3/13/18

Good time at the White Horse last night. SXSW unofficial pre-show with a shit load of bands. Of course I showed up late and only caught a couple of them before we went on... We were last... Not the headliners.

Texicali's new band was great. The rhythm section of We Are The Asteroid and Chelsea Taylor on guitar, AKA the secret weapon. They put on a hell of a set. She is actually the most impressive player I've seen in years. She's only done a dozen or so shows in her life and she just kills it on rhythm and lead without looking like she's even working. Some people just have it.

Pure Luck was next. All of those double leads!! I can't get enough of that crap, I'm a real sucker for it. At the end of one tune the did a minute of an Outkast song. Some college students had walked up right before and they were so excited!!! But they walked away soon after the next tune started... 

Our set was golden. The place was pretty crowded and stayed that was for most of it. Even though we gave them plenty of reasons to leave! Apparently folks need that Hickoid love. We gave them all of the sloppy goodness we had.

11/8/13

Hickoids at the Triple Crown. I made the drive in 32 minutes! And I wasn't really speeding (much)... I load in and Pure Luck is setting up. They have a Drum Kit, Bass rig with 4 10"s , Orange amp with two 12"s, two Peavy's with 2 12"s each and Cody sets up a Fender pro Junior with 15 screaming watts of power through a 10" speaker. Luckily the sound guy (an out of costume Steve Vegas) knows what he is doing and everything sounded great. Rockin set!!

At some point someone popped a string and Smitty got his out to loan. The dude was playing a solo on it and it came to me that he was touching virgin territory on that guitar. A joke I beat to death by the end of the night...

We went on and had a good set. Not great, but we were fine. I only used one cabinet and it felt a little lean to me. "Steve Vegas" had it sounding good, but I've gotten use to having both cabs.

Mr Lewis and his Funeral Five were last. Good stuff. To over simplify them I'd say they sound like Tom Waits with a clean voice. For a few of the tunes they had a guy playing percussion with the drummer, getting closer to the double thing I love so much. 

The world needs more drums.

10/5/13

ACL Week One Day Two

It was me and the Ladies (and a pile of other bands) at Infest. This night was the big Gary Floyd benefit and the place became packed, eventually...

We went on second when only a handful of people were there (and after Scorpio Rising.) Since Wiley had his drums up on the riser Draya sat over on BC's side of the stage. Drum risers are really cool when there is only one drummer, but they make it hard when you have two.

We had a really good set. Played another new, old one and we generally kicked some ass the whole show... Except for one song. "The First Time" sucked... Bad... I have no idea what went wrong or how it happened, but it was pretty fucked up. That song was the first tune I wrote specifically for this version of the band and we've been kicking the shit out of it pretty much every time we've played it. I guess the fuck up was bound to come (you will screw up on everything, eventually) it just sucks that we finally did. We finished it up in a fairly "professional" manner, looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, laughed and finished the set. No big deal, just one, little black spot.

Someone shot a video of the newest, old song, details to follow.

Pure Luck was next. Odd seeing Pinkus on guitar but a great set. El Pathos whipped it. The Casters were after. Really strange watching that from the front. Tom did a hell of a job. but my picky ass kept thinking "Nope, that's not how it goes!" The strangest thing was Tom was playing the bass line that Jacob laid down on the recording of "Derby Crush" and not the one I played. I'm in the video playing bass, but it's Jacobs line you hear. The part I came up with was a walking line that moves like all hell. The "Jacob line" is more of a 1/5, almost a country thing. It was confusing to my little brain to hear the song and not hear the "right" part (even if that part is on the record...) See, confusing.

David Yow and the Dicks. I'm certain you can read a number of positive reviews about their set all over the internet. My brief review is... What an awesome show! Absolutely killed it! Yow is an amazing front man (duh) and the Dicks were as solid as ever. I'd like to see that again.

They were finishing up and I got some pizza with my favorite Lollygagger then we got high and went back for the Pocket Fishermen!

The Lollygagger got really high and isn't use to it. She was getting close to a minor freak out when I said "Stand up front and enjoy a pothead's best friend." The Fishermen didn't disappoint. Many classics and my #1 favorite song about monkeys mutilating people ("those monkeys really rip it off!"). Loads of fun. By the end she was jumping around and laughing her ass off. The Pocket Fishermen save the day again!!

They finished and the club started kicking everyone out. I grabbed my gear (no amp, yea backline!) walked to the truck and took a little nap before I headed home.

Fun night!