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!