link below. We are still a bit a short of our $60,000 goal.
Click Here To Donate

New Orleans Rebuild program raising $, need your help by May 1!

A wonderful non-profit house rebuilding organization that we work with in New Orleans has run out of funds, and the grant money that they were awarded at the beginning of the year still hasn’t come through. If they don’t get it by May 1st they’re going to have to stop the work they’re doing, and it may take a while to get the ball rolling again. So Achachay! is trying to help them raise $60,000 by micro donations from people like you and me.

Before

After

It is a lot of money, until you consider this:

April 15th they’d only raised $5000

April 20th, they’d raised $15,000

April 22nd they’ve raised  $18,005.84

Regular readers of our blog will remember that on more than one occasion, we’ve volunteered with this organization rebuilding houses after shows (and breakdowns) in New Orleans. We got involved with the Episcopal Community Services Rebuild project through our good friends Julie and Kenny, who coordinated volunteers there for almost a year. I’ve heard amazing story after amazing story about their work there. From Kenny:

“My first day on the job last March, I volunteered with a group of college students from Iowa putting in drywall for a women whose house had been rebuilt and then burned down after squatters in a gutted house next door accidentally started a fire. The homeowner who had just sent pictures of her rebuilt house to insurance was waiting to hear back about her coverage. After her uninsured house was burned down, our program was her last hope; she at this point had no more money to rebuild again. We completed her house in July.”

I helped install this counter and Caulk it

Can you believe that New Orleans is still reeling from Hurricane Katrina? It’s no longer on the news, but people are still living in FEMA trailers, hoping to save up enough money to rebuild their (sometimes twice) destroyed homes.  These are good people who have been hit by the hardest of bad luck.

TO DONATE, CLICK HERE.

Listen to Julie’s inspiring encouragement:

“Raising this amount of money may seem like an impossible task.  $60,000 by May 1st?  You may be thinking, “Julie, that is never going to happen.”  Well, if there is anything I learned while working for ECS, it’s that a lot of little good deeds and a lot of little donations can really add up to something huge and meaningful.  I remember all the days my volunteers and I spent completing seemingly small construction tasks–scraping the grout lines of a tiled kitchen floor, hanging a door, or painting the inside of a closet–but each of these little tasks helped move our rebuilding work forward and get the homeowners that much closer to coming home again.  I really believe in the power of little acts to create something big, and I really believe in the mission of this organization.  ECS and the homeowners in New Orleans need you, and you can help with a donation!”

Before

She’s right. We’ve been there and spent hours trying to just get a doorknob properly installed, or whiled away an afternoon caulking.  These tasks seem so small, but with hundreds of volunteers doing small tasks over the course of hundreds of days, the program has gutted over 900 houses and rebuilt over 60! I can hardly believe some of the finished product pictures.

In the time our friends worked there (around nine months), they managed to finish rebuilding 10 homes with a total staff of only 17 people, lots of volunteers, and a very limited budget. When the Episcopal Diocese told them it would stop funding the project, they worked hard to earn a grant from the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency.  Unfortunately, these funds have still not been made available to the program. $60,000 will help ECSLA finish eight homes currently under construction or in need of inspections so that their families can finally move back home.

For more information about this amazing organization and to donate online, please go to http://ecsla.org/.

After. Achachay! sheet rocked the ceiling of this house after playing in New Orleans

If you wish to send a cash donation, checks may be sent to 1623 7th Street, New Orleans, LA 70115.  They should be made out to Episcopal Community Services with Rebuild in the memo line, to ensure that the money reaches them.  May 1st is the deadline to donate!

Feel free to share this email with your friends and family, and thank you so much for your support!

(For more pictures click here:http://picasaweb.google.com/edolarebuild )

4 days in the gulf coast; lafayette, nola, pascagoula, mobile

Facebook event invites for New Orleans and Pascagoula!

Thursday April 15 @ Artmosphere in Lafayette, LA

Friday April 16th @ Coach’s Corner in New Orleans, LA (technically in Metarie), 10P – 2A

Saturday April 17th @ The Celtic in Pascagoula, MS 10P – 1A

Sunday April 18th @ Alabama Music Box in Mobile, AL 9P

I’m really excited that for the first time, someone else made a Facebook event for our show without us even knowing about it! Our friend David, who we met through Couchsurfing and christened Ryan as “Hooch” back on our East Coast tour in 2009, took the initiative to make the Pascagoula show packed. This is our third time there, so it should be charming.

In general we’re pumped to take a little weekend jaunt out on I-10, play some great places in Louisiana and Mississippi, and play in Mobile for the first time. We’ll be seeing old and new friends, and we’ll be playing a few songs that have never been heard in these states. Hope to see you there!

Eugene – Keyboard jams, friends, reflections

We show up to the Muse Lounge (which made a sweet flyer for us, by the way)
Desire, the owner, told us to just set up right around him. So naturally I started jamming along a little bit after I set up. He dug it, and encouraged me to keep playing. Soon Hooch joined in. We jammed for a few songs while sparks flew. Everyone dug it.

Finally Ryan joined us, and it was an all-out funk jam with some of the best keys I’ve heard. Chris was a monster, knowing when to accompany and knowing when to go all out. He was creative, playing some crazy space-age sounding solos when the song called for it. It was fun! And our show hadn’t even officially started.

We all had a good time. Afterwards Chris came up to us with a suggestion – we all work on a cruise line together. Sure, why not? If we can earn some dinero to support ourselves when we’re not on tour, and have some extra to get some more promotion and more recordings, let’s do it! So we exchanged numbers. Who knows what the future will bring? Hell I’d bring Chris on tour with us any day. Maybe we will when we can support another body on the road.

Eugene was very sweet for another reason: I got to catch up with two old friends. One from studying abroad in Spain whom I hadn’t seen in three years, and another who lived in the room above mine freshman year at Rice. Both were very exciting; Nicole from Spain because we spent a lot of time together there, and Miller from Rice because she was a Senior when we met so I hadn’t even really talked to her in 5 years! Both seem to be doing great but alas our time together was far too short.

Unfortunately the first half of the show itself was pretty rough. I broke two strings, Hooch’s bass was peaking and going nuts through the monitors, and aside from our friends there was essentially no crowd. As a result the energy was low and we really weren’t feeling it.

After we took a break, we decided to just let loose. If only Chris were still around to join us! Or our friends to hear us! We just had fun on stage; jammed out extra long, gave each other more space to solo, improvised a little more. Barely anyone around to listen? Barely any reason to care. As a result, the second half was awesome.

Interestingly enough, there were probably about ten or fifteen people scattered about the bar – outside, in another room, etc., and they were all very complimentary at the end. We just didn’t know they were listening because they weren’t in front of the stage.

I was reminded of another thing Martin Atkins said in our interview – all we need to focus on is making one more fan. More on that later. This article is already pretty long.

San Fran: The joy of seeing old friends

One of my favorite things about touring is catching up with old friends. I have a lot of them scattered about the country (and world at this point), from a few trips abroad and from Rice’s cosmopolitan population. I think it’s such a gift to be able to see people who live thousands and thousands of miles away and usually don’t have plans to come to Texas any time soon.

I plan to see many people, and solicit their couches a few weeks (or days) ahead before we reach a city. This was the case with Andy and Megan, some very close friends from Rice. We stayed with them in San Francisco, as Hooch mentioned in yesterday’s post, and had a great time. They cooked us incredible food, we went to the Farmer’s Market, we traded music and stories, we played frisbee, we talked politics and love and economics and religion and bio-psycho-social developmental theories (you know all the usual stuff). We all had a wonderful time.

I also got to catch up with one of my old roommates and very good friends Brian Chek. Awesome.

Wish I had a pic of what I was talking about, but this happened on Friday night after the show. There was a lot of graffiti already in those practice rooms, so we added to it. We like to leave our mark I guess.

Some of the most exciting times are the ones that are totally unexpected. We show up at the Brainwash two Fridays ago in San Francisco. It’s a sweet place – food, coffee, beer, laundry, and live music all in one. The show was fun, we played with the same band as Wednesday plus another, we jammed afterwards with them and some of their friends at a crazy warehouse practice space with grafitti everwhere. This alone would have been worth a blog post. Everyone we hung out with was incredibly generous with their instruments, booze, and northern Californian specialties.

Back to the show – there was this moment during our first song when I glanced over the counter at Brainwash only to see two friends that I had not seen in three and a half years – since I studied abroad with them in Ghana. I did a double take, and for a few moments, maybe even a few minutes, I had to make sure I was not indeed dreaming. First I saw Rachel with long hair, even though the whole time I knew her she had a buzz cut. Standing right next to her was Kristen, another friend from the same Ghanaian Urban Ethnomusicological drum and dance fest. What! Last I knew one was in St. Louis and the other was in New York. How’d they end up San Francisco? This alone made the night amazing, because I love these girls!

We got a chance to catch up; I got to meet one of their boyfriends whom I had heard about back in the day; we ate burritos. The time was of course way too short (it always is isn’t it?) but it was so sweet. And I love surprises.

Being able to reconnect with people like this always spreads my grin so wide that my mouth muscles hurt. It was almost too much – catching up with Cole on Wednesday and Thursday, Andy and Megan the whole time, Chek, plus Rachel and Kristen. There wasn’t even enough time for it all.

Stripping down and hanging out at Esalen

We had the distinct pleasure of taking a break at Esalen on our way to San Francisco. For those who don’t know, which I guess is most people, Esalen is an alternative learning and spiritual retreat center dedicated exploring the vast frontier of human potential. As a result, all the major thinkers, spiritual leaders, new age gurus, and metaphysical philosophers of the past four or five decades have passed through the place – people like Abraham Maslow, Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, Buckminster Fuller, Fritz Perls, George Leonard, and even the Beatles and Ravi Shankar have spent time at Esalen.

Marie shows off the natural beauty of Esalen

A great friend of mine name Marie is the reason we were able to hang out there for a night. She was our gracious host and tour guide. We also had a ton of fun with her, her friends, and her mom. For example;

- We attended a group Gestalt psychotherapeutic session called “Open Seat,” (more below)
- We ate incredible food
- All the food at Esalen is DIVINE
- Much of it is grown on-site
- We experienced the hot springs (clothing discouraged, more on that)
- We played Big Talk kings
- I meditated over the joining of three rivers

Plus, on a personal note, I took a transformational class that studied the Human Potential Movement and American Metaphysics through the lens of Esalen. It was in this class that I made my lifelong friend who co-founded the Big Talk Project with me.

The Naked Hot Tubs

Esalen is infamous for the natural hot springs hot tubs that hang on cliffs over the ocean. Besides being incredibly relaxing and beautiful (the whole of the Californian coast between LA and SF boasts awe-inspiring vistas of mountains, cliffs, waterfalls, ocean, flora, and fauna), the baths are well known for the “clothing optional” rule, which is better put “clothing highly discouraged.”

I thought that I would be right as rain, given my dubious history on a bike, but I must admit I was a bit shy at first. I think it was comfort as well as the nighttime. When it’s dark outside, there’s a sense that you can still hide your anatomy from the rest of the people in the area. When it’s bright daylight, there’s no protection camouflaging anything. By my third trip to the baths, in the middle of our second day at Esalen, I felt much more comfortable sunning the areas of my body which normally remain obscured.

The Naked Mind

Open Seat was a good introduction to a group psychotherapeutic process, and it reminded me of something Martin Atkins said when I interviewed him a few months ago. Bands should get therapy. I whole-heartedly agree with this philosophy, and plan on it when we have more of the basics (three meals a day instead of one, for example) taken care of. We spend a massive amount of time together in very tight quarters, with little personal time or space. Why is this not a normal thing bands talk about and do? Certainly for the cost, but what about famous bands? Have the Red Hot Chili Peppers ever mentioned it? What about 311? When Martin said it, I thought, “of course!” Our experience at Esalen was not directed towards band dynamics at all, but if nothing else it helps us better understand each other and the different way we experience what we’re all going through at the same moment. Pretty cool. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think the other guys did as well.

As I said in the twitter message, “Esalen, we’ll be back.”

The Carolinas were fun

The first thing I do when we get to a club or bar, especially one we have never played at, is assess whether I get the feeling that this will be a good show or a bad show. You might wonder, what makes a show good or bad? There are several criteria. First, in my opinion, the most important thing necessary for a good show is the amount of people present. The more people the better because we feed off the crowd’s energy and it makes us play better. Also more people mean more potential new fans and sales on merchandise after the show.  Other factors include the amount of money we make from the show whether it be from the club and/or sales, impressing the staff of the club so that even if there isn’t a huge crowd they want us to come back and will make the effort to get us on a good bill next time, and also just the opportunity to tweak our live-set. This last one can be a good factor if it’s an off night before a more important show.

Couch Surfing

The 9^th through 11^th days of the tour were all in South and North Carolina. Two of those shows were at places we had never played before. We all hoped that Friday and Saturday would be big shows because they were weekend nights, but things don’t always go that way and you have to find the silver-lining. Both weekend shows did not have a ton of people in attendance, but this didn’t deter us from having some great shows, and furthermore great nights. In Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina we played at a place called The Village Tavern. The Village Tavern has a reputation as a cool venue, and the room sounded amazing. As part of our pay we got dinner (bonus!) and some of my family friends who live in SC came out to the show. There wasn’t a huge crowd, but we met some really good people and we sold a good amount of merch. One person we met before the show was actually really cool—he happened to be the father of the lead singer for the band Band of Horses, Ben Bridwell. He thought it was so great that we were on the road and doing our thing. He told us about traveling with his son’s band and how he wanted to sell t-shirts (I instantly recalled the thousands of times my dad jokingly (half-serious though) said he would sell t-shirts on my tour). It was cool meeting him, and making some new fans out of the people who were at the bar. The real fun began when we met up with our couch-surf hosts for the night in Charleston. We stayed with two girls, Kayla and Billie-Joe, and their amazing friends who were all chefs. They first fed us these gourmet tomato pies that tasted remarkable, and then we proceeded to play card games and Taboo into the wee-hours of the night. The game of Taboo was exceptionally funny with Hooch and his partner Kevin being the two worst Taboo players I have ever witnessed. They brought tears to my eyes and pain to my abs because I was laughing so hard. The night in SC was an example of a show that on paper was not so awesome, but which turned into a great night.

The next night we played in Asheville, North Carolina and stayed with more couch-surfers. By the way I love couch surfing now, it’s fucking amazing—the people you meet are great and so generous. After our hosts made us dinner, we headed over to the show at a place called The Root Bar. The Root Bar is a pretty cool bar that has its own backyard game named after it called ‘Root Ball’ which is a combination of horseshoes and bocce ball. Once again the crowd was relatively small (we later found out that the entire town was at a concert put on by local rock-star Warren Haynes of Allman Bros and Gov’t Mule fame), but we made the best of the situation. The people at the bar were all really into our grooves, and we played what I thought might have been one of our best shows on the tour. We sold a bunch of CDs and made some new friends with people who are immersed in the local scene. Also the venue loved us and decided to take care of us by giving us all of the bar sales for the night—the bar actually lost money but because they are good people and felt bad for the small crowd on a Saturday night they took care of us. It’s things like that which redeem a seemingly shitty night, and even gives me a little more faith in people.

Mayor Meeker at the Bee

Sunday night we played at The Busy Bee Café in Raleigh, which is part-owned by one of Jordan’s friends from Rice, David Meeker (who’s dad is the fucking mayor of Raleigh! The funny thing was, that not even Jordan knew about that little tidbit of info and he and his wife came to watch the show—the mayor at our show!). We played here on our last tour, and just like last time it was a nice show for a Sunday. You can’t expect too much from a Sunday crowd wise, so the comped gourmet food and the pay from the bar make it all good. We did play for a few people who are very in touch with the bar scene in Raleigh, however, and they all enjoyed us so that was also a bonus. We capped off the night sampling fine beers at Meeker’s apartment, one of which was a Belgian beer that weighed in at 8.5% alcohol content (cheers!).

Over all these shows weren’t the best ever, but between the people and the connections we made in each city and at each venue they were all pretty great. The last week of the tour is upon us now and I am especially psyched for the last two shows in Boston and New York!

Day . . . anyone have a calendar? I can’t remember what day it is

Allie and her friends

Baltimore was touch and go – we literally arrived at 8P for load in, closed out the night from around 11-12, and drove to DC to stay with Allie at Gallaudet (the top college for the deaf, hard-of-hearing, audiologists and speech pathologists). The show was good, we got a sweet recording of it which I’ll try to get online at some point, and highlights include playing for Allie, her friends, and her mom’s friend Jennifer. Yes in fact we’d have played for about three people if Ms. Wilson hadn’t brought a crew.

- Staying at a dorm is fun. Especially when a bunch of guys all go to the women’s communal bathroom/showers together.

- Staying at a deaf school is intense; you feel really self conscious. What if you pick your nose but it turns out you’re tell someone to eat your boogers? What if you try to wave but it comes out as “F you!” 

- Staying at a deaf school means men can be really loud in the women’s communal bathroom/showers cause no one can hear it!

Very happy to have some fans at the show (and a floor to crash on)

Also of interest – I’ve mentioned how living on the road we sometimes don’t eat enough. Well we’d had one meal that day and I was exhausted before the show. So I bounced out to the van and made a couple of PB&J sandwiches. There’s a reason the peanut butter and jelly sandwich is such a staple in American eating culture: it has almost eve

rything you need. Especially when you slam 100% whole wheat bread and preserves like we do; PB&J’s provide energy, protein, carbs through fruit, nuts, and grains, and they taste great.

LOWERING THE DRINKING AGE

By the way, I’d like to mention how no one gives a crap about our cause of Lowering the Drinking Age. We have not had a single person talk to us after a show about it. It has sparked a couple lively discussions with friends before a show, so it has somewhat accomplished the goal of spreading the word. Plus when we talk about it we get some hearty chuckles from the crowd. But no one has signed up to join the Choose Responsibility campaign and hardly anyone ever glances at their literature on the merch table.

I understand that the majority of the crowds we entertain are over 21 and therefore have little incentive to get involved. I understand that the 21 year old drinking age is not anyone’s highest priority. But isn’t that the problem? Isn’t that the reason we’re out here promoting the cause? Isn’t that why we still have these ridiculous laws and unhealthy traditions in American drinking culture amongst young adults? 

It’s more of an interesting observation than a rant, I just got carried away cause its 4AM and I’m freaking tired.

COMING SOON

- A “day of rest” in CT

- housekeeping: a new show, moving the NYC show to Thurs, frustrations with booking agents

- putting our EP on sale online. “SOFT LAUNCH” Sunday

- Springfield, MA

- The All Asia Bar in Boston

Day 6: FLORIDA! My name is Florida!

Jordan and JP reunite

It was 3AM by the time we had loaded up and pulled out of the Celtic’s lawn parking lot. At least seven hours from Atlantic City Florida and one broken headlight still waiting to be replaced, it would seem as if we had quite the night ahead of us. Surprisingly, the 330AM-1130AM drive passed without incident. I felt electrified the whole time until about 7 when I decided to drink a Red Bull. I felt absolutely no increase in awareness, concentration or energy. Instead after about 20 minutes I felt an intense crash and had to pull over to switch drivers. Ryan and I flopped into the aft cabin while Roni and Michael dutifully moved into the front seats. Unbeknownst to sleeping Ryan and Jordan, Michael fell immediately back asleep and left Roni driving at 730 by himself. Fortunately, and despite our best efforts to the contrary, Roni still hasn’t shaken the corporate lifestyle and remains an early riser.

Ryan cools his head

Florida was a dream. It was so awesome catching up with JP, my friend from studying abroad in Spain who I hadn’t seen in almost three years. His band Saltwater Grass was also incredible. They’re a six piece in the vein of String Cheese Incident and Widespread Panic – but a little funkier. Great energy, great jams, I just had to dance to the music. Plus they’re all a bunch of really nice guys. In fact all of JP’s crew was really cool. From the moment we arrived rubbing sleep from our eyes they welcomed us, hung out at the beach with us, throwing frisbees, running around like fools, and guiding us to the best fish tacos I’ve ever had. Atomic Flying Fish Tacos in Atlantic Beach Florida are a must – upon mentioning them right now Ryan erupted “those were awesome!”

What could be better? Catching up with old friends, going to the beach, eating delectable food, playing music, dancing to another great live act, and going to a hilarious after-party. Yeah after the show we all headed over to a house and got rowdy. And by rowdy I mean we sat around telling ridiculous stories and making up songs about people at the party. Hoff from Indiana – we’ll never forget what you do with baseball bats. 

I can only speak for myself, but hanging out with JP made me realize that I am living my dream. Not just because we’re getting to showcase our brilliant Achachay! compositions in front of new people every single night, but because I get to travel around the country catching up with old friends and meeting the people they love. From Aaron and Evan and Anna and Darren and Clory and Beth and the whole Houston crew to Julie and Lea in New Orleans, to JP in Florida and Meeker in Raleigh, and all the people in the Northeast and Midwest that I can’t wait to spend an afternoon with, this lifestyle is indeed exactly how I want to spend my time. 

Two more interesting tidbits. 

(1): We got in the paper!!!

(2) The Fly’s Tie specifically asked us not to mention lowering the drinking age. Crazy right? I understand that they get a lot of pressure from the local fuzz and have to be really hard on IDs and whatnot, but we’re not supporting illegal behavior. We support changing the legal rights of adults. So we kept mum about it. I mentioned that there was something we normally talk about that we couldn’t and people should check out website to find out more. Barely anyone even asks us about it. More on that soon.

Regardless we’ll definitely be back to the Fly’s Tie, and we’ll definitely be playing with Saltwater Grass again.

Day 7: The Busy Bee

Day 8: Fayetteville