This is the first true moment that I had been able to sit and process the last few days (or more apt, weeks?). Currently I’m in a coffee shop in Vancouver, Pallet Roasters, had just enjoyed a ham and cheese croissant and ordered a pour over coffee.
Since Sunday, TV and I had been doing extensive driving, going the length of the northern California, Oregon, and Washington. We stayed in Salem, Oregon on Sunday evening. Monday afternoon we met up with an old friend of mine, Austin Rich, to catch up and record for his radio show on WFMU. The show will apparently run sometime in November. Austin has quite a few projects under his belt in music and radio, of which can all be found on his site: https://austinrich.org/.
While it feels like the tour had just started, TV pointed out that we’re halfway through the west coast tour. After this west coast tour, they will do a couple other shows in Los Angeles and Arizona before going to the East coast to do it all again.
The prior weekend, I had driven down to Los Angeles to stay with TV, their spouse, roommate, and lovely cats, Faye and Hog. Hog, once told me his name was Hank, so I called him that the rest of the weekend and had entirely forgotten his name was Hog. In LA we did three shows: Coaxial in Los Angeles; Mrs Olsen’s in Oxnard; and the Til-Two Club in San Diego. The Coaxial show was delightfully gay, naked, and noisy, ending with a secret Hollywood Johnny show where they sang Creed covers over MIDI versions of their songs. As per usual, Johnny was naked, this time body was covered with “catboy’s for creed” written in sharpie all over their body.
Oxnard had a really cool space and stage. During events they turn on the black lights which entirely transforms the whole room to a trippy nightmare.
San Diego’s Til-Two, had a really good crowd and my long time friend, Matt, had come out to support.
After the Los Angeles shows, I drove back on Monday the 7th. On the drive back I stopped at my all time favorite travel restaurant, Split Pea Andersen’s, and also bought a bonsai tree at a stand off the freeway. I worked from Tuesday through Thursday. Early Friday morning, TV arrived by bus, and after some rest we rented the car for this stint of the trip.
Friday evening we played at Dead End Vintage in San Francisco, and on Saturday we played at the Cafe Colonial in Sacramento. The Cafe show was sort of my homecoming show. The turnout was pretty good despite it happening the same weekend as Aftershock. Next door was a rave, so we got our share of stragglers that wanted a break from the high energies that raves do to see some weird music.
There has been roughly 3 parts to this full west coast tour: SoCal, NorCal, and the PNW. Today is our day off in Vancouver so I hope to do some sight seeing while here. On Wednesday we play here in town and then travel down to Washington on Thursday, back to the stupid states.
I’m enjoying my little moment in Vancouver, here by myself, in this coffee shop which is getting progressively busier as I write. The pour over coffee was a blend of peruvian and some other coffees that I don’t remember. It has very light tea and rustic cherry notes to it.
While walking around the blocks here I’m hearing a multitude of different languages, and while I naturally think it’s because I’m simply in another country, it isn’t any different than spending time in San Francisco or any other large metropolis city, full of diversity. It just ‘feels’ different here. I had found a vintage video and game store that had stacks and stacks of movies and games. It was simultaneously at home and overwhelming. Nothing was in any order, so I could have spent hours there. Luckily I didn’t, because as soon as I found 1 movie or game I would have wanted I would have left with 10 things. One has to consider how much they can carry while traveling.
In all, tour is going well. I think in an ideal situation I would just travel around and do shit like this, drink coffee in other areas, write and think about stuff. Getting to play weird music in weird places is just merely a bonus. But also, it means more shit to carry and think about.
But also, I like being at home ha ha! All my stuff is there and my cat. My roommates have been sending me updates on Elliott, ensuring that he’s doing well and being taken care of.
Okay, I think I’ll put a pin in this blog for now. I will want to go back and post pictures and videos of the trip when I have a better setup to get the photos off my phone. (Which reminds me, I still hadn’t done one for my Northeast trip last year, or my Japan trip from 5 years ago. All in due time).