April 2008

Well, we’re making our way home to Colorado this morning. Looks like clear skies and perfect driving weather, so we should make good time (about 10-11 hours). We had a nice hearty breakfast at the Living History Farms in Clive, Iowa (a place where they re-enact the 19th century farms of Iowa)… and we’re now on I-80 westbound, all the way to Colorado. Had a great show in Des Moines last night… incredibly nice people who own Java Joe’s, and the room turned out to be HUGE. We were picturing a small-ish coffee place, but this turned out to be a large venue with two separate rooms/stages.

 

Here’s how the setlist turned out:

Don
Hazel
Heat
View From Way Up Here
Park
ZED
Eoghan, Late Saturday
List
Obey –>
Life During Wartime (Talking Heads)
IIOKYN
Nightlite Jesus
Turn My Egg

About midway through the set, Jason and Beers spotted someone walking through the room… and recognized him as the drummer from American Princes, one of the two bands that opened for us on Monday back in Boston, MA. Sure enough, it was them… playing in the room next door to ours. Talk about a small world. We just happened to play in Des Moines the same night, and in the same building. Crazy. Not much else to report at the moment… passing lots of farms, cornfields, and cow pastures… lovely country out here. We’re all looking forward to sleeping in our own beds tonight for sure. Catch y’all from Colorado, unless something journal-worthy happens to occur in the next 10 hours…

Hello from a van of non-sleepers. We’re about 2 hours from Des Moines, having driven through the night from Syracuse, NY… and it looks like we’re going to make it in time to grab a quick shower and then load in at Java Joe’s. Woo-hoo. We’ve been thinking about this leg of the tour for the past month, wondering if it would work out… and thanks to some Dunkin’ Donuts, a bunch of coffee, and a strategic rotation between the four of us, it’s working out just fine. Had a lot of fun playing in Syracuse last night… it was basically a private show for some friends and some people who found us online (on Jambase.com), and the staff of the place. The weather was awful, so there was zero built-in crowd whatsoever. We still had fun, the promoter who booked the show said that he loved the music and wants to work with us on our next time through in the fall, and we made some new friends with the dozen or so people who were in attendance. Here’s how the setlist panned out:

Don
Park
Story Of
List
Around The Bend
ZED
Marula Binge
IIOKYN
Nightlite Jesus
Eoghan, Late Saturday
Heat
{set break}
Hazel
View From Way Up Here
Relief
Emil
Obey –>
Life During Wartime (Talking Heads)

We packed up and pulled out of town at about 1:30am, and I drove until 8am with Jason staying up as co-pilot. Anton took over from there, then Beers, then Jay… and now Anton’s driving us the last 2 hours in to Des Moines. We’ll play tonight in the main downtown area of the city, then sleep VERY well and head on back home to Colorado in the morning. Next show is Thursday in downtown Denver… then Saturday up in Ogallala, Nebraska… so we’re not out of the van for too long… and still loving it. More later… thanks for your emails!

Just pulled up and parked in front of the Bull & Bear, our gig for the night. It’s a rainy, cool night here… raining cats and dogs, but it’s somewhat refreshing for us. We haven’t seen rain since we passed through this part of the country Eastbound last week. Might hurt the walk-in crowd a bit tonight, but we’ll have fun regardless of how full the room may be. Going to grab some dinner here and load in… catch you after the show. I think I’m driving the late night (2am-7am) shift, so we may not have an update until I’m back in the backseat of the van.

Howdy from the van. We’re cruising westbound on I-90, headed for Syracuse, NY. Just drove by Anton’s dad’s place, and we’re fairly close to the New York border.

We’ll play at the Bull & Bear pub tonight in downtown Syracuse, and we hope to be pulling out of town by 2am so we can make good time to Des Moines.

This morning I woke up and watched candlepin bowling for an hour or so. It rules. I’ve talked for a while about opening a candlepin bowling alley in Colorado, as a side thing. I think it would be pretty popular. Totally different approach to bowling:

I’ve spent this morning and the last hour or so adding photos to the Road Journal here, so scroll down and go back through the older posts to see them now with photos added. I should have the last of the pics up there over the next 30-40 minutes. It’s been an awesome tour, met a ton of great people, played some great rooms, and enjoying the changing scenery. It’s amazing to just be able to “take in” life on these trips… observing people doing their usual routine in the concrete jungle of New York City or by the ocean in Portland, Maine or in the plains of Nebraska. It’s a really small world (and an even smaller country), and jumping into their lives for a couple of hours, giving them something new to hear… before heading on to the next new group of people in a different place. The road thing isn’t for everyone, but man – I, for one, LOVE it (this is Russ, by the way). We’re here in the 9th day of driving in this big red van and I’m not remotely sick of it. I’ll write the rest of those thoughts in my blog and keep this thing band-focused.  🙂   We’ll give another update from Syracuse when we get there… the scenery right now is gorgeous and I’d like to stop staring at the computer screen for a bit. We’re just passing through the Berkshires and rolling woods of western MA/eastern NY… beautiful colors and a nice 70-degree breeze blowing through the open windows of the van.

Had a great show in Portland, just about to hit the rack for the night here in Massachusetts. We’ve got a long day ahead of us in Syracuse, ending in Des Moines 48 hour from now, so we’re getting a good night’s sleep tonight.The owners of North Star Music Cafe where we played tonight are unreal… we’re already booking our return trip for October ’08, to play this stage again. We even had people dancing the tango to our music, which was a first. Here are those same people in action on YouTube… a Portland tango group with some showdates outside the state on occasion. Now we’re back at the Inn in Massachusetts, catching one last night of good zzz’s before a long weekend of driving and gigging across the midwest. Looks like the weather is going to be crap for our drive, too… severe t-storms in upstate New York and the midwest as we make our way across. Fun times. Hopefully we’ll be able to make it to Des Moines in time for our gig at Java Joe’s on Sunday night. Time to snooze here… more later today!

Howdy from Maine. I’m sitting here at the North Star Music Cafe, listening to our support for the night – Jon Call (his myspace here)…

Jon Call – Portland, ME
We’ll be going on in a half hour or so, and there’s already a good sized crowd. Good times. We’ve been really surprised at how many people have been in the rooms up here, so far from Colorado.

This is our last night in New England before making our way back to the West. Given that fact, we went to a place down on the harborside and enjoyed a fresh seafood linner (“lunch/dinner”). We all had big bowls of New England Clam Chowder (mine was thick enough that I could stand a spoon in it), and I had a fresh lobster roll. Took a stroll around Portland, enjoying the smell of seafood in the air. Seriously, the second we pulled into town, we could smell lobster, crab, fish, salt air, etc… awesome.

Hello from Maine! We decided to come up early and find a restaurant overlooking the ocean… and have a big lobster dinner for our last night in New England. It’s almost 3:30pm and we’re just a few miles outside of Portland, I think. The weather has been absolutely postcard perfect this entire week. We’re all blown away by the experience and joy of this week. I have about 4,000 photos on my camera that I need to get transferred to the laptop so we can share them with you here on the Journal. I’m going to go back through and update previous posts with relevant photos from those days… so I hope it’s not too confusing for y’all. Last night in Newton was awesome… thanks to all who made it out, and to the new Backstage Members who’ve joined the website this week, from Rochester to Des Moines to Boston. Hopefully we’ll have a few more members join us tonight after the show in Portland. Okay… I’m going to keep working on these photos and get this thing updated with some color! Hasta for the minute…

Russ here… Anton took over the Road Journal duties the last couple of days. It’s been crazy running around from gig to gig and doing promotions in between. Played tonight at The Attic / Union Street in Newton, MA. It was our last night with Fred on the tour, helping us with sound, merch, navigating, etc. We were all grateful to have his help with everything. We dropped him home a little bit ago, and all the guys have gone to bed. I’ll be hitting the rack here in a minute, after this update. Got out and played a round of golf this morning with Jason, managed to shoot a decent round on a course filled with trees (we’re not used to that on the Front Range in Colorado), then headed to Borders for a quick in-store promo set. After that, headed to the Attic and played for a supportive crowd… great room… a bit upscale, lots of after-work folks in there dressed up, etc…. really good dinner beforehand… and I’ll need to re-check on the setlist before posting. Fred’s got it with him, so I’ll need to make a phone call in the morning. I also can’t seem to find my digital camera, which has all of our photos from the last few days (yes, including the World’s Largest Truckstop and a college student in a tiny, tiny coat)… so I’ll have to dig through our bags and get those pics posted later today (Fri). We’ve decided to stay here at the Inn in Massachusetts for an extra night, rather than staying in Portland… so we’ll be driving a couple of hours back down here after the show tonight (Fri). It’s such an amazing place here at the Inn… we’re all happy to be able to relax and sleep here for one more night. Okay, bed time… here are some pics from today… hasta for now.

Breakfast at the Inn

Anton here.  We played last night up in Manchester, NH, at St. Anselm College in the campus Pub.  Other than driving the wrong way down a one way street once we got onto campus (we didn’t get pulled over), we got there without any problems at all.  A couple of the highlights from the evening include the interesting “drinking” policy for musicians playing at the Pub, and being approached by 3 robed monks in the middle of our set to compliment us and to let us know how much they enjoyed our music.  The students that were hanging out had a great time, and told us some hilarious stories after we were done loading out.  They manage  to have a good time up there just fine, it sounds like.  And the setlist:

Park
Story Of…
List
Around The Bend
Marula
Heat
Nightlite Buddha*
Hazel
Don
Eoghan
The View From Way Up Here
Pobrecito
Obey ->
Life During Wartime
Egg

* The monks were already in the room at this point, and a fan at the show was shaking her head “no” when she realized we were about to play Nightlite Jesus, so we changed the words on the fly to make it a bit less controversial at this venue.  It was a good laugh for sure!

St. Anselm’s Finest.

Post-Show Libations

Anton here.  The last few days have been great out here in the Northeast.  Last night we played in Manhattan, NY, in the heart of Hells Kitchen.  We hit some pretty serious traffic getting there on I-95 as we approached the George Washington Bridge, but managed to get there on time despite the delays. Loading in our equipment was interesting to say the least…we had to keep at least 1 person at the van, and in the club at all times to be sure our equiment was safe at all times, and there was a VERY steep flight of stairs to climb into the club, so we didn’t set any speed records.

After getting the sound figured out for the funky/small space, Tanner Walle and his band played a great set of original tunes to get the crowded room warmed up.  The room was pretty small, so it felt great with the number of people we had in there.  Here is the setlist:

Heat
Zed
Story Of…
Around the Bend
Nightlite Jesus
IIOKYN
Marula
Hazel
Eoghan
The View From Way Up Here
Park
Obey ->
Life During Wartime
Turn My Egg

After the set, we found a diner around the corner and enjoyed some classic New York eats (and PIE!). Here are some pics:

Tanner Walle opening