Tour Blog : Part 4

This blog entry is longer overdue and contains at least 1,151 miles worth of documentation.

First off, I have to thank Subway sandwiches for keeping me, and the band, alive with their tasty $5 footlong subs. The best part is, not only do they will throw piles of tomatoes on their sandwiches, these sandwiches last not one but TWO MEALS if 6 inches at a time fills your stomach (which for me it does). Next time around I must look into a corporate Jared-like sponsorship that would supply us with unlimited sandwiches and would allow us to eat more than 6 inches at a time.

WEDNESDAY

SAN DIEGO.
We played a very cool room called Le Stat’s in our first visit to San Diego and played with a local band called Fusse. During the day before the show, we dropped Jonathan off with his lady friend Mari and the rest of us went over to the beach at Torrey Pines State Reserve. While we were there, we talked mostly about future recording though we did stare deep into each others eyes and watch the sunset too.

We were lucky enough to crash for the night with a friend of mine who I met playing in Monterey a couple of months back. He is a songwriter named Jakob Martin – check out his music at : http://www.myspace.com/jakobmartinmusic



THURSDAY

I played a bad trick on Jason’s fiancée Carey. Jason and Carey got engaged at the end of December and they have just begun to get the details in order. While Jason was off taking a shower, I left Carey a facebook wall posting saying how happy I was to be Jason’s BEST MAN (not true btw) and she in turn wrote me this:

“Aw, Andrew. It does mean a lot to have you in our ceremony--your friendship has meant so much to Jason, and of course to me now, too! :) Thanks for everything, especially for taking care of Jas, and I'm really excited that you'll be a part of our wedding day! Take care! :) :) :)”

Once Jason was informed of my devilish activities, he immediately tried to correct the situation though we all got a good laugh about it.

IRVINE.
We returned to UC Irvine’s Anthill Pub for a show on Thursday night with our good friends LINKS. The Pub at my college alma mater was PACKED with people. My friends in the a cappella group Deceptive Cadence joined us for Morgan, the Conqueror and She’s Suddenly. Eric Frank was able to play with the band for the night.

FRIDAY

After being graduated from UCI for a year and a half now, I finally picked up my diploma. The woman at the admissions desk had a good laugh at how long it took me to get that fine piece of paper but I have a feeling she has seen worse.



LIVE on KUCI
In a band first, Jason and I played a duo gig at the UC Irvine radio station KUCI.

LOS ANGELES.
I am not sure why I even stop in Los Angeles anymore. The venues pay you nothing, it’s like pulling teeth to get anyone to show up and the sets are short. I understand it is all due to the fact that the ration of performers to venues in LA is out of control and venues can make their own rules. We even had to pay for our band photographer Alex Dita to get into the venue.

We played at ROOM 5 in LA. There was a good amount of people and playing was a lot of fun. Eric Frank joined us on percussion and back up vocals for the set as well. But the show was a bummer as it was 30 minutes/6 songs of playing for our fans/friends to see us at $10 a piece; money which we see nothing from.

SATURDAY

YOSEMITE
The story of this gig will be one I will tell for quite some time. Planning the tour this year, I wanted to make a stop somewhere on our drive back from Los Angeles to Sacramento. The show we booked for this stop was at the Yosemite Bug Resort in Midpines, CA.

This show started out with extremely poor turn out to the point where we ended up playing to no one by the end. We had been very fortunate up to this point in the tour to not have any shows where we didn’t have a good crowd but this show was rather laughable. By the end of our set we joked that the little pay, excellent food and rooms to stay for the night were the little saving grace of the gig. It was especially a downer since this would be our last gig before we dropped Jason and Kellen off in Sacramento and Jonathan and I headed north for Oregon and Washington.

But as we were about to wrap up our set about 45 people, mostly Americorp volunteers, showed up. They were there specifically to listen to music, drink, dance and be merry. We just sat there shaking our heads as moments earlier we had been the only ones in the lodge. Very quickly, it went from being on of our worst shows ever to a very good one.



OREGON

We said goodbye to Jason and Kellen in Sacramento on Sunday morning. Jonathan and I had a couple of days of rest before driving up to Portland for our show at the University of Portland. Thanks to my good friend Brian Dezzani, we played to a room full of students at UP for 2 hours on Wednesday night and have many new friends in the Portland area. The UP students helped me confirm that Myspace is old news and everybody is doing Facebook these days.

We have another show in Portland tonight and head up to Seattle and Bremerton this weekend. Playing on the University of Oregon campus next week headed back to California.

More to come soon,

-Andrew