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el John - drums
Atsushi Murase - bass and singing Daryl Shawn - guitar and singing 6/14/2000 Yreka, California. (Yeah, "why-reeka", so as to distinguish it from "yer-eeka" to the southeast. Honest. We asked every local we could find.) At the Motel 6...this little room is packed with our shit. We're so wired it's ridiculous, or at least it feels ridiculous for me, with my minimalist ideals. Little laptop and two cell phones between us, and i'm wishing for a wireless modem so i could be logged on in the van. This is a day off, no show til tomorrow. I think it was a good idea, putting 5 hours into our trip rather than driving the 11 to Portland tomorrow and trying to play a show after. (ej & atsushi are watching a Ligeti performance, the chords are incredible, so many tones by so many instruments. "Up to 56 notes at one time." Hm, that'd be 9 guitars plus half a bass, all using all their strings to play different chords. Yikes.) The moon was close to full tonight as we drove up, and suddenly Mt. Shasta emerged, glowing insanely above the tall, thin evergreens. We found a road past a gas station that seemed to arc in the direction and voted to head out for a better view. Miles up the road, with no evidence of humans anywhere, we pulled off and walked down a path, absolutely radiant with moonlight, shadows everywhere - I actually had to shield my eyes from the moon itself. Finally getting spooked by the unexpected glare of leaves turning in the warm breeze, we returned to the road and lay down for a while, digging the stars. We could easily have slept out there tonight - but i guess we need showers. This was great, a totally surreal (and peaceful) little view to happen upon. It's so nice to be travelling again. So much stuff is going on at home, i'll be moving into a new apartment and setting up a office there to work at home full-time in the next two weeks. But out here nothing matters but the simple task of getting to a place and playing a show. It's great, in fact, to be in unfamiliar surroundings, unlike the two previous tours down South. Here the trip is interesting too, just seeing what Portland is like is kind of exciting. I'm also excited to see the Satyricon, it's one of those places that always seems to pop up on tour itineraries, like the Bottom of the Hill back in SF. It'll be great to play there. 6/16/2000 Well, if it wasn't for the hospitality of ej's friends Kirsty and Bill, I'd probably feel a little defeated thus far. Although everyone at the club told me it was because Bad Religion was in town, plus N'Sync (our core crowd for sure), plus Bob Dylan was playing a tiny warm-up gig down the street, there was still nobody at the Satyricon. I found it really distracting to play to nobody this time, at least when it happens in SF there's a few friends to commiserate with and I can usually chalk it up to a bad slot or an unpopular club. Here we had a sweet slot at a well-known venue, and just nobody came. They were even nice enough to put up all of the 25 posters i sent - albeit, INSIDE the club and not in the neighborhood like I expected, but at least it felt like a warm welcome. We didn't play especially well either, a lot of little clams shared among the three of us. I just could hardly pay attention, I kept thinking about how this disappointing experience was costing me x dollars which I could really use for recording, or even in our apartment. It helped to meet a few other bands - UHF and Burning In Water - who put on good shows and were fairly compatible with us. I kinda slunk out afterward. Atsushi went back in to thank the soundperson again, which is a good idea. I should have at least talked to the doorperson, but i just wanted to get out of there. It's hard to imagine playing there again, even as we saw so many posters for so many great bands coming through, i'm just going to keep picturing that huge empty space. So far on these 2-date mini tours, each time we've had one disappointing gig and one great one. that puts pressure on tonight, which isn't fair to the evening, but i'm going to be a lot more mindful about the things we didn't hit well last night - at least if we play well i'll be happy i think. At Sam Bond's Garage in Eugene. A funny little place. As we pulled up, my heart sank a bit - this place really looks like Sam Bond's Gun & Ammo Shack, green wood siding, rustic touches. Huge cow horns made of what appears to be aluminum above the stage. Neil Young on the stereo, which actually feels very comforting at this point. But on the schedule are some really cool people, interesting bands. I still doubt there's going to be anybody here whatsoever, but it's an early show, so at the very least we can get out of here in good time and hang out a bit. Sigh. I'm looking forward to playing, but this isn't what I expected. It's gigs like last night that make me wonder whether it was even a good idea to do this tour right now, so I kinda need a good show tonight. It certainly should be interesting. 6/17/2000 In the van headed back on 5. This is when the seats get uncomfortable, the lack of sleep piles up, the conversation diminishes. This is a day longer than the previous minitours we've taken, I wonder how things get on longer trips. I suppose this decompression gets lengthened, or possibly delayed always by the anticipation and plans for the next show. That's probably what it is now, having nothing to plan for except more miles. I think our next jaunt has to be longer. It's unbalancing doing short runs, so much pressure rests on the handful of shows. If we hadn't hooked up with such great people in Portland, and if Diane at Sam Bond's hadn't been so sweet, providing us with pizza and stout and more money than we deserved after our show, this tour would have felt like an almost total write-off. That's just too risky, and too expensive. As ej succinctly put it, 600 miles per gig. With more shows, you do have the added expenses of more hotels and more food and more gas, but the averages work in your favor - plus it's so much work getting any trip together than adding shows doesn't add that much more work ahead of time. And the point right now is to explore the clubs - it makes sense to try to hit a lot of them. The Sam Bond's show was just okay. The openers, Thong (not the Sammy Hagar soundalike the name might suggest) were fantastic, they made me of think of what R.E.M. might have sounded like before their first album. A self-absorbed singer with his hands in his pockets, reading/singing poetry from a stack of paper in front of him, with a twangy guitar, a low-key bass and a really good, jazzy drummer creating atmosphere behind him with a minimum of chords and some interesting rhythms. We were worried about our volume in this little room (how could Promise Ring have played here??), but it was inspiring to hear them do it without blasting. We played reasonably well to the 20 or so people who showed up, although it's always hard to be able to see the audience plainly, and more so, to see them pay more attention to their plate of food or their novel than to you. As always, there was one or two genuinely listening faces out there, which made all the difference. And the soundguy bought a t-shirt, which was nice. Afterwards, Diane, the sweetest woman, hung out with us for a long time, talking about all the great Chicago postrock people who come through the club. Although it was a drag playing for so few, and getting no more reaction than a perfunctory applause, she made it worth it, she and the journal-writing woman who thanked us for the "swirly poetry" we provided. |