Friday, February 27, 2009

Are you there, Seattle? It's us, H Is for Hellgate.

If you read this blog regularly at all, you may recall that I mentioned an awesome tour video that Jon was putting together. Well my friend, today we're going to treat you to Part One of the Total Hellgate February Tour Experience. Check out the video below.

We're playing our first show since returning from tour tomorrow (Saturday, 2/28) at the Comet Tavern. We'll share with you all the wisdom and insight we gained from enduring such a strenuous trail, for example:

- one should pay attention to their DayQuil dosage
- if one's glasses fly off of one's face in a moment of rock and are subsequently stepped on, one should learn that they will continue to fly off of one's face and to stop rocking so goddamned much
- being sick on tour is like being punched in the face on Christmas
- be prepared to cop a squat anywhere at any time
- when an audience member offers to buy the band drinks, insist that the drinks be delivered via a bottle purchased from the bar and passed around for the remainder of the night
- assume everyone in Reno is an undercover cop and act accordingly

Anyway, the show tomorrow is an early one - doors are at 5:00 PM and the show will wrap up by 8:30, so really it's more like a dinner performance. Wear a sport jacket and bring a date (optional).

The Stranger said some nice things about the band for the show:

(Comet, 5 pm) H Is for Hellgate—the Seattle poppy-post-punk outfit powered by singer-songwriter- guitarist Jamie Henkensiefken—are gaining national attention for their new record, Come for the Peaks, Stay for the Valleys. But the track that most caught my attention is "Tina Fey," an as-yet-unreleased track I found on the band's MySpace page. Over a sprightlier-than-normal pop-punk riff (one of the band's key traits is their way with slower, heavier tempos), Henkensiefken lays out her deep personal love for the woman who's become America's Sweetheart. "Why did you marry some guy from the SNL band? I think we could have worked it out. If you wanna hook up with a real musician who won't knock you up..." The cute is kept in check by the creepy—the song ends with our frantic-with-desire frontwoman cozying up to her amazingly lifelike Tina Fey Real Doll. DAVID SCHMADER

And now, our featured performance.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Last Day of Tour

When we left off last week, we were about to rock the hell out of Albuquerque on a Sunday. If you can imagine, there were NOT many people out on the Sunday after Valentine's day. Also, the bar didn't bother to book any local bands. Great. Nonetheless, two very enthusiastic and kind people watched our whole set, showered us with compliments, and the male of the duo professed his love to me.

We had Monday off and had decided to try and see the Grand Canyon which is more-or-less between Albuquerque and Phoenix, our next stop. We made it to Flagstaff at around dusk, so we parked it there at the Super 8 and found us some RAD karaoke at an establishment called Museum Club. I'm pretty sure Museum Club was airlifted out of Livingston, MT, so at least I felt right at home. There were many dead animals on the wall, and not in that ironic King's Hardware kind of way. The karaoke being performed was predominately country, so I warmed up the crowd to us city slickers with some Judds and Barbra Mandrell before we said farewell with an all-Hellgate performance of System Of A Down's "Chop Suey." Then, we walked outside to two inches of snow.

The next day we attempted to go to the Grand Canyon but the road was closed because of snow, so we sat on our asses in Phoenix, enjoyed some fare from Hooters then went to a movie. The club was definitely not in a good part of town, a point which was proven by the mugging that happened outside the club during our set. We played with a really sweet band called Tugboat who kindly put us up for the night.


We had a scheduled day off before our Las Vegas show, so we booked a couple of nights at the Imperial Palace for some R&R. The first night, Samantha and I took some time away from the boys to go on a date. The boys entertained themselves by leaving us the pictured gift on our bed. The next day we found out our Las Vegas gig was bumped for a magic show (thanks, Las Vegas, you cheap slut), so we did what any responsible band would do - we filled up my 32 ounce boot from Coyote Ugly (that had previously been filled with daiquiri) with Jack and Coke and hit the strip to take some new band promo shots with Jon. Then we parked ourselves at the Bellagio slots, got a few free whiskey and Cokes, refilled the boot and resumed our mission.

Last night we played in Reno which was all-around bizarre. The club was a 24-hour sports bar that usually hosted metal bands, but the patrons all looked like they were more interested in hip-hop. We followed a local band which, between breaks of asking the ladies in the crowd to show their tits, played some sort of pop punk/metal. By the time we took the stage, I didn't think we were going to win any audience members over. The awkwardness of the night was multiplied by me breaking a string during the first song and Ben tripping on my mic cable and knocking over my mic stand and drinks. But the people who stuck around seemed to love us. One guy threw a twenty dollar bill on stage during our third song. I thought was going to ask us to play some Journey or equally bad cover songs, but as it turned out he really like our Rush-esque timing changes. Then he offered to buy us drinks and asked what we liked. I said whiskey. He returned to the stage a few minutes later with 2/3 of a bottle of Jack Daniels for the band to share on stage. The rest of the set, while not technically our best, was full of enthusiasm and vigor.

Today we've been hanging around Sacramento waiting to play our last gig. The van got an oil change and we're going to pull an all-nighter in order to get back to our own beds ASAP.

I'll be posting some more videos and photos as we all exchange our goods. I'm sure everyone is dying to see Ben sing "Band On the Run" or Jon's tour montage.

Hooray, Tour! Extra special thanks to Carly at Starbird for hooking our shit UP!

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Day 11 of Tour "You know I'm sick when I don't even want to use the internet" (working title)

Seriously. My first goal upon arriving in any particular town is to find the wi-fi, but this mad Hellgate cold '09 put us all on our asses for a few days. Ben had the cold first, so it's obviously his fault. Jon and I caught it at the same time, but that sprightly young fellow recovered much more quickly than me. Nevertheless, Hellgate is in better spirits all around and we managed to dig deep and provide some rock over the last week. Here are some highlights.

Oakland - we had a couple of days off between our Eureka and our San Francisco show, so we spent a night at the LoBot warehouse in Oakland. The warehouse is home to about 15 people, all artists and/or musicians, I believe. We were treated to a performance by John who does a Fleetwood Mac cover thing. Here's John singing my request of "The Chain:"








San Francisco - the next day we picked up a couple of Jon's friends from the airport who were awesome enough to come down from Seattle for a short vacation and to see the show. Then we checked into the Phoenix Hotel which is known for being a "rockstar hotel." This is when Jon and I started getting sick. This is also when we had neighbors who thought that, because they were staying in a "rockstar hotel" that they should stay up all night partying. Awesome. Our show at the Hemlock was good, but blurry in my memory which was probably corroded with DayQuil.

Los Angeles - We actually had a good LA show. I know. That never happens. Everyone hates playing in LA. We did well. We had friends there thanks to my g/f, as well as a handful of other friends. We had a long post-show drive to Yorba Linda to our hosts' house who medicated and fed us very well. Thanks, Jessica and Steven!

San Diego - One of the things I was most excited about for tour was going to a warm-ish portion of the beach, so on the way to San Diego we stopped at Laguna Beach. Unfortunately, it was the height of me wanting to die from my cold, so Ben, Jon and Sam saw the ocean and I slept in the van. Booooo. Well, not totally booo. It gave me the energy to play reasonably well at Bar Pink that night. Bar Pink actually had a built-in crowd which seemed totally bizarre for an urban music venue. People listened. People danced. The sound was good. Hoorays all around.



Tucson - Our original show was cancelled because it was double-booked, so the HangArt space was kind enough to put on the show. The HangArt is an art space in a mini-hangar. It was also kind of outdoors. We learned that the desert is not warm in the winter. Lisa Mae, friend of our occasional biggest friend, Matt Brown, was our hostess for the evening. She said we couldn't have bacon unless we played "Tina Fey." We played "Tina Fey" very, very poorly. After the show we hung out at our hostess's house for a while, listening to music, enjoying some PBR, and allowing Lisa Mae to entertain us with crazy stories. Ben sent a text to his wife that said, "Matt Brown's friend is crazy!" and the reply he got was, "Remember, you're married."

Santa Fe - The all-ages place where we played, Warehouse 21, was really rad. The people were all super nice, but the turn-out was not great. We found out after the show that two of the high schools had Valentines Day dances that sucked away the draw. I asked what there was to do in Santa Fe since we only have an hour drive to Albuquerque today and was told, "Party." "Hike." "Hike and party!"

We're doing neither. I almost assaulted a Starbucks barista over the mis-advertised "Two hours of Wi-Fi on us!" This town seems to hide it's coffee shops and I needed coffee and internet ASAP.

We're on the homestretch of tour with only five shows left. So far it has gone really, really well and people seem to like us, but it has also been weird not being well enough to do any of the fun tour things like drive hundreds of miles hungover or get video footage of Ben eating meat.

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Day 4 of Tour "I'm going to throw this Chinese food on your face" (working title)

Well, the Eureka show went well considering what it was - Hellgate as the sole band in a bar that probably features classic rock cover bands playing with a car speaker as a monitor to 15 people playing pool. However, at least half of the patrons said they liked our style and a couple of them even purchased CDs. Hooray!

We're treating ourselves to a Super 8 tonight. Jon just showered for the first time since we left. Tomorrow we're going to head down to the Bay Area to hang with Sam's friend who lives in a warehouse in Oakland and have a couple days off.
Here are some photos that Sam took of us. We're on a mission to create a library of promo photos in exciting locations, especially because we don't yet have any promo photos of Jon and I don't want him to think we hate him. We don't.






Saturday, February 07, 2009

Day 3 of Tour "Talk About It" (working title)

Well, last night's show in Eugene was just fantastic. We played with our friends in the Ovulators and The Dead Americans and even had some familiar faces from our show in January come out to see us again. Hooray!

We also debuted a new song for the fine people of Eugene, "New York Times," and it seemed to go over well.

Before the show we went to dinner at the Eugene City Brewery which is a Rogue beer place. The whole Rogue beer thing seemed a little cult-ish because our server wouldn't leave the table until we all agreed to sign up to be a part of the "Rogue Nation" which, apparently, has "benefits." I hope they have luck sending me marketing material care of Julie Ross in Kent.

We also got a little write-up in the Eugene Weekly which was good (I think...). It gives a little bit of an energy boost when we know that, when going to a town where few to no people know us, some might be persuaded to give us a try.

Thank you again to The Dead Americans to being fantastic hosts and breakfast company. Today we had a lovely drive through the Redwoods down to Eureka. Guess what? We found the ocean! Ask us how:

We attempted to start recording our RPM album based off of some fresh guitar stuff Jon was playing, but I discovered that there was some weird interference, probably because the power is coming from the van battery. But, I think we have a work around.

Many more rad videos and pictures have been taken by Ben and Samantha which will be posted soon. This is just to let you know we're still alive and causing just a little bit of trouble. As for now, we're sitting in a dive-bar-turned-nice-dive-bar called Lil' Red Hen in Eureka waiting to find out if other bands are on the bill with us as the three regulars watch bull riding. My hunch is that I'm going to be digging deep into my solo folk/country repertoire to fill up some time. And, I'm wishing we would have learned YYZ already.
More soon.




Labels:

Friday, February 06, 2009

Day 1 of Tour "F Everyone But Us" (working title)

Quote of yesterday (Ben): "You know that guy, Leonard Peltier...everyone's always trying to free him."
It doesn't quite feel like we're on tour yet because we're only in Portland, a city we visit pretty frequently. So, we're having some mandatory bonding time at Powell's bookstore to pass the day until we head down to Eugene to have a friend-band extravaganza with The Dead Americans and the Ovulators.
The show last night was pretty good but we had to cut our set short due to the first band, thrown on last-minute as a part of the early art show, playing over an hour long set. We arrived at the venue a couple hours early because we gave ourselves extra time as not to be caught in the infamous SEA/PDX traffic, but the penalty was having to sit around for two hours before we could load in. Here's a thrilling tour-check in with the gang as we take in some free East End food. I'm sure Ben has more exciting videos, but I don't know where he's at right now.




We're all trying to live as meagerly as possible and spread our funds out over the two weeks, so unfortunately that means we can't kill time by treating ourselves to post-drive cocktails. Too much. But, as pictured we did eventually treat ourselves to a drink at the Doug Fir.

This is Jon's first tour experience. He really wants to get a deck of cards to pass the time during tour. I wonder if he'll buy a deck today. I wonder what kind of games we'll play. I wonder if we'll train for our two day mini-vacation in Las Vegas. I wonder if I'll be the only one who will gamble. Good thing I'm in charge of the band bank account!

Anyway, the two bands that were actually a part of the bill, AristeiA and A Cautionary Tale, were a good fit with us and very nice and did not play for too long. They were also kind enough to donate their portion of the door money to us for the road. Thank you!

Thank you also to Sara for putting us up last night. After a good night's sleep we headed to the Rumblefish office were I, without even having coffee yet, summoned my best radio voice to co-host a podcast with Zach, a music chooser guy.

Alright, time to go find Ben in the astrology section so we can both figure out the meaning of life or something.

Thursday, February 05, 2009

TOUR! NOW!

Here I (Jamie) am, waiting for the boys (Ben and Jon) to arrive (suprise! they're late!) so we can shove all of our gear and two-and-a-half weeks of living supplies into the pictured van. HOORAY!!

Not only are we pumped to take our new three-piece act on the road and play songs from the new album, we have a few NEW new songs to throw at the west and southwest. That's how fresh we keep it here at H Is for Hellgate, people.

And, as if the modern spiritual quest that is the indie band tour wasn't enough for us, we're also going to attempt to complete the RPM Challenge - writing and recording an album in the month of February in the van. How sick is that? (I think I'm using the term "sick" correctly here yes, kids?)

Ben will also be filming our hilarious adventures with a neat little video recording device he got for Christmas. We'll post 'em here on the blog, but head over to our YouTube (youtube.com/hisforhellgate) site if you need to waste some time at work and get caught up on Hellgate adventures of the past.

We will see you soon, following cities:

Thursday, February 5th, East End, Portland,OR with AristeiA, A Cautionary Tale
Friday, February 6th at Luckey's, Eugene, OR with The Dead Americans and The Ovulators
Saturday, February 7th at Lil Red Lion, Eureka, CA
Tuesday, February 10th at The Hemlock, San Franscico, CA with Guitar Vs Gravity and Echodrone
Wednesday, February 11th at The Redwood Bar, Los Angeles, CA with Magnuson
Thurdsay, February 12th at Bar Pink, San Diego, CAFriday,
February 13th at the The HangART (all ages), Tucson, AZ with Beloved Binge
Saturday, February 14th at Warehouse 21 (all ages), Santa Fe, NM
Sunday, February15th, Atomic Cantina, Albuquerque, NM
Tuesday, February17th, Ruby Room, Phoenix, AZ
Thursday, February 19th at Beauty Bar, Las Vegas, NV
Friday, February 20th, Knucklehead's, Reno, NV
Saturday, February 21st, Kennel Club, Sacramento, CA with Starring Morgan Freeman