8/27/15

Hickoids were first on a bill of three last night in San Antonio. We played a new(ish) club called Paper Tiger. It was the White Rabbit a few years ago and it's right across the street from the Mix. I got there early and a couple of the guys from the club came out and helped me load in, Damn!

The stage is big and I was told they installed a new bank of monitors earlier that day. This place is nice. SA has a lot of money coming in. People finally figured out that San Antonio is a cool, cheap place to live. For the time being...

The rest of the guys showed up and we sound checked. About a half hour before we started the sound guy asked me how I wanted our mix to sound. Uhhh, what?

"Do you want the guitars on the left to come out on the right so it sounds like stereo? Or do you want it balanced across the front?" I was poleaxed. Never has a sound guy asked me that, NEVER! I didn't know what to say, but I opted for balanced across the front, but it might be cool the other way.

We played our set. It was decent. The crowd was light and in between songs they were silent. I mentioned all the quiet was gonna sound great on the live recording... It got the laugh I expected.

We finished, they fed us some pizza! I loaded up and headed home right after and made it home before midnight.

6/21/15

Damn! I totally forgot about this one...

The Ladies and I drove down to SA to play at one of the best clubs, the Mix on one of the worst nights of the week, Sunday. A 10PM start time almost guarantees light attendance unless you are a big road band. We are not... But the turnout was surprisingly good. A number of friends made it out to support our foolishness. 

We tried out a "new" cover, "Papa Was A Rolling Stone". I jumped on bass while BC played her French Horn. No joke. The general concept of a stripped down "Papa" has been floating around in my head for years. I'm happy we finally made it a reality. We busted our asses getting it right in rehearsal and we did a nice job of it at the show, but when we finished... Silence... Ouch. It's not dead, but that hurt.

Western Star finished up the night. All of the Ladies had already taken off but I stuck around to watch them whip it. The Mix is a really great club for rockin. And they did.

Short drive home and I was in bed by 4. Not bad.

6/20/15

Last night the Ladies had the opening slot at ABGB. That place really has it's shit together. They feed you, give you great beer, they pay and have parking in the back so you don't have to mess around with searching for a spot down the street after you load in. Hell, they even had enough microphones to cover both drum kits and we still had four vocal mics! Shit! It almost makes you feel spoiled.

Our set was good, a little ragged at times but we were solid. The crowd was on the tame side but they were enjoying themselves, we got solid applause after every tune. It's never a huge, ruckus of a crowd, people don't really go to ABGB to raise hell.

Western Star was up next. They are from Baltimore and we played with them during ACL a few years ago, good bunch of dudes. They had a rockin set, but most of the crowd drifted off during the fist part of it, so they didn't get to play to that many people. Kinda crappy but they still whipped it.

The Casters finished things off. They played the roller derby earlier in the evening and when they showed up to the club (a little before the Ladies went on) they were already coated in sweat. By the time they went on everyone was caked in it (it's been in the high 80's with 80% humidity, it's nasty outside... I was drenched halfway into our first song and I stayed that way until I got to hop in the shower back at home.) They whipped out a "new" tune, "Fistin After Midnight", apparently it got the plug pulled on them at the Derby. But the dozen or so folks at ABGB ate it up.

Tonight the Ladies are opening for Western Star at the Mix. I love the Mix and tonight should be more of the "In your face" type of evening!

5/24/15

I rode to Dallas with Smitty and Lance. We left Austin a little after 10 AM, about six hours after Plaidstock finished. We were all running on fumes. In theory this should have been a short day, the last band on the bill for Gringopalooza was scheduled to go on at 10 and we were playing around 7. Things didn't really work out that way...

As we drove north the evidence of previous night's storm was all over the place. Every few miles there was a missing roof or a sign across the street from where it was originally located. Loads of destruction. The worse we saw was a little north of my house on I-35. A storage place had about a third of it's top floor ripped off. Walls, roof and people's boxed up houses were gone and everything that was left was an absolute mess. More than a little sobering.

Anyway, the drive was easy, and we got to Dallas early. Tubb from the Gringos booked an extra room near the club so we went there and hung out for a bit. Then things got strange.

We were playing at the Gas Monkey on an outdoor stage and it was billed as a rain or shine show. But their power transformer is located under the stage and for the last fifteen hours it was under a couple of feet of water. Rain or shine my ass.

So some Dallas folks scrambled up a new venue, Club Dada in Deep Elum, a neighborhood that was once famous for legal gambling AND legal prostitution! By the time things got moving and the Me Thinks were going on it was after our original start time. It was gonna be a late night...

We went on third, after the Grannies and before the Beaumonts. Yup, more with both of them! Poor Dumb Bastards and The Gringos (duh) were also on the bill. Lots of love from lots of friends!

About half way through the Gringos set Tom was itching to go. Smitty and Lance were staying back at the hotel so I took the first Hickoid I could home. Tom drove the first shift and got us to Waco, I slept. We stopped for gas and I coffee'd up and drove the rest of the way home. After a shower and a beer I was in bed by 5AM. It felt good sleeping in on Monday.

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.