more about “Why Sound Photobooth, 9.5.09“, posted with vodpod
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I’ll say up front that this day felt like a two-for: it really felt like two days. As the remaining days of the tour draws thin, having more experiences to enjoy is a commodity. We left Helena early to get to Havre, but after our gig we returned to Helena to experience another days worth of very noteworthy shenanigans.
In the morning, we went downstairs to our lobby at 6am we found a sleeping Sam and grinning Allie to greet us and have (free) breakfast with us; once again a reflection on their hospitality and tenacity for the hang (if not just an appropriate response any undergrad should have when offered free food).
Havre is approx. 40 miles from the Canadian border, a small college town we performed at months ago during our spring tour. They invited us back to do a fall welcome week concert. If you recall from our first encounter with the school, a few key elements made our experience memorable: 1. The old rickety stage which was a lesson in plate tectonics stood in the cafeteria, awaiting our stomping and convection-current like feet; 2. Our good friend Hammar crashed our radio interview holding a 4 gallon tub of pretzels which he ate by the handful; and 3. our good friend and Canook Desiree demanded that we take our shirts off.
Ok, back to a chronological description. After we set up, the local radio station just down the hall invited us to do a live interview on air. The DJ who was a charming and learned veteran of college radio had done his homework. He had heard our tunes and had read my blog. His questions were quite prepared to engage us in our distain for Olympia (read blog entry “Get me the hell out of Olympia, WA”), as well as thought provoking questions about the music industry and the philosophy behind being an independent artist. We took a break to play a song on the air and a former Olympia resident called the radio station to question the DJ as to where exactly we were in the city and what venue we played at! I watched as my half of the awkward conversation unfolded. When we got back on the air I invited said Olympian to call back and we’d give him a free CD as amends… he never called.
The show was actually in front of quite a large audience of hamburger engulfing college students. It’s always hard to play in front of such audience because it is not captive, and it’s hard to engage even the captive ones because they are eating and it’s 12 in the afternoon! The pro to noon time shows is that there will always be more students on campus. The con will always be that it’s hard to get ppl into rock music at lunch time and harder to hang out with ppl after since they have to go to class. On stage we kept on having difficulty reading the crowd: late applause, dull and removed facial expressions… much to our surprise we sold more CDs than at any other gig(!) The show went great. Again, there’s really just a limited amount of energy an audience can reflect at that hour, but the kids obviously liked our music and brought the CDs home. Special and mad props to Leah and Cori who sold the goods.
(Day 9 part II starts here)
After a short lunch we loaded the van and headed back to Helena. I was still skeptical about the likelihood of a bunch of ppl I hardly knew putting a birthday party together for me, but, sure enough, Sam and about 20 students were waiting for us at Riley’s pub downtown!!! I couldn’t believe it up to the point of walking into the bar and seeing a bunch of ppl, most from the night before chatting and throwing darts in a reserved area of the bar! I got to chatting with more wonderful Carroll students and we all engaged in eating, drinking, and dart throwing.
Then Sam posed the question very bluntly to the birthday boy: 3 options, chill at his place, go Skipe hunting (where you run around the forest with burlap bags hunting for edible ground-fowl), or driving out to a lake for a bonfire. I selected option 3. So we loaded up 3 SUVs full of students, grabbed some s’mores and headed for the mountains along a dirt road. We got to the lake after driving around a gate that said “day use only”. Needless to say, we were alone at the shore of an expansive lake surrounded by forested peaks. David, my ride and apparent closet male-stripper was fast on building a fire via road flare while a large contingency of us decided to explore the lake. In the center there appeared to be an isthmus leading to a small rocky island with a few trees. We walked over there to find that the isthmus was actually several sandbars connected by partially submerged rocks. I immediately decided to take off my shoes and brave the intervals of wading and barefoot rock jumping, with Allie and a girl named Mary heeding the call. The others chickened out, with no other explanation.
The island was much farther and involved much more wading on slippy rocks than I anticipated and it took us close to 30 minutes to get out there. When the three of us finally arrived we wanted to stay and enjoy it so we sat on the rocks and the conversation got deep. I mused about the apparently supernatural ability for Carroll College kids to connect with us in such a short time. The girls explained that the culture of the college, established through programs like mentoring ministries and tight knit dorms, was truly familial; strangers bearing the same Carroll hoodies would look after and open their lives to each other. They said that there was a maximum of 1 degree of separation between every student and I believed it. The school’s philosophy on community was highly similar to the philosophy I hadn’t discovered until adulthood; I mused at the fruit of learning such a lesson so early in life and improved my outlook on Catholicism.
Nate started calling for me. He claimed that he had dim sum for me back at the bonfire (Jonny was happy to echo him). We could hear everything across the lake crystal clear because there was roughly a 13 second echo to everything you said, every sound cascaded across the valley back and forth. We slowly made our way back across the isthmus. One of us had to fall in, and it was Mary, taking one for the team. Hell yes, my shorts didn’t even get splashed!
Back at the campsite we cooked up s’mores. Sam and the Carroll kids (I can call them kids now that I’m 30) surprised me with a cake and everyone sang to me as I impaled the cake with a burning ember only to be blown out after the singing. The campfire was warm and toasty, the conversation was engaging, Nate and Jon were hacking away at a tree. Nate managed to cut it down with an axe much to the detriment of his hands and arms. Jon used a saw and went at the log with hair-raising vigilance. Needless to say, there was no shortage of firewood.
Then, leave it to Nate, he dared one of the guys Sean to go in the lake and said the famous last words: “I’ll go if you go”. Sean went. Nate was wearing white boxers. Kayla, skip the rest of this paragraph. The two of them returned to the bonfire, Sean clothed and damp and Nate with boxers only, wet, clinging to his shivering body. I invited the girls to look away while Allie got our shivering Cali boy a blanket from her car. I refused, refused to go in the water because I had enough from my little island journey. But, Pete and Jon, our intrepid gentle boys said they would go in if the birthday boy went in (an absolutely irresistible proposition) and sure enough, my shoes were flying off and my body was in the lake. In fact, every guy at the campfire went: the band plus Sam, David, Sean, and Mark. Sam’s encounter with the lake was noteworthy: rather than diving in like the rest of us, he stood shivering waste deep, hesitated, squatted down, and splashed water on his head so he could claim he went in; I saw the whole thing (cuz I was peeing).
Ok, I think I’ve described enough. I had a very, very good birthday and I have the Carroll college kids to thank for it. My 30th was spontaneous, fun, far beyond what I expected, and most of all it injected youth into my veins. I could not ask for a better way to turn 30, thanks to all.
The drive between Lacey, WA and Helena MT would be the longest on the tour. It’s roughly a 10 hour drive, and we lose an hour. We left the hotel at 8am and didn’t arrive till 7pm Mountain Time. Now, yours truly is extremely sensitive to caffeine; I could drink two 16 oz. decaf coffees in the moirning and be up until 3pm with no problems. Jon had a leftover “Monster Hitman” which is a vial of medicinal-flavoured 3-Monster-energy-drinks-in-one-4-oz-vial thing. Well, I took it with my lunch during my shift and I drove for 6 hours, no problem.
Carroll College is a small Catholic school of 1400 in the mountain city of Helena, MT, the capital of the Big Sky State. We knew that they tried to bring us out in the spring but just couldn’t do it because of their budget and that the event that we were playing was their only concert event of the year. We were already primed emotionally to put on our best show.
The soundguys there were very knowledgeable and helpful. The staff of students were extremely hospitable including Sam who painstakingly read the menu of a restaurant to us and brought us dinner and Allie (who has a striking likeness to my wife) helped us with exacting care on the merch table. I’m quite honoured to say that during our soundcheck we overloaded the powergrid on 4 separate breakers. The soundguys did end up repairing it and during the show we had no problems.
The Carroll kids promoted the show right. By the time it was time for us to start, there was a huge crowd of kids sitting on the grass; I invited them to stand up in unity and take big step forwards in the same manner. George, one of the students who was instrumental in bringing us bought one of our Orange tshirts because he liked it so much, but we only had a women’s large left, so, uh, it was tight. He enthusiastically ran around like a Centrevol hype man, sometimes with a video camera stirring the crowd into a frenzied, screaming, bouncing mob of frothy Catholics. We have video of this, check our youtube for it, one of us should post it eventually.
At 1am Mountain Time on September 4th 2009, my body would age 30 years. Sam, one of our hosts, planned a hike after the show up Mt. Helena, a Peak nearby that Carroll students often climbed. I announced from stage that I’d be honoured to usher in the new decade with everyone there and they happily obliged. I’d guestimate that approx. thirty kids met us on the darkened trailhead. It was a 1 mile hike up with a stop at some random cave where Nate said he saw bats whiffled out into the night.
On top of the Mountain a crowd of my new friends sang me happy birthday in two languages as I bid my 20s adieu. I called my wife and she could not compose sentences as she was in that sleep saturated loud mumbly state. George, who deserves mad props, gave me my first Cuban cigar I’ve ever smoked; the only birthday gift I’d receive actually on my birthday. Wow, the hype is true. It was smooth and flavorful, but not bitter intoxicating like the Dominican brands. Not only that, I got to enjoy it with a beautiful view of the city among friends, old and new.
Our next day involved a 4 hour drive to Havre, MT for a 12 noon show. The day after that would be an 11 hour drive from Havre, MT to Logan, UT in the Salt Lake area so we decided to drive back to the Helena area the next afternoon to lop off 4 hours of driving on our way to Utah. Sam, the apparent party event coordinator of the gang said something about planning a bonfire by a lake the following evening to celebrate my birthday… I was somewhat removed and cynical from the possibility of that actually happening as I sleepily hugged all of my new friends and birthday celebrators and retreated to my hotel.
We woke up in Portland with no rush; we wouldn’t need to get to 2-hours away Lacey, WA until around 6. We hit up one of my fav destinations in Portland: Sweetness Bakery where the pastries are mighty tasty and the bubbly staff remembers me for my yelp entry. We all had breakfast with our hosts Allison and Adelle before finding out that we had a slow leak in one of our tires. The boys toiled replacing the tire only to find that the rim of the spare had rusted to the point of treachery so we once again put the same ¾ flat tire on the van, pumped it with 44psi and were off. The lug nuts were shiny with all of the labor we poured into them.
We got to Lacey with no problem but were thankful for some rest before our load in time. St. Martins is a small Catholic school tucked in the woods about an hour south of Seattle. We found delicious tofu veggie sandwiches and able-bodied staff and soundguys upon arrival. We were getting pretty pumped. A band named Emsley played before us and by the time they went on there was a healthy crowd on their feet and ready to rock.
By the time we got on stage I quickly came to this conclusion: St Martin kids are cool. Every kid was on their feet and digging us. It was so easy for us to connect with everyone and get everyone involved. We certainly had the best show of the tour thus far and we gladly obliged to an encore. Nate shredded to death his sticks so he had multiple fragments of wood that he threw out. Connecting with the SMU kids was super easy and super fun; they each had us sign each fragment of drumstick. Mad, mad props to the SMU event planning committee who put on a great event with superb promotion.
Much to our delight we discovered that the pool/jacuzzi area at our hotel is open 24/7, a first ever on tour. So, with no hesitation whatsoever we invited the entire crowd of students from the show to our hotel. Lo and behold, about 20 of them showed up in bathing suits! In fact, a few more would have made it out like Kayla and Katie, but through some epic miscommunication they ended up back at their dorms in their boardshorts getting ready for bed. Two frowny emoticons 
Brock from Portland and his sister showed up with beers and my good friend Austin once again met us at the hotel. Much to my encouragement, the alcohol stayed upstairs in our room for our of aged guests and the pool party downstairs stayed dry, uh, in one sense. Shenanigans, expectedly, were abundant at the pool. The school books a lot of bands and entertainers at the hotel so I think the staff was gracious in letting in a horde of screaming and splashing college students.
We got hungry and the after-after party was at the Jack in the Box drive through where Nate definitely ended up spread eagle on top of one of the cars and we, through honking our horns, earned some harsh words, pretty gnarly fry chips, and no napkins from the bereaved staff. The after-after-after party came when it started raining so we had to retreat back to our hotel lobby where we once again entertained our guests. The conversation ranged from academic counseling to spiritual enlightenment.
Kicking it with the St Martins kids was definitely a highlight. Thanks guys for a great show and a great time!
more about “MSU Northern Photobooth 9.4.09“, posted with vodpod
Pete did a princely job by booking us at the Super 8 in Lacey, WA near Olympia where we played last night. Last tour we took absolute basement prices and suffered for it. Pete went a step up and got us a two starred hotel that paid for itself with the late check out and sound sleeping. We woke up early, got free breakfast, and went back to sleep (heaven).
We headed out to The Couv (Vancouver) WA which was on the way to Portland where our show was. My sister in law Lydia lives there and she wanted us to stop by. We chilled out, had some burritos and coffee drinks downtown; the burritos at Pepper’s are big and yummy, and the coffee at Mon Ami=delicious. We would see Lydia again that night with her boyfriend Josh, we bid her adieu and headed into Portland.
We chilled out at this bar called “The Tugboat”, a really cool off the beaten path bar with a café atmosphere in downtown Portland. You heard it right, full bar, 25+ beers on tap, totally laid back laptops out read a book vibe. The bartender was nice and dished out drinks to the boys at $3/beer happy hour rates. They had books on the walls such as a how-to guide on raising rabbits. They had power to boot and free wireless. It was a pressure free zone to chill out for long chunks of time and do work online. IT WAS NIRVANA.Pete’s friend Beth came out and chatted with us while I worked on some promotion and backing up some key files in case a catastrophe happened.
Our venue is called Eastburn, located on the east side of burnside, a major street that intersects Portland laterally. When we drove by there, much to our delight, we found it was packed: $2 pint night. Apparently they have cool beers that are even cheaper than the equivelent volume at a grocery store. Needless to say the bar was packed, and the venue was actually very nice! The sound system sounded great, and I was even able to easily sneak in our under-aged friend from Gresham Nicolette. We were all excited to play.
We did a two-hour set with a break at the beginning and it was tiring. The response from the crowd was good and we had a $100 guarantee, so I am NOT complaining. But it’s difficult to keep the energy high in that long of a set when the audience is not captive, no matter how you look at it. We made a few great connections including with a table of ppl who paid their check and then stayed an hour to see us play our second set, then demanded an encore. Sorry Bridget, we had nothing left to give:(
Our benevolent friends Joe and Allison put us up for the night despite their small living quarters and our very late arrival, and we are thankful.
more about “Carroll College Photobooth 9.3.09“, posted with vodpod
Saint Martin’s University Photobooth, 9.2.09
Published September 3, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
more about “Saint Martin’s University Photobooth,…“, posted with vodpod
Yes, the show was in Olympia, and yes, the title suggests we weren’t too happy about being in said community. I tried to give the city the benefit of the doubt, I thought that each event I’m about to describe was freak, then after multiple similar events occurred I can only disclaim the possibility that our experience was a small microcosm of the greater city. Honestly, we didn’t connect with really anyone who may be hurt, so I’m the most brazen with being honest by calling a poopy city what it is: poopy. But, there is one person who if you are reading this, was princely and kind to us and that’s Torrez our venue host. Thank you so much, bro, none of my comments on the city reflect how cool you are. Disclaimer over, get me the hell out of Olympia, WA.
Our morning started in the east bay area, CA, early. We had 12 hours ahead of us; the drive was drama free. Charlie’s in Olympia is a sports bar slash (as we’d later discover) heavy metal venue. It was a relatively clean bar, with a kitchen that dished out delicious salads to us free of charge. The free beer they gave the boys seemed potent, and the cranberry/pineapple juice was bountiful and tasty for me. I’d say the venue was a solid step above a dive bar.
When we started, my computer had a little scare. It was frozen and when I tried to reboot it, it wouldn’t start up. Everyone in the band had their sad-face on. Austin, my good friend, saved us in super clutch heroic timing by doing a little IT while played our first two songs. The computer was working again and we used it for the rest of the set and I’m using it now to type this blog. The show went fine with no real significant audience response or sales.
Now, rather than give you the play-by-play of all the stuff that happened that brought us to dislike the city, I will give you a list, in no particular order of chronology or severity. NOTE: all of these events occurred on one side of a single block in Olympia WA on a Monday night:
1. We were approached 20+ times by ppl asking for cigarettes or money. Every single person asking us were able bodied ppl who were apparently high. One person claiming he needed gas money for a threesome with a drunk girl wished us bad karma when we said no to financing his debauchery and proceeded to tell other ppl on the street that “that band over the sucks” based on the intel he had gathered.
2. An absolutely intoxicated girl literally zigzagged across the sidewalk and vomited twice on said sidewalk. Interestingly, a dog belonging to some squatters interacted with it later in a way I will not specify.
3. One of the bands playing after us had a rather frightening looking skull-statue thing that had LED lights responding to the kick drum and which elevated from time to time.
4. A guy wearing an Iron Maiden shirt (who I think was authentically trying to compliment a band said that I was a good bassist (I don’t play bass) and that his wife would like our music.
5. We saw two fights break out: one where a female was a victim and who had her septum pierced nose bleeding everywhere, and another where a guy took of his shirt and chased another guy out into traffic. By the way, all of the characters that I’ve mentioned so far have also asked us for cigarettes and/or money at some point.
6. We saw a very highly potential but still alleged bike theft.
So, basically, I’ve been to SF, I’ve been to NY, I live in LA, I’ve been to third world countries, but I’ve never been approached by so many pan-handlers (some of whom are violent) in my life: I felt much more comfortable in LA’s skid row than on that stretch of Olympia, WA. Get me the hell out of here.
But, at least my salad was good.
So much of what we do as humans is primal; instinctual. Like a spider knowing how to spin its web, humans have idiosyncrasies that are peculiar and difficult to explain. For some reason whenever I roll into the bay area, particularly over the bay bridge while entering SF, an intoxicating nostalgia washes over me, like I’m returning to my roots. The nerve endings and sinews within me stretch and expand towards this area, the sights, sounds and smells of the bay spin alpha helices, churning out my origin, my self, at an expanded rate.
I love this city.
I tried to play it down when Nate kept on insisting to annoying point that we take video of the city while crossing the bay bridge. I’ve seen it a trillion times… but when you pop out of the Treasure Island tunnel heading westbound into The City, it’s still magical. We visited City Church where our friends attend. The service was very interesting: traditional yet appealing to my generation; quite refreshing.
Lunch in Japantown a few blocks away was catered by me for Christi Chew since she blessed me with her voice in service that morning (and to give her one less excuse to miss the gig that night), then off to the Lower Haight area where the venue is located. We got there early in hopes of meeting some ppl and inviting them to come. The neighborhood is an absolutely perfect area for kids like us: mid 20s, hipsters, artsy, liberal, bi-curious… ‘twas awesome. I broke away and got to work on doing some promo for future shows at place called International Cafe, but I could not help but be distracted by the jazz jam session that was happening as well as the gorgeous mural in the back courtyard.
Underground SF is a typical dive bar in just about every way; including the award for having the most obnoxiously gross bathroom I have yet seen while touring (which is saying a lot). Despite the lack of soundguys and microphones, we managed to get everything set up and sounding pretty good.
Surprise, surprise, it’s time to smile and get happy, Christi Chew showed up and was primed to sing her favorite song with us, “Dose of Hope”. Oh, yeah, after church this morning she was ready to bring her little voice to the seething cesspool of debauched secularity! We were about to get started but we had to (ahem) wait for the Beall sisters to make their 30 minutes late appearance;) then the show was off to a start. Not a huge crowd but we had a lot of fun playing it, and the ppl that were in there including the other bands really dug our music. Christi, announced as “90 lbs. of Asian female fire” got up and sang it as rehearsed much to the chagrin of ppl who hate music around the universe. When she and Pete were singing together in harmony it was like angels were fluttering inside the PA system. Thanks Ms. Chew, you are welcomed any time:)
Then off to the pizza place two doors west of the Underground on the north side (sorry forgot the name). It seemed to be Muslim owned (turkey/beef sausage?) which was interesting, but the pizza was damn good. They gave us a one topping large pizza with a mountain of cheese for $12 split between 4 ppl! Hell yes! I spent $26 on lunch and $3 on dinner. My wife will be happy about the second part of that last sentence. I should yelp about all these places but I probably won’t have enough time; Marcelle says she would so just check her stuff out if you are curious.
We did the after after party at Coit tower last time so this time I wanted to go to the Golden Gate Bridge vista point north of the bridge to give tourist Nate (and my stirring alpha helices) a breathtaking view of the bay’s other masterpiece bridge. We snuck under the fog with the massive two towers vanishing into the haze.
I love this city.
Odometer: 128080
