The day after the Plymouth show, the always rad Dustin Krcatovich came to pick me up and drive me to Detroit, where we looked in some record shops and I ate my first ever 'slider', all the time fulfilling my tourist's obligation to drink in the city's faded glory. Here it is:
Look at that faded glory.
We made it back to Ann Arbor for the show, which took place at a fun little space called The Third Death Star. The show was very exciting for me because, as well as featuring the much celebrated Fred Thomas, it was also a comeback show of sorts for Actual Birds, the project Dustin was working on when we first met in 2004 and who produced some records I like a great deal. On this occasion he was reimagining some of his old fits through a prism of "mid-period Psychic TV meets Erasure". Obviously, this sounded great and I had a blast dancing and singing along. Dustin, as ever, dressed the part and put on a great show:
I went back to Robert and Kourtney's house for another night of expert hospitality and the next day I met up with Dustin for the ride over to Chicago. We didn't have a show booked (Chicago seems really tough to book), but we had arranged to hang out with our friend Ally, just like last year. We went into some record stores and I didn't spend any money again. Good work, Hugh. Then we had a drink in a Polish dive bar, ingratiating ourselves to the barmaid by putting some Polish Christmas music on the jukebox. We rode over to Ally's where she was preparing a fantastic meal for us, which we fell upon gratefully, before heading out for a Chicago barcrawl, which was a little shambolic, but a lot of fun. Several hours later, we got back to Ally's, I mixed up some harsh drinks from the dubious moonshine in her cupboard and we all piled into bed together to watch a terrible horror movie, whilst falling asleep. It was a really fun night and it was great to see Ally again. She is exactly the host that an itinerant musician hopes for.
We all went out for Chicago style pizza (it's a bit thicker; nice claim to culinary fame, Chicago), then it was time for me to take the bus to Milwaukee. My show in Milwaukee was kind of crappy - a bar show to a decent sized crowd who were all chatting to each other (which is fine: I don't feel entitled to their attention or anything, it just makes things seem a bit pointless), but my plea for a place to stay was met by a couple of really friendly and fun, self-described "rednecks". We stayed up, drinking bad Milwaukee beer and chatting about all sorts of things, having a great time before I tucked myself up on their grotty sofa for the night.
The next morning I rode my last megabus of the trip in to a freezing Minneapolis. I dropped my suitcase off at the venue (Fuck Mountain!), then spent a fun few hours walking around the town, picking up some cool looking trashy hardcore 7"s from Exxtreme Noise Records, found the art gallery closed and headed back to the house. The show was slow to get underway, but was cool when it did. Not too many people came out for the show, but the people who did were nice. I played what felt like a fairly entertaining show, then Mr Mons Tear (aka Lady Shaver) played a cool set of warped lo-fi Kesha style electropop (or something), resplendent in her finest finery:
A band called Strange Relations played a good set of shoe-gazey, Banshees inspired rock, then InBoil played some 'sad Christmas songs' upstairs, while I spoke on the phone to a highly entertaining Taryn J Popplewell, on the back-end of a wild, gin-fuelled work Christmas party. By this point the snow was coming down pretty thick and fast, and I was beginning to wonder how much this might affect my getting to Seattle the next morning by plane. When my alarm woke me up (some 95 minutes after I had gone to 'bed'), the snow was about 4" thick outside and I (inevitably) set out for the bus stop in totally the wrong direction, discovering that however great my new suitcase (really; thanks Drivers), there are some conditions that it was just not built for. I got to the bust stop and found no sign of any buses running, which prompted me to begin panicking pretty hard about missing my flight. A friendly passer-by gave me the number for a taxi-firm, I swallowed the bitter taste of my second expensive airport taxi-ride of the trip and made it to the airport in something approaching comfort, in spite of my drivers disregard for the icy conditions.
After a long day's travel, changing planes in Denver, I found myself in Seattle with no show set up, but a place to stay with Zach Burba, somebody with whom I have many friends in common, so was fairly confident would turn out to be great. He didn't disappoint, looking after me admirably, and showing me a fun night in Seattle, going to a show at the local radio station and staying up for a few drinks with his lovely, enthusiastic housemates back at their place.
I was pretty excited about the following day, heading up to Bellingham WA to play with Girl Guts at Lil' Wisconsin. This was a repeat of one of the most fun shows on the last tour and turned out very nicely again. We picked up some free pizza from the pizza place Andrew Wild works at, then went back to his place to drink beer, eat pizza and listen to Black Flag; a pretty great combination as the smart ones among you will already know. After a little while people started turning up and the show got underway. Two young local bands played sets of slightly jazz-inflected post-rock, I played a set featuring the great Girl Guts as my effective and surprisingly sympathetic backing band, then it was time for the main event. Girl Guts were great last year, but they were even better this time out, equally raucous but with a little more nuance to their songs I guess. Fun times and a sweaty, moshy crowd topped off a beautiful night. Here's me and Andrews Beer and Wild from the band.
Andrew Beer was kind enough to let me stay at his place and even to wake up early enough to feed me breakfast and drive me to the train station for my first ever trip to Canada (unless you count my 7 hour layover in Toronto airport, but let's not). The train journey was beautiful enough to discourage me from adding to the two and a half hours of sleep I had and I made it through immigration and customs without any of the problems I had been worried about to find myself in a very wet Vancouver. I strolled around in the rain, looking in some thrift stores and eating excellent Thai food until Hassan, one of the people I was going to play with offered to come and pick me up, which I gladly accepted. I took a shower at his place and pulled out my reserve pair of shoes (extravagant packing, but ultimately a great idea), leaving my Puma MTV Yo! Raps to dry out. We went out to meet Rose Melberg (another performer for the show) and her boyfriend John at a Chinese restaurant before heading to the show. Rose has been active in the indie-pop world for a long time and has made some records that I really love, but her friendliness made it easy not to be starstruck.
The show was at a house called The Mansion which was nice in a rundown sort of way and the show there was a lot of fun. Rose played some songs by herself, then some with John as their new project, Imaginary Pants. I managed to persuade Rose to play some drums with me, which she did spectacularly well. Here we are playing together:
I don't know what I'm bellowing, but it looks like people are finding it very amusing. That could just be the accent though I guess. Hassan Li played a really cool set afterwards, including a great Abner Jay cover. After the show, Rose and John, their friend Tory and I all went back to her house to drink beer and tequila, listen to records and stay up late talking. It was a lot of fun. I went to sleep with my alarm set for one hour of sleep before I had to dash off to take the train to Olympia. My body had finally had enough of me putting it through that kind of crap though and refused to comply, meaning I woke up a clear 3 hours after my train had left, suddenly terrified and with no idea where I was or why. 'Luckily', my show in Olympia had fallen through, so I didn't really need to be there. I spent some time hungoverly searching for a solution to the problem and discovered I could take a train the following morning which would get me to Salem OR in time for my show there the following day. Feeling much relieved, I was able to enjoy a relaxing day in Vancouver, giving myself a haircut, wallking around beautiful Queen Elizabeth Park, getting some Christmas shopping done and, spending an evening hanging out with Rose and her ten year old son, Sam, playing Wii and watching Rudolph and getting a very welcome early night.
My Canadian travel disasters were not at an end yet, however, as the ticket officer at the station pointed out by highlighting that I didn't have a ticket from Vancouver BC, but from Vancouver WA. This is what happens when you do things like that hungover I guess. It wasn't cheap or easy, but I managed to arrange a route that would still get me to Salem in time for the show. I am still drafting my letter demanding that one of the Vancouvers change its name, but I'm not sure who I need to send it to.
In Salem, I played with Election Year and Whiskey Priest in the beautiful home of Alex and Jen Carmichael. It was a lot of fun to play in front of a smallish but attentive crowd, and everyone I met was fun to hang out with. I was sorry I didn't get a chance to see Salem at all, because it looked like a nice little town. The next morning, I got a good breakfast and a packed lunch for my trip, then a mad dash to the Greyhound station where I caught my bus to Medford with seconds to spare.
My show in southern Oregon was in Jacksonville, a tiny little goldrush boomtown that was pretty cute in a hokey sort of way, and fun to stroll around in.
I played in a cafe with a band called The Seaons. These guys are young, good looking, talented, enthusiastic and commited to what they do. They even have screaming girls at their shows. They were really sweet kids, put on a fun show and were game enough to do a few songs as my backing band, which was great. The only problem we encountered was in our difference in opinion about Coldplay. Anyway, it was a fun show, and I had fun hanging out with the band and their manager/soundman/roadie/dad, Dave. The weirdest part of the night was when I got back to Dave's house and found his dog was so terrified of me that it pissed itself when I walked in and couldn't stand to be anywhere near me. Animals are always the first to know, huh?
I took a bus the next morning down to Sacramento, where I did some more wandering around in the pissing rain (don't believe everything the TV tells you about California), waiting for my dear friends Adam and Malin to come and pick me up for our show in Davis. We arrived at the Robot Rocket Residence as "the first band every to turn up early for a show" (except for Generifus who beat us to it), and went out to eat some bad Mexican food, toying with the idea of turning up again at 1 am just to prove that we're not squares. Because we are squares, we went back at around 7:30, just in time to catch Night Hikes play a good set of Will Oldham inspired indie-folk songs. Generifus was a sweet guy and had some cool sounding songs, and then it was Adam Lipman's turn. I know Adam will probably read this, so I don't want to be too nice about him, but he played a great set of his great songs. So far all of the acts had played really cool concise sets of around 6 songs, so it made sense that the next guy would play crappy blues songs for an hour. I played about 6 songs, then the blues guy decided he ought to play some more. Adam was so horrified and amused that he forgot to take his guitar when we dashed out of the door.
Here's Adam playing:
We went back to Adam's mum's house in magical Half Moon Bay and sat in the hot tub for a couple of beers and to catch up a little beneath the stars before hitting the sack. The next day, we went back to Adam and Malin's place here in Montara and started preparing for the big house show that night. These preparations mainly revolved around making glögg, an operation involving a quite staggering amount of booze. This and the other tasks involved in setting up the flat for the show were accompanied by a the consumption of a not inconsiderable amount of booze, leaving one member of the party in need of a restorative sleep-break before the first guests had even arrived. The guests rolled in, but not as thick as the excuses from people saying they weren't coming, meaning there were ultimately only three people who showed up! Adam felt pretty bad about organising an 'unsuccessful' show, but I reassured him that this was far from a failure and reminded him of some of the shows we played together last year. We all had fun sitting around drinking and jawing and Adam and I didn't bother disturbing people's conversations with more than 4 or 5 songs between us, including a couple from our forthcoming country album. We stayed up late playing cards, drinking and cracking jokes for each other and I'd be hard pressed to describe the show as anything other than a roaring success, despite it lacking most of the characteristics of 'a show'.
The next day was a bit of a struggle for all involved, but we got through it by doing some Christmas shopping in Berkeley, eating sub-par Indian food and, for those who could stay awake, watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Today, Adam and I went for a walk along the beautiful coast here and doing a photo shoot for his new record here before he had to go to work. I've been enjoying having a leisurely day off, taking a bath, tidying up the hungover hatchet job I did on my haircut in Vancouver and generally doing not very much apart from listening to Adam's records and slogging away at this blog.
Tomorrow I head down to LA for a show I'm pretty excited about at The Smell with a great sounding band called Brannigans Law whom I've been looking forward to seeing since the show was set up a few months ago. I also get to hang out with Oana Marian and maybe Franic Rozycki if he's town, as well as the magnificent Taryn J Popplewell, who's going to take me down to San Diego for the final show of the tour on Thursday, which is sure to be a stormer.
So the good news is that, with only two shows left, the next update can't possibly be as long as this one! Thanks for bearing with me, internet.
Much love,
Hugh
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