Sleeping the Sleep of the Tired

So here’s the last addition:

The house in the O.C. was used as a wonderful sleeping/napping place most of Saturday. I saw the last 20 minutes of Snatch (for the third time in a week) and spilled a beer all over myself while I slept:

At some point, we headed back to Jesse’s house to pick up Chirps and get to the show. The show started similarly to the night before, we were missing a P.A. and Chirps was surprised. A P.A. was scrounged up while Ben, Gunner, Ryan, and I all headed down to the beach to drink rum and take pictures of Ben on the phone. I forget how relaxing the ocean can be sometimes.

After a brief interlude of beach antics, it was back to Coconuts for the show. Three bands played before us: In The Flat Field, Anglo Jackson, and The Heroines. Both In The Flat Field and Anglo Jackson had some really good music and were quite entertaining to watch. The Heroines were a bunch of prima donnas. Their drummer flaked on them, so the original plan was they were dropping out of the show. This can happen, and we all understood. Then, they changed their minds and decided to play the show with their lead guitarist playing drums. An admirable decision; soldier on without the fuck-o who freaked out on you. Unfortunately, this loss apparently made them sound so bad that they cleared out most of the crowd. Then, their lead singer (duded up like a fucking duke) walked out of the bar and never came back during their last song.

These histrionics set the stage for our final performance on tour. We set up, cranked up, and played a good fucking set. Both the good bands stuck around, along with a few people who were brave enough to weather a sadly lackluster performance in hopes of light at the end of the tunnel.

For me (at least) it was a cool “industry try-out show” kind of vibe. I just imagined us in some tiny little club in NYC performing for Clive Davis and two of his friends. While we were finishing up Cowboy Song, the bar tenders were stacking chairs. While we were playing Folsom, I didn’t care.

All in all, it was a interesting show and an appropriate cap to an (increasingly) weird week.

After the show, we headed to Riverside and the home of Alex, Melisa (sp?), and an angry girl with a boyfriend who was going to “beat us up”. Alex was hilarious, Melisa was fun and the angry girl left for work (at 2:30 in the morning?) shortly after we got there. Quinn, Ryan, and I decided that drinking was a great idea. Gunner and Ben decided that sleeping before the nearly 24 hour drive home was a better idea. Somewhere around 6 a.m., I finally gave up on tipping over and fell on a couch (stealing Quinn’s sleeping bag because I had been too lazy to grab mine. Sorry.). Quinn and Ryan, however, were still up (relatively speaking) when I woke up a few hours later to pee (because I’m apparently 60 now and have to pee every few hours like clockwork). They had achieved some type of drunken balance out on the porch. At the time, I imagined even a slight breeze knocking them over.

Shortly after my drunken art show experience, I got the joy of a little shithead dog humping my head. Angry girl had returned from work. With a dog. And a penchant for slamming doors. She went to bed, and her boyfriend sat down to play World of Warcraft (for the next _ hours until we left). We chatted with Matt for a bit (Melisa had to go to work - at a normal hour) and Ben and Gunner went on a coffee and donuts expedition. After they returned, we got directions to the I-15 and In-And-Out burger. We ate burgers (which are pretty good, although not the life-changing experience I was given to believe they would be) and hit the road (after one wrong turn on my part).

I drove from L.A. to some point in southern Utah. We drove around St. George, Utah looking for food somewhere around 10 p.m. with little success (fucking overly conservative, backwards-ass, Orin Hatch-electing state…). Nothing interesting happened. Gunner took over driving and O.D.ed on pep pills. I think he’s still trying to drive somewhere right now. He’ll probably crash in August some time and be legally dead for a week.

Obviously, we arrived safely and without incident. The tour was exhausting, exciting, fun, uncomfortable (in many different ways), and an experience I’d happily repeat. I met a lot of cool people (Matt, Reid, Amanda, Betsy, and the rest of the kids in Olympia, you guys were awesome! Mike and the rest of the Upstarts in Stockton, thank you for your hospitality and a great time. Jesse in San Clemente, your shower and you ability to calm down angry drunks were wonderful. Jeff from Sudworks in the Bay, the whole band appreciates your generosity. Pacific Ocean, thank you for sand. Heather in Portland, thanks for helping out a band that just wanted to play a show. Alex and Melisa, thanks for sticking around and watching when it didn’t look like the cool thing to do and for letting us stay with your crazy roommates. I know there are others, but I’m tired and forgetful, so please, assume you are thanked, and if that’s not enough, track me down and tell me different.), saw interesting places, and generally enjoyed the best vacation I’ve ever been on.

Now, the rock star life is over for a while. It’s back to fixing computers and drinking at home. I guess we’ll have to start writing, book more shows, get a drummer for sure, and get moving again so I don’t start suffering from withdrawals.

A final note: Ben Balyeat is fucking rad. The guy left work, family, girlfriend, and other bands to spend a week on the road with a bunch of shitheads half his age. He didn’t get paid very well, didn’t sleep enough, and volunteered his own car for the drive. Thank you, Ben. We literally couldn’t have done this without you.