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.