Tour 09 Kicks Off

Judging by the most recent post on this blog having to do with The Fish Don't Mind... well I am not sure what conclusion to draw from that. Something revealing about my commitment to blogging, no doubt. In any case, we are on a week long tour supporting our album All the Other Animals with our friends Stencil right now. We kicked off the tour in Olympia at Le Voyeur.

Tonight we had 3 vehicles -- Lucas's, Devon's, and mine. Lucas and Devon's car was filled to the brim with equipment so the three members of Stencil that would be performing that night hopped in my car with their guitars tightly nestled in my undersized trunk. Traffic was surprisingly bad.

Scott and I were both feeling a bit under the weather, not terribly so, but enough for me to not want to have a beer. I borrowed a hoodie from him to try to "sweat out" the sickness. While standing in Le Voyeur donning Scott's hoodie, drenched in sweat, it had crossed my mind that "sweating it out" may not have any medical value and all I was doing was making myself uncomfortable.

The opening band last night (Unicorn Basement) had a crazy monologue between songs. It went something like this:

This next song is about Billy Corgan. Billy Corgan and I used to be pen pals; we would write each other all the time. We stopped writing. I became tired of his verbose correspondence. I sent him a letter, an envelope only, with the words "fuck you" written on the outside.

One time Billy and I were near the Puget Sound. He said, "look there is a man on a motorcycle". "That just looks like a man, it is really a dog" I replied. Then we got JFK masks and robbed banks.

This next song is about people having sex.

I do not remember much about the band after them. There was a spectator that found a red hand truck and attempted to cart himself around. If this sounds impossible, it is. He managed to demonstrate this fact empirically.

Stencil's "The Singer's Young Friends" went over well. Hand truck guy wanted to know if they had any more fast ones.

Our set was pretty shaky. There were long periods of time between songs where a drum was being fiddled with or a guitar being tuned. There was a group of girls outside in the alley behind us smoking pot. They started to dance like crazy when we played Power Cords. When the set was over, I was about ready to chalk the show up in the minor disaster category when we were approached by a man about our age with a military haircut. He said he really enjoyed the set and wanted to buy a CD. He explained that he and his two friends were about to be shipped off to Iraq. Scott insisted that he take two complementary CDs for his friends. Genuine enthusiasm from someone we have not played for before can really turn a show around in my mind.