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.
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.
posted by Jamie H at 11:53 AM
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