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.