5/23/15

Plaidstock!

Wow. What a great night. The Hole in the Wall was packed the whole evening with with people hoping to see Davy Jones get up and rock the guitar. They weren't disappointed!

I played three times. The first was with an old college buddy of Davy's, Dan Hill. I met Dan about twenty minutes before we played. It was a total seat of the pants set, I even had him show me the progression of a tune on the stage right before we went on!

About a minute after that the room packed out and then Davy showed up, total rock star style! Dropped off at the front door with EVERYONE in the room cheering him on. Yeah! He got up with us and jammed on "One Meatball". I haven't played with Jones in over a year and the last show was this crap gig we did with that lawyer....

Anyway our little set was pretty good considering we'd met minutes before.

My second set was with Bigfoot Chester. And we whipped it good.

My third and final set of the night was with the Hickoids we also backed Frontier Dan from the Frontier Circus. One of Little Rock's finest. It was a beautiful mess of a set.

About ten minutes before we went on the city of Austin was hit by a tornado. No joke, a tornado. They had a silent auction on the porch and it got nailed. As in the tent it was under was picked up and slammed in to the ground. Everyone was soaked and the inside of the club was basically a swamp. Water was all over the floor.

Then we went on. Yeah!

Davy didn't get up with us, but he was there. Turns out I'm the only Hickoid who got to play with the man... Lucky me!

So that was just my little part of the fest. There were around twenty bands on the bill and a shit ton of people at the show. Over ten grand was raised for Davy. I was hoping for four. Glad my estimate was way off.

More tomorrow!

5/22/15

There was barely any traffic on the drive to San Antonio. I made it to Hi Tones in no time. Chief Fuzzer was on (you could call them three-fifths of the Beaumonts.) I caught five tunes and I dug the hell out of it. I love being impressed in new ways by people I already like.

The Grannies were up next! That's right, Grannies! They played their first show of this Texas stint Thursday at the Triple Crown. I missed that one because I knew I'd see the next three. They did a bunch of stuff they played with us over in Europe a couple of years ago. I love shouting "Meet me at the corner, the corner of fuck and you." Makes me feel like a real tough guy...

Those Goddamn Beaumonts were next. At this point the amount of gear that was being moved around was ridiculous. Chief Fuzzer had a guitar amp, drum kit and the bass rig for the night on stage. The Grannies went on and they moved the guitar amp and drum kit and moved another drum kit and two guitar amps on to the stage. When the Beaumonts went up they moved both the guitar amps and the drum kit then set up two other guitar amps, a drum kit, the steel rig and then put the bass amp to the other side of the stage. When the Hickoids went on we moved the steel rig, drum kit and one guitar amp off the stage and put two guitar amps and a drum kit back on to the stage.

We left the fucking bass amp where it was, there was already too much gear moving going on. Thank the lord I don't believe in the Ladies weren't playing. If another drum kit was moved around I'd...

Beaumonts kicked it in their usual fashion and we did the same right after. We finished the set after the lights came on and they started booting people out immediately. No talking, no handshaking, just go. I said a couple of quick goodbys and headed home.

We've got two more days of these shows coming up including Plaidstock! More to come!

5/16/15

Bigfoot Chester had a decent little show at the Carousel the other night. We were gonna be the first of three bands on the bill, but the second one canceled the day of and by the time the third showed up there wasn't much of a reason to play. The already thinned out crowd had gotten even leaner.

We went on after a bunch of short story readings. The Carousel can be a pretty eclectic place, there was belly dancing before the reading. We did a dozen or so tunes and we played fine for the most part but after all of the readers and their friends took off there weren't too many folks around to watch us.

I keep fucking up this one tune, it happened this show and the last couple of rehearsals. For some reason I keep confusing two Howlin Wolf songs (Commit a Crime and Who Will Be The Next One) They have some similarities, but not enough for me to keep confusing them them. Hell, we don't really play "Commit" that much anymore! Doesn't mean I won't keep fucking things up...

Joe from Churchwood was there and he hopped up and did a couple with us (one of which is the aforementioned "fuck up" song). He sang on two "regular" Bigfoot songs but he sings them so differently than we normally do we had to change up the arrangements on the fly. Easy enough on the song I'm not continually messing up on, but I was a bass playing, fuck up, machine when we played my current "nemesis".

Anyway we finished up, got paid and hung out for a bit. Better luck next time kid.