Modified, Phoenix, AZ, 8 May 2007
(A trailer full of metal wildlife, on I-10 outside of Tucson, AZ, 8 May 2007)
Such a lovely time at the Casbah last night, and lovely time at Modified in Phoenix the night before! Thanks, you two! We should seriously hang out again. Get in touch with my secretary and we’ll hook something up.
Tonight is the final show of the tour, @ Largo in L.A., after which Ms. Clark must spirit away for a red-eye flight to meet up with some Canadians. Canadians, is there anything they can’t do?
Words are failing me, just like I failed college by failing out of it so many years ago. In their stead, have sum mur pics after the (more…) thingy.
Oh, and remind me to forget what “The Svengali” is. *shudder*
(JV and DD, Ft. Stockton, TX, 7 May 2007)
A few days ago, a nice fellow who was helping us load the van asked, “Have you ever been on tour before? It’s a lot of fun, huh?”
I can be lots of fun. It’s definitely a lot of work, hence the lack of updates on this here blogernet.
Anyhoo! Here I sit in a lovely room in the lovely Congress Hotel in lovely Tucson, AZ, where we arrived late last night after a 13-hour drive from Austin. Woooooooooooo! After checking in and side-stepping the drunken ruffians (more Wooooooo!) still raving it up downstairs, I performed the new touring ritual: get to the room, plug in the laptop, iPod, and mobile phone, then crash. (Topic of conversation in the van: did people actually tour before laptops, WiFi and mobile phones? Were the 80’s and early 90’s just a dream?)
The shows so far: pretty great, very fun. As one young Daniel Folmer said of her Denton show (which is true of every show I’ve seen), Ms. St. Vincent has had the crowd eating out of her hand every night. Me? I’m 30 and I can’t hear music anymore, but she sure as hell impresses me. JV and DD too, they have the goods, they bring the goods, and they make the kids happy using said goods. Quite a great bunch of people to be traveling with.
Brief re-cap of the shows thusfar:
- Birmingham, AL @ Bottletree: ladies and gentlemen, this is how you setup and run a rock club! Obviously put together by people who have slogged it out in vans at least once, the Bottletree sounds great, is staffed by friendly and lovely people, has excellent food, and has a large, comfy, and clean band chill-out area. I love you I love you I love you, oh Bottletree.
- St. Louis, MO @ Billiken Club (St. Louis University): located a mile up the road from my old house on S. Grand Blvd. Ladies and gentlemen, this is how you setup and run a college gig! The staff were totally pro and on-the-ball, the sound was very good, and there was no food-court vibe at all. Very nice. Chris from Undertow/Magnolia Summer, btfl man. Thank you!
- Springfield, MO @ Randy Bacon Gallery: excellent, excellent venue. Great staff, excellent sound, wonderful venue all-around. Randy Bacon and his crew are doing a wonderful thing: hosting an alternative to dirty, scuzzy rock clubs, and treating their local audience to some music that would otherwise pass through Springfield. Thanks, people! (Afterward, DD and I hung with some nice people at a scuzzy rock club just to create some equillibrium.)
- Denton, TX @ Dan’s Silverleaf: I was married here, so of course I had a great time.
- Austin, TX @ Emo’s: Bryan Schmitz (former Dentonite and Baboon/Baptist General) was our house sound guy tonight. He took several volts for the team while trying to diagnose the source of some wicked shocks Annie was receiving. I love this guy.
Tonight is Phoenix (preceded by a 1 PM taco call), then San Diego, then L.A., then home. Wooooo!
More photos below!
My original flight to Atlanta left from DFW at 8:20 AM without me, but I was automatically bumped to a later flight. Met JV, DD, and DB (who I am tagging-in for on this tour) at the airport, exchanged hugs, bought some coffee, and headed for the van.
First stop: Weaver D’s, for fried chicken, broccoli casserole, collards, and sweet tea. Quite delicious.
Athens show: at the 40 Watt, and large, very well-known venue with a great staff and a big ol’, modern, futuristic FOH console. Nightmare flashbacks of the ‘Lab’s old Yamaha O3D filled my head, but after a while moving around on the thing was quite comfy. I can see liking these things!
Also met Annie of St. Vincent, who is a quite pleasant person and an awe-inspring musician.
Coffee and key-lime pie with Josh McKay, then after the show, late-night beers and tales of being picked up by Fred Schneider and over-the-top PDA at local Athens watering holes.
So far: good times. Great hotel. Lots of comfy.
Birmingham tonight, which I’m actually looking forward to.
Katey and I attended the Mariners/Rangers game this past Monday, her first ever trip to the Ballpark here, and my first in, what, five years? (Jeez, has it been that long? Now that the Frisco RoughRiders are closeby, I’ll definitely be taking in more games.) Rangers lost 5-4, giving up 4 runs in one inning early on, and never making it up despite a 3-run homer in the 5th. Good times, though.
Leaving Monday for the Vanderslice tour, meeting up with JV and DD in ATL, where they bid adieu to current FOH guy/TM, Dan Brennan. Still have a lot of prep-work to do today, mostly finishing up the advances for a few shows and making sure I have all the gear I’ll need. Very much looking forward to it: JV is playing as a 2-piece, and I get to mix the opener, St. Vincent. Good hotels, good food, good shows — sounds lovely.
Tre Orsi will be recording our first 7″ on 13 May, with Bubba Kadane producing. Shit! Artwork plans are still up in the air! What are we going to do? I dunno!
I have mentioned how much I love my Moleskine notebook? And Google Calendar? I had been thinking about getting Treo phone for keeping up with my calendar and various lists, but I’ve found the notebook/regular cellphone (w/ Gcal SMS alerts) much more usable. Thanks so much to geek productivity wizard, Merlin Mann for his collection of Moleskine hacks and other infinitely useful lifehackery.
Still have “Going to Alcupoco” (The Crust Brothers version) stuck in my head. Such a great rock song.
Shows w/ Shearwater & Xiu Xiu & Casiotone went well. It’s always disorienting joining a tour halfway-through — relationships & inside jokes & routines have already been established, and I feel like an interloper. The other bands were pretty great, and meeting Owen (CFTPA) and his friend Emma was a real treat. Hope we can stay in touch in the future.
Finally managed to pick up a Brooks B66 & cork grips for the Univega. Jacked the bars up a little bit, now it is damn-near dreamy to ride. Will still take the Bianchi fixie to work and back, but the Univega will see a lot more action now.
No band practice in a couple of weeks — I hope we can actually get it together enough before I split for the JV tour. Tentative plans for shows later this summer. Mostly focusing on how to Russian-doll Bryan’s drums so we have even more room in the TDI Wagon.
Other crap: planning on buying a Telecaster, actually. Warmoth will make me a body w/ contours, which fits my fat gut much nicer. Also, have lost about 15lbs since my birthday, and if all goes to plan, I’ll be at my goal by my next birthday. My personal debt is going down at quite a clip as well, and i just recently managed to pull all of my cards’ interest rates out of the stratosphere. So great.
Katey is in San Antonio for the week, attending the TLA conference. She called to tell me that a bunny rabbit licked her. That & the Alamo sounds like a party to me.
Passover is soon, and Katey’s whole family is coming into town. She’s been cleaning and organizing like crazy, and I finally got the garden started. Very much looking forward to it.
Recorded the band Deep Snapper this past weekend, which was great fun. Their drummer is a grill-meister, and kept us well-fed. Was also my first session on the new Studer A827 24-track, which I loved more than life itself. I also got to try out the new Audio-Technica ATM450 mics, which are awesome. For less than $200, I get all the functionality of the excellent Josephson e22s, but for 1/10th the cost. Thanks, AT!
Tre Orsi shows w/ the Pig went ok, though we’re sick to death of the older songs. Will record our 7″ next month bust. After that, it’s off on a two-week jaunt w/ John Vanderslice.
Random links that made me happy today:
From the early 1980’s, a surprisingly non-alarmist WFAA piece on the Dallas punk scene. (Thanks to Good Music for Bad, Bad Times!)
San Francisco To Ban Plastic Shopping Bags (via Treehugger):
It looks like the supervisors acted after becoming frustrated with the California Grocers Association inability to voluntarily reign in the volume of bags they gave away, estimated at 180 million plastic bags last year.