8/18/18

After the show at Slim’s we got some breakfast near the motel. Pulled up to a Denny’s and a load of people were outside waiting on rides. But not everyone... a couple of ladies were working the crowd and a number of other folks were tweeking, hard. 

We all took note and headed inside. Then there was this dude. He was wearing a tracksuit, backwards ball cap and he was squatting on the floor.  Then in one move he jumped up, spun around and started drumming on the bottom of a picture frame and he started laughing like a maniac.  He ran outside and disappeared. It was really surreal until Cody noticed there was a wet spot where he’d been squatting....  Slapped back to reality quick. We got back in the van and moved on.  

I slept in the freak. The motel was looking pretty methy and we would all feel better if someone took the hit. It was a noisy but uneventful night. 

...

Next morning we drove to Portland for the next two shows. First was at voodoo donut too (2?) in the parking lot. Those folks are so nice to us. And the free coffee, donuts (and secret band beer!) will keep us coming back. 

Smitty was talking about doing the one song set of “Stop it Your Killing Me”.  It’s something we’ve talked about doing on and off for a while. But while we were about to start I was looking at the forty or so faces that were so happy to see us and I just couldn’t do it to them....  I liked them happy.  

Second show was at Dante’s downtown. Surrounded by dumpy bars, strip clubs and fancy new big city, gentrifyin buildings  Portland has a ton of shit going on. We were after the Lucky 13s and they were on it. We also played after another band of Bradley’s earlier in the day. He is doubling up on killer sets. 

We went up and the crowd was decent. Hell of a time even though we were all running on fumes. At this point in he tour it’s gonna take something huge to derail us. We got nothing but momentum. 

Bend tomorrow. 

8/1/14

Day one of a mini Hickoid tour in the Pacific Northwest. 

We all met at the Austin airport at a ridiculous hour to make our 6AM flight. The Austin airport has a strange policy of checking every guitar case that goes under the plane for explosives residue. I get it at some level, you don't want a bomb on an airplane (duh) but EVERY guitar out of AUSTIN???!!! That's a whole lot of swabbing. Anyway my bass case is a weird vault kinda thing and it's a real pain in the ass to put back together so I always have to go to the back room to help them out. And that means I've got to get there earlier than usual. Let's just say that at 4:30AM I am pretty useless...

We finish the first flight and have a three hour layover in Vegas. Then another two hour flight to Seattle. We grabbed the rental and make the drive to Portland. It could have been easy but it took around two and a half hours to go 40 miles...

Traffic clears eventually and we make it to the hotel and later to the club, Tonic Lounge. Nice place! We were the last of three bands on the bill. First up the Lovesores. Some pretty sweet rockin punk and the lead player was amazing! Then our old buddy from Austin JT (whom I hadn't seen since the last time we hickoided it up in the PNY) latest band Adios Amigos, an (almost) all instrumental four piece with a bass 6 holding down the low end (and a real badass on lead, it's a theme) Some sweet shit. 

We finished things up with a pretty good set. We were all feeling a little punchy by that time (we'd been up for more than 20 hours at that point) we were mostly semi-reacting for the majority of it. But the crowd liked it and that's what really counts. 

Currently we are in the rental heading to Seattle for tonight's show at Slim's. We are all fairly well rested and our stomachs are full from a great breakfast at the restaurant (Montage Cafe) where JT works. He even comped us the meal!!! It's a fine way to live.