Mammoth Lakes Mammoth Mountains

After a long drive from the bay area we found ourselves in the deserted tourist town of Mammoth Lakes. A long haul from SF because the Tioga Pass just closed for the season therefore adding another two hours to our drive. It was well worth the extra drive time. Our show at The Auld Dubliner was exceptional for a Monday night in a town where the tourists have yet to arrive at their million dollar condos and chalets. I was told that the town is composed of around 7,000 year round residents and can swell to as much as 30,000 during the winter months. Whoa! If it wasn’t for Rantz’s friend Jeff, the bar would be like an indoor version of the presently off-season sleepy town. Dead from a musician’s perspective. Jeff went to great lengths to have us come to town, make sweet posters, and gather a plus fifty crowd. He is the real deal folks. His band from Mammoth, the Sweetwater String Band, played their first show in months on an off night just so we would have a crowd. They brought all the sound equipment and took us to a little chalet party before the show to feed us and let us meander with the locals. That’s top notch hospitality. I found out later that the gathering (remember this is a Monday night) happened because we were coming to town and once the fridge was beerless they all gathered their jackets and beanies and migrated the six block walk to the bar. This is unheard of and a one of coolest things that has happened to us on this tour. There are a lot of times when people say they will bring a crowd and more often than not they don’t. And its not like they aren’t good people for trying it’s just hard to get a group of people to commit. Jeff did all of that and more. He put us up for the night in a sweet pad about twelve miles south of Mammoth. Since we climbed up to Mammoth from South Lake Tahoe during nightfall I didn’t get to see the sweetness that surrounded me until the next morning when I woke and saw some of the most beautiful country that I’ve seen on this tour. Mountains shot straight up to the sky from the backyard and to the north and east I saw a huge grassy basin surrounded with even more spiny mountain ranges. The morning, or lets be honest it was more like afternoon, was perfectly clear. It felt like I could see for a hundred miles. Clear blue sky and snowy peaks that climbed over twelve thousand feet. As I sat on the deck and took it all in, I quickly forgot how broke I am and how exhausted I am from weeks on the road. My muscles relaxed with the warm coffee and my rattled head from the night before went easy. It’s one of the perks of being on the Road that pushes me to get back in the van and roll. What am I going to experience next? What beautiful scenery will grace my presence in the future? What clubs will open there arms to us in the future? No one knows but the potential is always there. All that is needed is a drive to make it happen and a lot of heart. A lot of heart.

Sac-Town

We have a GPS system in the ol’ Weinlander that sometimes leads us astray to not-so-good parts of some cities. Her name is Gwendolyn and she speaks with a British accent. She is highly educated in cartography and vocabulary. But she lacks serious street smarts. Because we rolled into Sacramento and thought we were going to Luigi’s Fun Garden to play a show with Loch Lommand but instead we ended up at a dead end by the railroad tracks. There was not a soul in sight. I gave Gwendolyn a stern warning and she piped up to take a left then a right go straight for a while then u-turn. She is so temperamental. Geez. So…when we finally arrived to Luigi’s Fun Garden or in my mind Luigi’s Pizza Garden we were greeted by our good friends Loch Lommand. It was really exciting to see familiar faces after three weeks on the road. They are great people and fantastic musicians. It’s been a while since I’ve seen them live and they sounded absolutely amazing. I just love their instrumentation and jaw dropping harmonies. Sonically they fit the room perfectly and played to a very appreciative audience. The crowd was one of the best that we played to in a week or so. All age crowds are fun and very attentive because they are not all sloppy drunk and distracted by a two dollars and fifty cent shots of Evan Williams or stepping outside to chain smoke. They sat and stood to take in the music. A dream for a traveling musician. I had fun and hope to be back at Luigi’s soon.

Tucson to A Goose Egg in L.A.

More dessert...

Prickly pear cacti and deep troughs of sagebrush nestled up against sand banks littered the refuge lanes on Highway 8. Traveling east from Tucson we passed awfully close to Mexico. I could literally see the George W. Bush border fence to the south as we passed through not one, not two, but three customs and border checks. The sand dunes and tall cacti mixed with the impromptu inspections made me feel like a foreigner in my home country. It also created a whole lot of tension in the van because we were running way behind schedule and knew the Hollywood Freeway in LA was going to be locked up with impatient, cell phone texting drivers during the tail end of rush hour. And it was.
Luckily, Rantz was behind the wheel and manhandled that freeway till the bitter end. Finally, when we arrived at the Origami Vinyl off Sunset Blvd for a short record store performance we unloaded all our gear only to find out that we had to travel up a small spiral staircase to an even smaller loft. I exnayed the whole keyboard setup (there was just no room) and just played the Casio high performance 20 key pipe organ beat box. It was fun but we were exhausted. Our bellies were void of any food and we were in LA where a slice of pie and a beer run you at least ten bucks. So after the “performance” to two people and an employee, all of whom were extremely nice, we packed up (now down the spiral staircase) and headed to Hotel Café in Hollywood for our 11:30 show. Thank God Baby Jesus there was a Whole Foods on the way. Fresh veggies and a sando got me through a rockin’ show at the Hotel Café. They had an upright piano on stage and it was awesome. The sound was awesome. The venue looks awesome. But the fat goose egg was not awesome. 0 dollars from the club and 0 dollars in merch sales. Did I mention that we were in L.A.? The only way that a band gets paid at the Hotel Café is if there are at least twenty five people who are there to see YOU. We had about twelve maybe a few more. No big deal though. I love playing the Hotel Cafe and the word on the street is that bands get paid much to nothing in L.A. So it’s fine by me if we didn’t make a dollar. I got to see palm trees, sunshine, my buddy Sanders and a serious drunken fight explode into the street outside of a night club near the venue. Also every woman in L.A. seems to wear the same exact dress except in different colors. I thought that was ironic for a city of fashion. But, hey, who am I to say? I wear the same thing every day and haven’t bought a new shirt in years.

Inside the Hotel Cafe

Only in L.A. do the "mamicans" have size D boobs

The Dessert

Sunshine in November is not a common comfort for a Portland guy. I am usually wrapped up in a raincoat and hiding my head from the incessant “liquid sunshine” while wiping the rain droplets from my glasses. It’s a factor of life that we north westerners are complacent to because the summers are so good. That’s why I’m falling in the love with the dessert in November. It’s like summer in Portland. And when you pair up sunshine with rock n’ roll and some serious Mexican food, life is good.

Prescott

The Raven Café is like a little oasis in the high dessert of Prescott. Amazing beer on tap (like Portland in a way) and a slaw dog that rivals the best Hebrew National on the planet. Plus they have a sweet roof top bar and a generous bar tab for musicians. It doesn’t get much better when I get a meal and a few beers on the house. Our show went well on the smallish stage to a smallish crowd. Our set was enjoyable but ended quite abruptly after only half an hour. The sound guy cut us off mid sentence when we still had two songs left to play. I didn’t and still don’t quite understand why. The band that was about to play after us witnessed the whole event. They didn’t get it either. We were all confused. Come On! We travel half way around the country to play music and you cut us off early! We sacrifice a lot to play to every crowd. Let us play! It’s what we do. So in retaliation, we packed up the van and headed to a house party. We met some very nice college goers at the show and they asked if we would like to play at their house and of course we said yes. Little did we know that we were on our way to play in the smallest room ever and to a crowd that danced their asses off. They were dancing right between every other member of the band knocking down beers and borrowing my microphone. It was a good makeup to what happened at the Raven. The only downer was the fact that by the time we got done playing and loaded out it was nearing two in the morning and we had to wake up at eight the next morning to head to Tucson.



Tucson.

Tucson is really not that far from Prescott. About three or four hours. But we sacrificed our precious sleep to fill our bellies with the amazing Mexican food at The Little Poca Cosa before they closed at two. That’s how much we like Poca Cosa and you would too if you had their chiken mole tacos. Mouth watering goodness. They don’t have a phone, they bump Neil Young at an ear piercing level, they only take cash and there is a mandatory hug from the cook/waitress after every meal. I am not ashamed to say that we ate lunch there and went back the next morning for breakfast. Nothing trumps Café Poca Cosa.
After the satisfaction of barbacoa and mole we all rolled down the street to KXCI for a little radio promo for the show at Plush. We all squeezed into a small recording room, set up as minimal as possible and played a couple songs for the people of Tucson. They were listening too, because a handful of people we met at the show heard us on the radio. The best part was the next morning at Poca Cosa when we ran into someone who heard us talk about how much we loved Poca Cosa on the air and that we were going to eat there the next morning. He managed to be there at the same time we were and bought a c.d.! Sandra, the cook, told us that there were multiple people who stopped by that morning and said that they heard some gringos talking on the radio about how much they love Poca Cosa so they had to try it themselves. Poca Cosa and Weinland = BFF.

She parks her bike inside the front patio at the restaurant

Awesome

The show at Plush was our best performance of our fall tour so far. We rocked out to the max for two hours in the lobby to a bellied up bar crowd. The band was tight and dynamic. Adam’s vocals on God Here I Come were something special and a definite highlight to a great performance. Weinland…you can pat your self on the back. We even met some guys that drove down from Phoenix to see us play.

We’re huge!

TEXAS TEXAS TEXAS!!!

Weinland world has been pretty quite for the past week with a mix of driving and recording. We hung out with our friends in Fort Collins during a dry spell in the tour and recorded some top forty hits soon to be released in the spring. We thawed out after the snow storm during our drive down to Texas. It took a while to thaw…about 15 hours to be exact. The drive was an all day affair mixed with subway sandwiches, radio surfing for the world series game, and bare Texas landscape. Oil Country is like a dessert dotted with nauseating cow farms and ghost towns. You do not want to stay very long and the impression I got from every gas station attendant is that they don’t want you to stay long either. At least they got the reciprocal relationship thing down. When we finally time warped to Fort Worth for the night we were smelly, slimy, tired, hungry and thirsty. Thank God Jayson and Sarah were prepared with a cold beverage and some snacks. We met them last time we were down in Fort Worth and they are great people. Genuinely generous and thoughtful. They’re like angels on the road. Much like our friends in Fort Collins and Denton They make the Road justifiable. I love them all.

Austin - Hole In The Wall

The Rolling Stones, Hendrix, Neil Young, Elvis Costello, The Band, Stevie Wonder, The Beach Boys. The hits were being spun by two vivaciously drunk, ass grabbing lesbians. They were putting on a show for all to see. They danced in front of the juke box with a fearless display of affection. It was pretty funny to see some dudes get up and try out their moves. Rejection at its finest. It set the tone for the evening at the Hole In The Wall. A college bar full of drinkers, two stages and an outside patio bigger than the inside bar. It's the Austin way. Outdoor venues, coffee shops, taco carts. Everything is outside. It’s awesome. Quite different from our rainy northwest town.
The show at the Hole In The Wall was our first show in a week. A little offsetting and strange but it did not get in the way of us shaking the ground at the Hole In The Wall. We rocked pretty loud and loose to a smallish and appreciative crowd that held their beers up to the sky after every song. After our set we got kicked out of the bar because it was closing time. They rock out late night in Austin and little was I to know that they rock out late in Fort Worth too.

Muchos Backflips at the Hole In The Wall

Fort Worth, TX The Moon

The Moon is a great venue in the TCU area of Fort Worth. Small and sweet with the best bar employees ever. Last time we played at The Moon every employee bought some article of merchandise from us. Even the door guy bought a c.d. The same people were working there on Friday night which was awesome and they even remembered who we were. We’re doing something right!!! The night started off with Pictures Of Then, a seriously serious rock band from Minneapolis. They played a polished and energetic set of songs that featured a great bass player and lead guitarist. I also learned a few business tricks from them during a post-show chat. Great people and great musicians. The second band that graced the stage was a two piece, guitar and drums, from Oklahoma called Hosty Duo. And Holy Shit! could the lead singer shred on his hybrid strat-tele. He was pulling out no-look licks and flawlessly playing a bass pedal board at the same time. The best guitar player that I have ever seen live. And he brought the banter. Hosty Duo are the total package.

We're so excited Weinland Dance Party!!!

We're so excited Weinland Vinyl!!!

Vandalized Weinland poster

Jayson wearing the vandalized Weinland poster

Coolest bartenders ever!

We finally graced the stage around midnight and rocked to friends and bartenders. And once again, we closed down the bar. Not because we exactly wanted to but after schmoozing and packing up it was closing time. Texas knows how to throw down, put beers back and party until the sunrises. We have been kicked out of every bar for staying past last call. I’m not exactly a late night guy, so staying up late night is pretty exotic. Waking up at one in the afternoon creates a mini twilight zone in my head. A fuzzy realization that I’m wasting away daylight. I’m all nocturnal now. It’s been two weeks and I’m finally falling into the rock n’ roll schedule. I’m getting use to two meals a day (I can’t believe that I just wrote that), the cheap beer IS water, and sleeping on hardwood floors. What a glamorous rock n' roll lifestyle!

Push up competition at three in the morning.

Dallas, TX

Last night at The Cavern in Dallas was something to remember and behold. The venue is seated right in the mix of a couple dozen bars and dance clubs. The street was en fuego with short skirts, drunk military men, a bus load of more drunkards dressed up like Santa Claus (it’s too warm for Christmas in Texas…I didn‘t get it) and enough cops to break up a three hundred person riot. They closed off a side street across from the venue so they could park the paddy wagon close to the action and when that paddy wagon got full there was always another one ready to take its place. The strip didn’t get uncontrollably crazy until we had to load out to the curb around two thirty in the morning. A bunch of drunk guys that weigh A LOT more than I do decided to start playing the drums and un-casing the bells. I can see why they have a lot of cops on Greenville Ave. Oh…Dallas…you uphold your image. Party hard and never give up. Puke into the gutter then head back to the bar for another shot. ‘Cause, you got this Dallas, I know it’s in you!

The Fox and The Bird playing IN the crowd at the Cavern