Tour - Days 8 through 11 - Albuquerque through San Antonio

The tour had to end abruptly and before its scheduled end, but I wanted to write about the last few days - Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Austin and San Antonio.

I left off with excitement right before the Albuquerque show and the people of Atomic Cantina did not let me down. The place was packed - so packed that we didn't have room for our merch table. We rocked a pretty good set except that I broke a string right in the middle of Cool Your Jets, an instrumental song that requires tons o' wanking. Then, I broke another string during the last song. I've never broken two strings in a set. Between that, all the people, and being really sweaty, it felt like we were really a tough rock band. For once.

Ben got the brilliant idea of setting up the merch on the street outside the venue which turned into heckling all passers-by and I think even convincing some girl who wasn't even at the show to buy a t-shirt. Also, the sound guy liked us and when the sound guy likes a band, it's a good thing. Sound guys see so many band, so it makes us feel warm and special.

Since pulled in a little bit of money that night, we sprung for another Motel 6. When David and I were getting the room, a very intense security guard (I'll call her "Jo" because of her mullet and masculine traits) let us know that we would want to park the van and trailer in the south quadrant and assured us that the trailer would be safe because, well, she was on watch and the grounds are safe when she's on watch. Thanks, Jo.

We had a short drive to Las Cruses the next day, so we had a late lunch at the High Desert Brewery upon the suggestion of Mel, a former Las Cruces resident. We had green chili cheese fries. It's fun to get regional food. We still had time to kill, so we played a lengthy round of hackey sack in the church parking lot across the street from the venue where we were to play, the Red Room. Some cops circled around the block a few times to monitor our criminal foot bag activity. Although, I'm sure four pasty white kids hanging out in a parking lot at 7:00pm in a small town is suspicious.

The venue which was actually a room within a place called the Hookah Lounge which didn't serve alcohol, and since we were temporarily alcoholics while on tour, we went to the nearby liquor store, got some SoCo, and had a pre-funk in the van parked behind the venue. Drinking and conversing about sex was almost more fun than the actual show. But then, by the time we played, we were in the form to play our worst set yet - or, at least it was my worst set. It didn't matter anyway...we had fun. We played for the other bands and two other people (literally). Apparently, it was prom in Las Cruces that night and we were assured that typically the venue is packed.

The drummer from Ten Seconds to Liftoff let us crash at the trailer he was house sitting. The owner had this crazy ass dog that was sweet...and a basset hound/Rottweiler mix. Once we were inside, we discovered A LOT of porn and cigarette burns on the furniture. The house sitter, Brad, informed us he had done a lot of cleaning which did show, but I think the owner was probably a huge pig. David, Marie and I all snuggled in a king sized bed while Ben took the couch that was in the bedroom. We were afraid the mountain of porn might attack us during the night.

The next morning as we were leaving Brad asked us if we had problems with bugs during the night. We didn't. He said, "Good, because when I moved in, I wondered why there weren't any cockroaches, so I looked under the trailer and discovered a ton of black widows."

We left pretty early because of the 12-hour drive to Austin. It was a long drive, but at least for me, spending all day in the van was starting to feel pretty natural. Since we were entering Texas, David declared that he would be the one to mess with Texas.

The show at Room 710 was fun and we had another sound guy (Jason? ...my memory sucks) really like us and invite us back to play with more appropriate bands and even gave us some money for the road out of his own generous pocket. Mostly, it was fun to play for Marie's friends and family.

Marie's family lives in San Antonio, so at midnight, we hit the road for another hour and a half to get to their home. Somehow we all made it without falling asleep. The next morning Marie's mom made us an awesome pancake breakfast. We watched some Colbert Report, did laundry for the first time, checked in on David and Ben's Facial Hair Quest 2007 progress (that's a 10-day old mustache under Ben's nose, in case it's not apparent), then went to the River Walk in search of a good margarita. We found okay margaritas then met Marie's family back at her mom's house for an amazing bar-b-que. I mean, I know BBQ is supposed to be better in Texas, but I didn't know "they" weren't lying.

When we arrived at Rock Bottom Tattoo Bar and heard some of the other bands, I was pretty sure we were going to be beat up in the parking lot after we played. There was a lot more testosterone and yelling than the H can typically deliver, but it turned out that quite a few people were into us. We had a lot of fun playing too, again, for Marie's family and friends.

We were invited over for a night cap by Chuck Ramirez, an old friend of Marie's. He lived in this historic part of San Antonio in an amazing house that was part apartment, part art gallery. He is a professional artist (San Antonio live pictures are courtesy of Chuck and his handiness with an unfamiliar digital camera) and had incredible art in his house and we stayed up until 5:00 AM having conversations about...I don't totally remember...probably mostly centered around the meaning of life or something. We spent some of the time in the back yard which was the perfect garden party kind of setting with viney plants and small white lights. It was a nice end to a fun night.

The next day we slept. Then we went back to Austin because we were going to spend one of our days off with Marie's friend, Susan. On the drive, we made a list of all the businesses that began with the word "Texas". There are a lot. Texans are proud people...they have image of their state emblazoned on EVERYTHING, but to my surprise, they're also very polite and kind people. I thought that the state that produced GW Bush would be a-holes, but I was kind of wrong. Sorry, Texas.



We had some beers and shot some pool at Lovejoy's before, again, searching for a good margarita. Jaime's Mexican something or other treated us all right and then we took our left over tequila from San Antonio over to Susan's house and made margaritas of our own. They were just as good as any other margarita in Arizona, New Mexico or Texas. Susan had some music gear in her living room, so a request for some tunes turned into a short tequila-inspired jam session with me on drums, Ben on keyboard, Teresa (my lady who met up with us for a few days) on bass, David on guitar, and Marie on timbales.

We got to bed kind of early...mostly because Susan's partner needed to get up for this bizarre thing called "work", so the five of us all snuggled up on 2 double beds. Teresa headed back to Seattle the next day while the H headed up to Dallas where we were going to stop on our next day off en route to Kansas City for our next show. We arrived in Dallas and had lunch with Ben's cousin. That's when I found out my dad had been in an accident. We went over to the house of my co-worker, Kindra, where we were going to spend the night. We had a Coors Light next to her pool before I found out that my dad passed away. Kindra rushed me to the airport where I caught the last flight up to Minneapolis. That was the end of tour.

It was a really weird shift for me to be having the best time of my life and then suddenly the worst, especially because my dad was going to drive down from Minnesota to see us play in Des Moines three days before he passed away. It would have been the first time he saw H Is for Hellgate live and the second time he saw me perform in a band.

So, our apologies to Kansas City, Des Moines, Lincoln, Denver, Provo, Bozeman, Kennewick, and Spokane. Hopefully we'll be back next time minus the catastrophe.

We have a bunch of shows and festivals lined up for May and June. If you're in Seattle, we'd love to see you out at a show.

Tour - end

I have many great pictures and stories from the tour dates from where I left off until yesterday when I got a very, very horrible phone call.

I will tell the stories another time, but for now I just wanted to let any readers know that the tour has been cancelled. We hope to play in the cities that we missed in the near future and we will be back to rock Seattle soon.

Day 8 - Albuquerque

We got a good night's sleep at the M6 after the Carly's in Phoenix debacle. The final word was that the booker's 6-piece band has played there often, so it wasn't because we were a full band, but because our name scared him. As Ben said, "The booker is always blaming the owner, the owner is always blaming the booker."

Yesterday we had the whole day to "explore" Tucson. Our explorations consisted of some time in Shot In the Dark Cafe where the barista insulted David's request for a 12-ounce, tall mocha because, pie on our face, "talls" are 16 ounces in Tucson. The day also consisted of other efforts to waste time like going to Best Buy so David could offload the 1299 pictures and 48 videos he's taken so far and a trip to Target so I could get more socks. (Note to self: pack more short socks when you're going to hot parts of the country where you might be inclined to wear shorts and not tall socks. Second-day socks are pleasant for NOBODY.) David and Marie compulsively wrote in their journals. I imagine they say things like, "I'm so bored, I want to stab Jamie in the neck and put her guitar through a wood chipper."

There was also some intense hacky sack/foot bag in a park and a meal at a delightful little place called Iguana Cafe where, as we entered, all 15 of the patrons put down their drinks, turned their heads to us, and watched us walked in with that, "Hmph, yer not from here" look. But the food was great and we tipped generously, so I'd like to think they liked us in the end.

The consensus of Marie and I (I guess that's not a consensus, really) was that it's actually easier to waste 10 hours driving from town to town than to sit in a single town. Although, all this new-found sitting is giving me a good fit of sciatica.

We played at the Vaudeville that night with two other out-of-town bands (Mad Happy and Thee Makeout Party) and locals Flagrante Delicto who all kicked ass. Although, it was a little concerning at 10:30 PM because the only people in the bar where two of the bands and the bartender and we all had our eyes glued to some HBO real sex show on the TVs. I, of course, had my eyes covered. I'm a lady and don't watch such trash. But, the club filled out, we had fun playing, people were nice to us (Matt Brown was right), and a sweet fellow named Mullarkey offered us a place to stay. We learned from being in Mullarkey's place that he was Tucson Weekly's "Best Scenester" for 2005. It was almost like being among a celebrity.

This morning we went back to the Shot In the Dark coffee shop where David was again insulted for his drink order, then we hit the road. The drive today was a little quieter. The novelty of eight-hour drives might be wearing off. Or, the cold that David and Marie are battling could be having an effect. All I know is that, since we've been in the southwest, I have had nothing but shitty margaritas.

We're now kickin' it at the Atomic Cantina which has a cool...for lack of a better word...vibe. It's a Friday. It's the 13th. It's already pretty full. All of these things bode well for the core objectives of a touring band: play in front of a lot of people and make enough money to pay for gas (and then some, hopefully).

Day 6 - Phoenix

Oh, sweet, sweet tour and your unpredictability.

When we left off, we were in San Francisco, about to enjoy a day off to explore what we would soon discover to be rampant poverty. David, Ben and Marie walked from the hotel to the Haight where Ben was offered drugs while I walked to the Castro in search of sushi. We rendezvouzed back at the hotel in the late afternoon and enjoyed sev-er-al mai-tais next to the pool. This is where we came up with our next big gimmick (actually, first big gimmick) - we're going to become/start a Scientology Rock band. It's the new Christan Rock. The next thing I knew (well, the next thing after spotting Peter Buck), we were at a nearby restaurant and I was throwing a mock punch at Marie while Ben was offering hera glass of water that ended up in the path of my faux punch. Water and ice were everywhere. We were cracking up - the waitress and the other patrons were not cracking up.

We strolled back to the hotel for some more by-the-pool time where we were apparently speaking too loudly because Sean Nelson (it was like a Seattle convention up in that piece) immediately moved far away from us.



The next day was a big drive to LA. We hit surprisingly little traffic and were cut off a surprisingly few number of times. We were a couple hours early, so we just hung out in the venue because the surroundings were all strip malls. And condos, but mostly strip malls.

We all had a weird vibe from the venue, Zen Sushi, from the moment we walked in. We couldn't load in until the sound guy got there, which was supposed to be 8:30. At 9:10 we were told by the bouncers that we were playing at 9:45. The soundly showed up at 10:15, set up some mics, and left. At 10:30 we started with Philip from Stereotype stepping up to the board and running the sound. The second band was pretty cool, the third band never showed up.

Besides the disorganization and lack of being paid, it was a pretty good show. We finally played live for the 2/3 of our label folks who hadn't seen us live yet, plus we got to meet some of our label mates.


Ben's friend, Corey, let us stay at his place, just down the street from Dr. Dre's studio. We wanted to lay down some tracks this morning, but we just ran short of time. This morning we left LA with, again, little traffic but in agreement with the widely held opinion that LA kind of sucks, and started our journey across the great southwestern desert land. It's totally foreign to us...well, the "us" who isn't Marie and has lived in Texas. It was windy and hot and there were crazy dust tornado things.


We arrived in Phoenix a couple hours early, so we parked the van at the venue and walked towards downtown. It was very clean and very inactive. We did manage to find some sort of outdoor mall thing with a Hooters, so naturally, we had to dine there. Tammy made sure we were all taken care of, just like she's taking care of her ex-husband's house and Chevy 1500 while he's in Iraq because the engine on her Chevy 2500 needs to be replaced and, well, they have child and that changes things but he's like a brother to her now.

When we went back to the venue, Carly's Bistro, we were told that we got free food and drinks since we were playing (yes!). We loaded everything in and then, something that could only be described as a "snafu" unfolded. Apparently, we discovered through a chat with the club owner, the person with whom I booked the show and occasional booker for the venue, Mike from Fatigo, had never told the venue that we were playing that night...after confirming the show with me twice. Furthermore, it's not even a venue that could accommodate a full band. It's a bistro. It's small and intimate and more well suited for the folks who were actually booked tonight. But, I know sometimes this stuff happens on tour and one just has to roll with the punches. (Update: Mike's response to my MySpace message to the snafu was, "whoops sorry bout that! " No problem! We were excited to drive 8 hours to be stood up! Call me some time! Stay sweet!)

It seemed to be a night of sucker-punches because at the same time there were two men outside of Carly's discussing a voicemail one of them just received about both of them being fired from their jobs. Then, this 9 year-old on a Huffy ride up to us and asked us if we wanted a tip. David said yes and the kid said something about shopping at Progressive.com and then tore off. We were even duped by a goddamned kid.


After a lot of "that sucks", "Does this 'Mike' normally book for you?", "I'm sorry, there's not much I can do." etc, we loaded out, cursed Mike, and decided to hell with Phoenix, we're moving on to Tucson. Although, one of the people who worked for Carly's very kindly offered us her house to stay at, we wanted to move on. And we did. The two hour drive flew by thanks to some Snoop D-O-double-G and moving Total Eclipse of the Heart sing-along.

So, here we are in Motel 6, a little defeated and a lot starting to feel the pain of the $3.2x + gas prices in California and not playing a show/making new fans/selling CDs. But, Tina Fey was on Conan O'Brien tonight, so that made it almost all better (at least for me). Tomorrow, Tucson will (hopefully) be ours.

Day 4 - San Francisco

Currently, we're not really "roughing it." But, I'll get to that in a minute.

I left off right before we played at ACME in Portland on Friday, April 6th (day 1). It was a pretty good show. The weather was really nice that day, so I have a feeling most people opted to be outdoors (like, on the venue's outdoor patio) rather than inside listening to music. But, we got free food decorated with compliments, so that counted for a lot.

We spent the night at the house of an old high school friend of mine, Dannai, seen here sporting a kitty mask atop a cowboy hat while dancing to Christopher Cross. It was very nice for her to put us up (again). The way David said "thank you" was by nearly burning her house down.

You see, David wears these wrist sweat bands when he plays. After two nights of playing, they were sweaty. He was trying to think about how to dry them out since, on the road, we don't have access to things like dryers. David thought that if he microwaved them for FIVE MINUTES they would dry out. So, David put them in the microwave, left the room, and two minutes later Ben found the wristbands on fire in Dannai's microwave.

The aroma of burnt wristband is a gift from David to Dannai that, unfortunately, will linger for a while.

Then, as if one fire in a day weren't enough, on the drive from Portland to Eugene, we saw a 70's-ish Cadillac with the entire front end engulfed in flames stopped on the side of I5. Yesterday on our drive from Eugene to San Francisco, there was a controlled burn along the side of freeway (although, it was dumb because the fires were already put out - there were just the signs to warn us). So, putting all hell references aside, this might be the Controlled Burn tour. Or not. But, we need a name for the tour pronto. "April 2007 Tour" is lame.

Eugene was lovely. We played on Saturday, April 7th (Day 2) at a bar called Luckey's. It was also a benefit show for this group/place called Womenspace that provides services for victims of domestic violence. The guy who put together the show, Ian, was super nice. The other bands were nice. The bars staff was nice. The door guys who paid us out of their own pockets because Ian had a little (waaaaaay) too much to drink left before giving us the gas money we had agreed to... were nice. Zak from the Dead Americans who invited us to stay with him, drink his PBR and Emergen-C, and, overall, was an awesome host...was very nice. Everyone was nice. We like Eugene.

(Sidenote - this was the first women's benefit type thing where I heard the male singer of a band say, along with other unquestionably offensive things, "Suck my d**k, bitch!" That Gloria singer was nuts.)

On Day 3, we got an early start because of a Google-estimated 8-hour drive to San Francisco that, with several gas and hackey sack (I prefer "Foot Bag") stops like the one at left, mountain passes and the added weight of a trailer, actually took 11 hours.

We arrived just in time to load-in, but not before having to overcome what was one of my biggest fears about pulling a trailer in San Francisco - going up a big, steep hill. We had to circle the block around the venue in order to get into the load-in spot and, of course, the streets aren't actually on a grid, so we meandered through some convoluted series of narrow streets and ended up being faced with a big, steep hill we HAD to ascend. So, with the van in low gear and the pedal nearly to the proverbial metal, we chugged and chugged and finally made it. Then, we promptly parked away from the hills.

For it being Easter Sunday, the venue wasn't too dead. The other bands (The Clouds, Pie Rats) were friendly and rocked the party. There was a huge cooler of Budweiser that we hardly made a dent in, but did our best. But, the reality of being farther from home set in when it came to finding a place to stay. Marie's friend, Avery, is an apartment manager and had very kindly offered to let us stay in a vacant apartment, but as it turns out it was gross and trashed. So, he even more very kindly helped us out with a hotel room at the Phoenix Hotel. We had planned on staying here tonight on our night off as a treat, so staying here two nights is a HUGE treat (Thanks, Avery!).

So far, people have been really kind and helpful. We appreciate that and can hopefully return the favors in due time.

Today, Day 4, we have no show. It's just about chilling out, checking out San Francisco (if you're Ben, David and Marie) and taking advantage of the free Japanese spa pass provided by the hotel (if you're me). The Phoenix Hotel is awesome - it's a pseudo tiki/tropical themed place with a heated pool and bird noises that are broadcasted throughout the courtyard 24 hours a day. It's also known as the "rock star" hotel. We're not rock stars, but it's nice to have a long shower and a mattress.

Day 0 - Seattle (and some of Day 1 - Portland)

HOORAY! Thanks to everyone who came out and helped us kick off our tour good and proper. And an extra special shout out to Another Perfect Crime and Diamond Cut Diamond for rocking the Mars Bar with us.

(Ben after seeing this picture, "Looooook at Matt Brown's tonsils.")

Today I picked up the u-haul trailer that's transporting our gear, went to the Chophouse (our practice space), and had a strategery session on packing said trailer. All in all, I think we scored high in spacial reasoning and our weight is evenly distributed. This is Van and Trailer, ready to put the pedal to the metal. Have the rubber meet the road. Bungee chord it to the wall and see what doesn't shift.

Anyway, we're all here chillin' at the ACME before we show Portland how it's done. Earlier, we played an in-store performance at Music Millennium, but not before enjoying some top-notch pizza at Escape From New York Pizza. Words can't describe how awesome this pizza is. You can probably sense the elation and euphoria demonstrated in this photo.

Playing at the record store was odd. There were about 15 people there and none of them seemed too interested in the loud noises we were making. But I know deep inside they were there to shop. I wished I was shopping while we were playing. Okay, not really. But I was still thinking about the pizza.

I'm going to try me best to keep you, the good world, apprised of every breath and movement of the Hellgate's journey through the Western Heartland. If the next three week are anything like today, there will be many spirited debates on ethics, morality, the good of man, survivalism, and picking a Scientologist's brain.

Peace out.

(The day is wrong on this sign.) (And the time.)