October 2010

I wasn’t sure whether to post this in my (Russ) blog page, or here in the Road Journal. I opted for here, because Fred is still here at the end of his tour with us, flying back home to Boston tomorrow. So technically – the “tour” continues tonight.  🙂

And besides – we did hit the road today.

Fred was once out here in Colorado for a concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, but he’d not yet been to the place in the off season to enjoy the venue as a public park. So I took him up there today to spend the afternoon relaxing on the stage, staring up at the empty rows of seats, the rock formations, and visualizing it full of SoundRabbit fans someday. One can dream.

We sat on the rocks at the back of the stage for a long time, stood in the middle of the stage for a while, and basically sat in silence, taking it in. It’s amazing that this place is a short drive from my house, and wide open to the public to enjoy at their leisure. I told Fred that I’m going to try and go up there once a week by myself, weather permitting, to sit and take it in. Maybe bring the guitar and/or a notepad and do some writing. No reason not to.

Here are some pics from the day:

Quick update… we just checked into our hotel for the night. We picked a random exit in North Platte (saw a bunch of hotel signs from the interstate). I hopped out of the van and ran in to check availability of rooms, and had a deja vu moment. The guy working the night shift came out and I recognized him. He looked me up in the computer and sure enough, we stayed here recently. He asked if we wanted the “newly renovated” rooms. I said, “Shore.” As we got to the rooms, we realized that we’re staying at the “Asbestos Removal Zone” hotel again (see Road Journal post below from August 28th). Funny, and completely random. No barricaded hallways this time, though my room does smell like it was just painted an hour ago. We’ll have sweet dreams tonight. Later, skaters.

We’re on the road to home… I-80… westbound… somewhere near Cozad. Had a long drive this morning, pulling out of the Grand Forks hotel parking lot at 8:00am, covering the southern half of North Dakota, all of South Dakota, and the northern half of Nebraska. For our readers on the East Coast, these are LARGE states. We basically drove the equivalent of Boston to D.C., played a show at Doane College, and then hit the road again to get to where we are now. Yay. The story of tour – drive for 10 hours, play for 2, drive for 10 more.

The kids at Doane were gracious to have us back as a full band (Anton and I played duo there 6 weeks ago). While our drive started out rainy in North Dakota today, the weather in Nebraska was pleasant enough that we were able to play outdoors, outside their Student Center building, under some really nice tall old trees and by a waterfall/fountain thing. Pretty peaceful, to say the least. There was a Halloween Zombie event going on, where a bunch of students were dressed as zombies and another bunch were dressed as zombie killers (tossing stuffed socks at the zombies), and another group dressed as “survivors.” The only way to tell the difference between a zombie “victim” (aka a “zombie”) and a “survivor” was that the survivors wore a red hankerchief on their arm. Zombies wore them on their legs, a la Punky Brewster. So while we played our set, we observed some zombies get killed and some perfectly nice college students converted to zombies. Regardless, we got a dozen or so zombies to get up and dance to View, the end of Park, and Wartime… so all was good. The acoustics in the amphitheater (as it’s called) were actually remarkably good. It may have been the best sound we had the entire little run. A perfect amount of reverb between the buildings and trees. We made some more fans, got some more CD’s out, ate some chicken strips and cookies for dinner in their cafeteria and then hit the road, actually going backwards for a bit to drop Jay at the airport in Lincoln. He’s flying back to Virginia in the morning, as we press on westward to Colorado. We’re going to try to make it to North Platte tonight, or maybe Ogallala if we’re up to it – but it’s been a long day in the van. Here are some photos from today:

a grey start to our drive south out of North Dakota. backtracking yesterday’s route.

blurry (wet) cows.

double rainbow!!! (minus 1)

say hello to the camera.

jay driving the first shift, Anton reading the news. rainy day in the van. flat landscape. yip.

fred gives his best ‘grey rainy’ look.

3 of these were the only times we slowed below 70mph. cruise control and blurry cows.

at doane, beers finds a nice place in the trees to warm up pre-show.

our fountain companion (it was right behind Beers’ drum kit)

anton and beers and trees.

beers’ practice spot, zoomed out. NICE campus at doane. feels like east coast or something.

More from the road tomorrow… we’ll have about 4 hours to Denver, and hopefully uneventful, as much as I like writing to y’all.

Greetings from our Marriott hotel in Grand Forks. We’ve ordered a pizza to be delivered to the lobby and we’re all just hanging out and chatting about the show tonight. As mentioned earlier, this was our furthest-north-gig in our short history. We’re further north than the most northern point in Maine. Interesting. We found the University of North Dakota kids to be AWESOME. We played on a stage they call the “Loading Dock,” with the house sound provided, and a modest lighting rig for Fred to run. They also had a fog machine that smelled like… a fog machine. If you’ve never worked with one of those things, they basically envelope you in a cloud of ‘hot-electrical-wire + dust’ smell. Yummy. Anyway, we had a decent number of kids show up for our first time ever playing there, signed some CD’s and posters, and made some new fans for sure. Our Facebook fan count is already up by a half dozen or so tonight after the show. Yes, we’re only at 255 fans, but dammit we’re proud of each and every new person that we earn. So there.

It was a long day today… so I’ll let the photos (and their captions) tell the rest of the story… catch up with you in the morning from the road back to Nebraska. We’ve got about 9 hours on the road tomorrow, and an early evening show, so we’ll be up early. Hope this pizza comes soon.

Packing up to hit the road from our hotel in Sioux Falls, SD

Leaving the hotel in Sioux Falls, SD
(had to get the Quality Inn sign, as Russ was once employed by them. awesome.)

sometimes on the road, there’s no time (nor need) to pull one’s pants up.

Beers driving the first shift on I-29 northbound to North Dakota

another farmhouse.

it is FLAT up here. crazy flat.

FLAT.

FLAT – with occasional stands of trees.

we arrive at our Marriott in Grand Forks – aka “Jetson’s Home.”

holy Jetsons.

the cool hallway texture.

lobby.

enough pictures of the lobby. let’s go.

elevator paparazzi.

our room for the night.

winky water wankle.

dammit. missed the “miss grand forks” pageant by one day.

fred at dinner. we went to a really nice place (one night each tour, we splurge).

FrAnton comes alive at dinner.

bread. butter.

water. shakers. wood finish.

breakin’ bread at sanders.

Russ’ french onion soup. yumalicious.

din din.

flying frog above our table.

Russ’ prime rib and mashed potatoes (and what are those colorful things? oh. veggies.)

Jay’s classic upper-midwest Walleye dinner.

fred digs the chowdah.

eat.

setting up on stage at the Loading Dock – UND.

fred ponders the setlist.

Wow, what a great night we had last night here in Sioux Falls. Too many stories/anecdotes to share here in a short road journal post, but I’ll cover some of the highlights.

We rolled into Sioux Falls around 4pm, checked into our hotel, and headed straight to the FedEx office, so I could pick up my bag of gear (piano power cables, pedal, tuner pedals, etc.). An important bag, to say the least – and it was sitting at FedEx as scheduled, Good times.

Fred picked up a bad cold somewhere along the trip, so he stayed at the hotel for the night. We were bummed not to have him (especially with the way the night turned out), but he’s feeling better this morning, so it was a good thing that he rested. We headed to the venue, Latitude44, and found it to have a really, really great vibe. Our friends from the road, Jason Spooner and Ryan Montbleau Band, played it a few weeks ago, so we figured it was probably a good spot.

While we were setting up, I chatted with the owner, Cindy, about the Montbleau/Spooner show. As it turns out, her daughter went to Bates College in Maine (Jason Spooner is from Maine), and I told her that Anton had gone there. She flipped and called Anton over, and they had a nice long convo about Lewiston (Maine), Bates, etc. Not a conversation he expected to have in the middle of South Dakota.

After soundcheck, we walked up the street to grab some dinner at a Mexican place. Jay, Beers, and Anton headed over there first, and ended up missing the place, walking a couple of blocks too far. They realized they were lost, and saw a girl walking by herself up the street toward them. Jay asked her if she was a local, and if she knew where Jacky’s Mexican restaurant was. They got to talking and she told them that she was “heading to a show.” Anton said, “At Latitude 44? We’re playing there tonight.” She stopped and said, “wait – you’re not SOUNDRABBIT, are you?! No way.” Haha. I wish I had been there to see the guys’ faces. So as it turns out, she was given a copy of our album, This Room Becomes A Crowd, two years ago by a friend from Colorado Springs. She’s been listening to it since, and was shocked to hear that we were playing up the street from her house in Sioux Falls. Better yet, she’s friends with the guys from Harriet Tweed, who helped us set this show up (we played with them in Madison, Wisconsin six weeks ago and Sioux Falls is their hometown, and we played this show with them). Small, small world.

After dinner, we headed back to the venue to catch Harriet Tweed’s set. It was their first time playing acoustically, so they weren’t sure how it would turn out (they’re usually a heavier punk/rock/funk band). They sounded fantastic, with a totally different take on their songs. The room filled in with people, and we all enjoyed chilling out and watching their show. We took the stage shortly thereafter and were beyond warmly received by the fine people of Sioux Falls. We started off with “View,” and had an explosion of applause at the end of Anton’s solo in the middle jam. Nice to play for a room full of people who are excited to hear new music. We got a great singalong going for “Nightlite,” and played for about an hour and a half. Here’s how the setlist panned out:

View From Way Up Here
From The World I Have Known
Story Of…
Park
Emil
Heat
IIOKYN
Nightlite Jesus
Don
Marula Binge
Lift
ZED
Turn My Egg
Obey –>
Life During Wartime

After the show, we signed CD’s and posters for people, visited with locals (and even a guy from Boulder who was just visiting), packed up and then headed over to Harriet Tweed’s studio space, a few blocks away. It’s in an old office building, a former Attorney’s office. Pretty funny. There are still labels on the doors (“Office of Joe Schmoe, Attorney at Law”) and the upstairs has the feel of a 70’s-style office – but it’s now filled with music gear, beer cans, and musicians hanging out with their friends. Definitely one of those “only on tour” moments, where we were all thinking, “man – I never thought I’d be in a former-Attorney’s-office-turned-band-hangout in Sioux Falls, South Dakota at 2:00am on a Thursday night.” Hehe. They showed us all of their gear, played us some of their new album cuts, and we met the band in the studio next door, a jamband that occasionally gets down to the Denver area. Another great networking connection, and really nice guys.

We stayed at the studio until almost 3am, and then cruised back to our hotel to grab some zzz’s. We’ll definitely make our way back through Sioux Falls (and play at Latitude) again, possibly as early as March when we’re en route to Minneapolis for our scheduled gig and NACA events.

So now we’re packing up in the hotel room here and we’re hitting the road to Grand Forks. It’s about 5 hours directly north from here. We’ll have time to check in to our hotel around 5pm, grab dinner, and load in at the venue on the campus of Univ of North Dakota at 7pm for our 9pm show. Nice, easy schedule. And nice driving weather again today, with blue skies and temps in the 60’s. Woot.

More later from the road or Grand Forks…

Greetings from the van. Pleasant drive today, no news to report, but wanted to check in with y’all. We’re about 20 minutes from Grand Forks (our destination). We stopped in Fargo for gas, but other than that, it’s been a straight drive north up I-29 from Sioux Falls, with zero traffic, blue skies, and flat (FLAT!) land as far as we can see. It actually looks exactly like the northern Netherlands around here (I went there a couple of years ago), minus the canals. Can’t imagine what it would be like to live up here in the winter – pretty bleak and absolutely nothing to do. It’s pretty in its own way – stands of trees like islands in the middle of a sea of rich, dark brown soil and golden, dry corn stalks.

Spoke with the University kids earlier and our hotel’s been upgraded to a Marriott, which is nice. Generally good breakfasts in the morning and nicer rooms. Woot. These college shows are fantastic, because we get a solid 4-figure guarantee for a 1.5 hour show (check in hand when we leave), along with hotel rooms and dinner – and we don’t have to promote or worry about draw; it’s their job to promote the event, run it well, and get kids out. We show up, rock the room, and everything else is taken care of. Pretty nice. Someday we’ll have 10-night shows with 90% college dates and a handful of club shows… for now, we use the college shows as anchors and book club shows around them.

Alright, going to sign off, as the internet around here is spotty at best. We found out that we’re getting a special tour of the UND Hockey Arena when we get there. It’s their pride and joy and is reputed to be nicer than a lot of NHL arena. Should be fun.

Just passed a sign: “Winnepeg (Canada) – 152 miles.” Wish I’d brought a coat.

Hello from the van, as we pass Lewis & Clark State Park and the Omaha Indian Reservation on I-29 northbound. We’re in Iowa for a brief period here before the highway swings northwest into South Dakota. We’re making decent time to Sioux Falls, though there’s tons of construction and slower speed limit zones every 20 minutes or so. Anton’s driving, Fred’s snoozing in the back bench row, and the rest of us are hanging out online and watching corn field after corn field go by. Just passed a “Sioux City – 35 miles” sign. We all rested well last night, and Beers & Jay grabbed some Cracker Barrel for breakfast this morning, while Anton, Fred, and I strolled over to King Kong Burger for ours.

Hi.

The Monkees.

King Kong.

What you can’t tell from the photo is that each of the 4 patties is 8″ wide

Apey Beers

Apey Anton

Apey Russ.

jam

foots.

We don’t play until 9:30pm tonight, so we’re on a relaxing schedule for the day, which is nice. Beautiful weather again today – upper 60’s and completely blue skies. Good times. We just watched a video of Semisonic playing “Closing Time” at the Pink Pop Festival in Germany back in 2001. Pretty funny to see, after playing with them last weekend in Denver; must be weird to be a one-hit-wonder and play for 80,000 people thanks to one single song – and still milk it a decade later. We’ve been enjoying “Yacht Rock” videos on YouTube this tour, too. Not much else to report until tonight. Hopefully my gear bag is sitting waiting for me in Sioux Falls right now – if not, we’ll have to write an interesting setlist tonight.

We did just pass a sign for the “National Music Museum,” which is evidently is Vermillion, South Dakota. And we also just realized that our show tomorrow night in Grand Forks, North Dakota marks the northernmost show we’ve played in our short history – it’s actually very close to the northernmost point of the lower 48 contiguous states; higher than the northern tip of Maine. Crazy. We’re actually pretty close to Winnepeg, Canada. The weather forecast is for 16 degrees tomorrow night. We’re all in t-shirts, so that was some poor planning. Should be fun.

Okay, more later… thanks for sticking with us.

Greetings from the Countryside Suites hotel in East Lincoln. Aside from our hotel room smelling strongly of cologne (Drakkar Noir?), it’s otherwise quite nice. Non-smoking, two queen beds, a flat screen tv, fridge, and a couch/sitting area where I’m sitting here updating the Road Journal. No complaints, and no asbestos warnings (see earlier Road Journal post, last tour). Oh, and there’s a King Kong Burger next door, with lots of gorilla statues of various sizes along the parking lot. Good “RBT” photo opp in the morning.

Lincoln has a great little downtown. The city has 250,000 people, and we spent the evening in the Haymarket district, where we had dinner, walked around, and then (Anton and I) played our duo acoustic set. We had dinner at The Oven, an Indian restaurant across from the music venue, and it was unbelievably good. Between the five of us, we enjoyed the full range of low-spice to “damn hot,” along with some tasty salads, soups, nan (bread), and a bottle of cab wine. The entire neighborhood smells of good food – mainly of BBQ wafting from some restaurant that we weren’t able to find.

Oh, and there’s some weird photo shoot thing going on in Lincoln today/tonight. We saw at least 4-5 different “scenes” being shot by a photographer around the downtown area, some of which appeared to be for softcore pr0n mags or something. Really strange. We drove by a factory building and there was a girl posing on the “porch” of the building with a photographer, then we walked by another girl standing in a fountain a few blocks away with a photographer shooting, and yet another girl standing in an alley in a shiny red dress with a photographer shooting away. Weird. No one seemed interested in photographing us, though.

Anywho – after dinner we headed to Crescent Moon Coffee House for the gig. Really cool little room in the lower (basement) level of a building in the middle of the Haymarket area. Big heavy arched metal doors opened to reveal the ‘cavern’ style room, with big wooden beams, a low ceiling, and tables scattered throughout the room. There’s a small (6″ high) stage area with some spotlights, and overall a nice little vibe in there. The reporter who interviewed us last week for the Journal Star showed up with some friends, and we met a local musician who was really interested in our stuff, which was cool. Other than those folks, it was a to-be-expected quiet night. Jay, Beers, and Fred hung out playing chess and reading while Anton and I made noise with our geetars. The owner of the place asked if we’d be able to come back and play a Saturday night sometime, when the place is hopping. We’ll see… nice to be invited back for sure.

Here’s how the setlist panned out:

Story Of…
From The World I Have Known
Years Ago
Heat
Message In A Bottle
Obey
Nightlite Jesus
Marula Binge
IIKOYN
Park
Machine
Turn My Egg
Hazel
View From Way Up Here
Don
Blame
List
ZED
Emil
Relief
Eoghan, Late Saturday

The girl from the Journal Star suggested we head to the Starlight after the show, saying that it’s one of her favorite bars in town. We packed up the van and walked over to the place, and found it to be exactly as she described (and exactly what we needed) – mellow, cool place that felt like someone’s basement, circa 1967. The whole place is decked out in authentic 60’s furnishings, with wood paneled walls, 60’s light sconces on the walls, 60’s rolling chairs around card tables, and Frank Sinatra on the radio. Awesome. They’re known for their martini’s (including a “s’mores” flavored one), so a couple of the guys tried ’em out. It was super nice to be in a bar at 11pm with no dance/house/4-on-the-floor music blaring. It literally felt like hanging out in a friend’s parents’ basement or something. Everyone was super nice, and we stayed for an hour, talking about the plans for the new album, our upcoming NACA conference in Connecticut, etc.

When we wrapped up there, we drove back to the Interstate and headed East about 10 minutes, to the hotel where we are, here for the night. We listened to the new album recordings in the van on the way, and we’re all continuing to be very excited about the material. Woot. We’ll hit the road to Sioux Falls around noon tomorrow, should take us about 4 hours. We don’t load in at the venue until 6pm, so it should be a relaxing day.

Okay, here are a bunch of photos from Lincoln. More blabber tomorrow from the road:

Lincoln’s Holy Site: “Go Big Red”

The Weird Photo Shoot at the Factory (blue shirt = photographer, blonde = model, red shirt = lookout?)

Fred & Anton, Haymarket neighborhood, Lincoln

The Trusty Red Van – downtown Lincoln

Lincoln

Lincoln

Lincoln

Our venue for the night

waiting for the bus.

Beers and his little chocolatey drink

Anton brings the beet back.

we’d probably love her.

pretty.

the fountain before the girl jumped into it for her photo shoot.

loitering.

fred. head.

lincoln.

buddy bench.

crescent moon cavern.

the nan. yum.

crescent moon. cases.

Russ & Anton

Russ & Anton (2)

Jay & Fred at Starlight (note blue/green chair on the right. vintage.)

that’s a dirty margarita.

hotel home.

indoor pool!

One of our neighbors for the night.

Greetings from the van. We’re driving Eastbound on I-80, headed for Lincoln, Nebraska. Duo acoustic show tonight (me and Anton) at 7pm at a coffee house called “Crescent Moon.” Sounds like a pretty cool little place, an active part of the burgeoning Lincoln music scene. It’s been a great drive so far, perfect weather, dry roads, and as usual, no traffic, with the exception of a few construction zones in Eastern Colorado. Other than that, the cruise control is set to 80mph and it’s non-stop except to get gas and grub. Anton drove the first leg to North Platte, then we played musical chairs and Beers is now at the helm. Fred and Anton are playing Foosball on the iPad in the back, and Jay’s in the way back, enjoying a nap.

I had an “oh, crap!” moment today in North Platte as I realized I’d left a bag full of gear at my house back in Colorado. The power cord and pedal for my piano, along with my guitar tuners, extra strings, picks, etc. are all in it. Called FedEx in Louisville (CO), and they’ll be able to overnight it to Sioux Falls, South Dakota for our show tomorrow night – so hopefully that all works out well (and I owe my wife big time).

As we loaded up the van last night, we were all reflecting on the fact that touring feels so natural now; still exciting, but there’s a real “home” feeling to being on the road, too… I-76, I-80, I-90, I-35, I-70, I-95, 495, etc. all hold familiar sights for us. Like the Maranatha Bible Camp sign we just passed here in Nebraska, and the familiar “Des Moines 353 mi” signs, etc.

Beers is playing DJ at the moment, and we’re jammin’ out to some Tower of Power as the blurry cows, farmhouses, and semi trucks pass by the van windows.

So tonight we play duo in Lincoln, then we hit the road to Sioux Falls tomorrow (easy 3-hr drive) for a show with our friends, Harriet Tweed, at Latitude 44. We’re headlining the show, and the venue is supposed to be pretty sweet. The Ryan Montbleau Band guys and our friend from the road, Jason Spooner, played there a couple of weeks ago. On Friday morning, we drive north 6 hours to Grand Forks, North Dakota for a headlining show at the University of North Dakota. Friday night shows at colleges are tough to predict – sometimes they can be packed, other times the kids want to go out or to house parties or whatever… and they can be relatively dead. We’ll see; at the very least, the venue is supposed to be super nice, with full lights/fog, house sound, big stage, etc. Good times. On Saturday, we drive back down to the Lincoln, NE area for a return visit to Doane College in Crete. Anton and I played there last month (see Road Journal entry below this one)… and they’re having us back with the full band. Should be fun.

More later… here are some shots from the van:

Our Traditional Departure Shot

The Melted Funk II

The Melted Funk (“Original”) I

Self Portrait

Mr. Beers

The Boyz.

Nebraska Agua