California round-up: Eureka.

We played some shows. They were pretty rad.

We started driving at 7 p.m. Thursday night. Wound up at a Motel 6 in Eugene, OR around midnight. Watched some Adult Swim, crashed out. Halfway through the night, a bug or a spider or some shit flew into my mouth and I couldn't sleep anymore.

Friday, we turned up in Eureka, CA. The Lil Red Lion is the kind of place that has shotgun shells and used rubbers strewn across the parking lot, and a sign in the toilet letting you know that you're being videotaped. I chose to shit at the Burger King instead.

Mount Vicious play first. Consummate showmen, I'll tell you what. I don't remember most of what they played that night. I polished off my drink tickets before they even started. That's how rock and roll I am, dude. But they were great. Fantastic band.

We play next, and my amp shits the bed before song number one. I am pissed. Alli of Mount Vicious subs hers in and I start twisting knobs in between songs until it sounds right. I keep forgetting how loud those little Fender DeVille things are. Technical difficulties aside, we put on the best fucking rock show all eight of those people in Eureka have ever seen, and we finish it off with a twelve minute version of "Watching The Hydroplanes," in which I play guitar on top of the bar and get pelted with lemon wedges by the bartender. I'm still not sure if he was doing it in rock and roll fun or if it was because he wanted me to get off the fucking bar. Adam would have gotten in more trouble anyway for crowd surfing onto the pool table.



The Zygoats played last. I forget most of it. I was drunk. Cool dudes, though.

Richy and Alli posed as a couple and rented us a room at the Econolodge a block away. They woke up a very grumpy hotel manager with a very thick accent.

"Yeah, we need a room. But we hate each other, so we need two separate beds."
"I no care, asshole. Meh. Check out time is 11, asshole."

The room, of course, is right above the manager's. I don't think we made a very good impression.





We tried to break into the swimming pool. No dice. Brian, Necklace, Alli, and I went to Taco Bell instead.

"Hello?"
"Hey James, this is Adam. Can you get me two 7 Layers?"
"Um, okay."

(click)

(ring)

"Hello?"
"Hey James, this is Chris. Can you get me a cheese quesadilla?"
"Okay."

(click)

(ring)

"Hello?"
"Hey James, this is Andre. Can you get me a chicken quesadilla?"
"Sure."

(click)

(ring)

"Yeah?"
"Hey James, can you--"

(click.)

The next morning we packed our vans back up. I was supposed to sleep in the van, but Dre was sleeping on top of of my keys and cell phone. 'tevs.

Motel manager was staring at us, as we packed the van. I bet he was thinking something like.

"Ach. You fahging asshole guys! I rent room to two assholes, and I see eight asshole guys and one malnutritioned little girl. Fahging bastard guys! Meh!"

Richy goes into the office, throws the key card on the table, and says "Thanks, dude!" Points to a stack of newspapers and asks "Complimentary?" before taking one. Big, huge, brass balls.

(more to come.)

"Hellovent" = Hell Of Relevant.

That's a new slang term that was invented the last time we played the Sunset. So, here's a bunch of shit that's hellovent right now:

We're getting in the van and doing four dates in Northern California: get into it.











John Graham wrote a nice little thing in the SF Weekly here.

Sorry about neglecting the quality jams. Here are the quality jams:

I'm gonna mispronounce your name all night

So we had ourselves a little weekend trip during the last weekend in April, the 24th and the 25th. This is notable as the first trip we've done that involved two since not in either Seattle or Bellingham.

The morning of Friday the 24th awoke with us finding out that we were actually confirmed for a show at Ray's Golden Lion. We were planning on being in the Tri-Cities anyway that evening to break up the drive to Missoula and stay with Adam's mom.

When we got to Ray's, we found out we were playing with five other metal bands. We sucked it up and asked to play first, as we were pretty sure the kids there wouldn't be too into our post-working class punk. One of the aforementioned metal bands was kind enough to lend me a bass cab, as I hadn't brought one on this trip to size constraints in the van.

Our set went surprisingly well though. We tore through songs from Real Size, two planned for Fuckin' Totally, and our cover of "Watching the Hydroplanes" that is fast becoming our "Won't Get Fooled Again"/"Sister Ray"/"Diamond Sea". People seemed to like it. Enough that Greg McBride was able to sell some CD's for us.

The rest of the night was spent watching the other bands and drinking to celebrate Richy's birthday eve.

The next day, Adam's mom prepared us a delicious breakfast, we stopped at Adam's dad's and said hello, and then made our way to Missoula. Missoula has always been very good to us, so we were very stoked to be back for the first time in a year-and-a-half.

We got to town and bit early, stopped at the always excellent Ear Candy, then made our way to our friends Ben and Darcy's house for some grubage.

Since it was Richy's birthday, I had asked Ben and Darcy to help me make it special for Mr. Birthday Boyer. They did not disapoint:



After some awesome food, we headed over to the Palace for the night's show with the Victory Smokes and Places.

We had some minor snafus during load-in. Hoight from the Smokes had given us a key card so we could use the elevator. But, there was another code that had to be entered that we kind of blew. James ended up being stuck in an elevator for several minutes while we tried to get everything figured out:



Eventually, we got all the gear down the elevator and waited for the show to start.

The Smokes kicked off the night, and were great as usual, even with some gear issues. Pat may be the most joyful looking drummer EVER. We played pretty well, and got a Missoula-worthy reception from the audience. Ben took the photos below:








Places headlined, and were great as well. Turns out two of the members of son's of Missoula legend Checkers, whom we'd been told to say hi to by some guy on teh internetz.

After the show, we went back to Ben and Darcy's, drank more, ate pizza, and eventually went to sleep.

The next day, we gave ourselves some more time to enjoy Missoula, including a round of sandwiches at the Staggering Ox. Then we made the long drive home.

Of course, a long drive in the van will instill a certain amount of madness. We were no exception, especially since our van is pretty cramped, and we don't have the ability to zone out on the road that we used to have. Suffice to say, things got a little silly, and I made a few videos to document things:







Suffice to say, we had a great, great time on this trip. We all agreed this was about the most fun any of us had had playing out of town shows in a long time.

Next up is our N. CA tour with Mount Fucking Vicious over Memorial Day weekend. Saying we are excited for this trip is putting it far, far too lightly. The MV folks are some of the nicest/funniest people we've had the pleasure of rocking with, and we can't wait to urinate in their beds. Or maybe that's just me. The full dates are on our 'space.