Yet Another Portland Tour Story
Still with the tour stories. This is more of a diary than a story but how about the time Mumble & Peg (me, Jenya, and Erik) went up to the Pacific Northwest in January of 2001 for a three day run of shows?
We loaded the rental van and hit the road for Portland around midnight. I had the first driving shift all the way past Redding, then Erik took over. I laid down on the backseat, waking after a couple hours to the sound of concern about lack of visibility. I looked up to see we hit blinding snow over the Siskiyou pass. Yikes. We had no sane reason to continue onward considering we couldn't see the road nor the guardrails, but we did anyway.
We survived and made it into Portland around noon. With our free afternoon we met up with our generous host, Dawn, and then puttered around Burnside. Dawn was a singer/guitarist in the Francis Farmer Gals and a long time friend of the Oakland music scene. In fact, Jenya and I stayed over at her place when Dreamland had its own northwest tour way back in '95.
After dinner we loaded into Meow Meow, a new all-ages club in a part of town that gets zero walk-in traffic. We were playing first so we had a long sound check, during which my sansamp pedal ceased functioning. Figuring it was a dead battery I unscrewed the back and the spring from the footswitch shot out into the void of this vast, poorly lit club.
The entire staff helped me look for this tiny spring but it was never to be seen again, somehow rendering this $200 piece of equipment totally useless in its absence. So no distortion for Matt this tour. The show went well, at least musically. Outside of Dawn and her band and her select fans, there was nobody there to see us except John - a friend and fan of Bay Area art rock who attended almost every show I've ever played in Portland, bless his heart. After our set I lounged in the green room getting a huge buzz eating cheap candy and playing an endless series of games on an old Atari 2600 system.
In the morning we shook off our comas and slithered over to the diner where Dawn waitresses. She hooked us up with breakfast and sent us on our way up north. Once in Olympia, we stopped for more coffee and ended up hanging out for a while on the main strip, putting up more posters for the Chehalis show (as if).
We made it into Seattle around rush hour and found the club - some sports bar. We didn't know what to expect, but the staff was nice right off the bat.
While setting up for soundcheck I was shocked to see Ted, an old bandmate back when I was in college in Binghamton, NY. He was chatting with the soundperson and I called out, "Ted?" And he called back, "Matt?" Small goddamn world. I mean, I knew he lived in the area, but I hadn't seen him in over 5 years and lost touch until this evening. But there we were, sharing a bill.
Anyway, we played first, and just as we started we noticed Erik's girlfriend Virginia arrived, having unexpectedly flown up from Oakland a few hours earlier. We played a solid albeit short set. Next up was solo songstress Maria Mabra. Then Ted's band Ponticello, where he played bass and sang in this trance electric violin rock trio, and finally we enjoyed the super catchy pop of Blue Collar Love. Considering how much room there is for potential sucking when playing an out of town show at an unknown club with three unknown bands, tonight rocked. Erik and Virginia split off with their local friends, and I ended up going with Ted and Jenna (another friend from Binghamton) to stay at their pad this evening.
Ted and Jenna and I caught up on the whereabouts of our mutual college peeps before bed. We left all our equipment in the van a block away. The thought of theft, coupled with my large caffeine intake this morning, yeilded a sleepless evening. But Ted convinced me this was a safe neighborhood.
In the morning our van and equipment were still there. Phew. We met up with Erik and Virginia and her friends on one of Seattle's many interesting drags. We checked out a cool but tiny comic book art exhibit just down the way. Woodring, Clowes, Burns, and more.
Then we headed to Chehalis and quickly found the Matrix - a pretty cool cafe/bookstore/restaurant/club. Jenya played there before so she already knew the lay of the land and our gracious hosts, Holly and Moon.
Ate delicious food as the other musicians showed up. One band on the bill was called Hot Carl. We asked if they knew exactly what their band name meant. Of course they did and were ready for a new name. They were a a young punk band with some relation to the Melvins, so I was told. They brought a lot of their friends, most of which left for our set to go drinkin' down the street. However, those who stayed bought a bunch of singles/CDs and stuff, God bless 'em. And that was the end of the tour, more or less. Packed up and thanked Holly and Moon who were extra nice to us out-of-towners. We actually got on the road and headed south just after midnight. The weather was much better on the way home, and the whole journey took 14 hours. Jenya did most of the driving, though I did the nasty 4-6 a.m. stretch through dense fog.
Once back in the Bay Area we returned the van (and got $20 back since the driver's side window was broken and wouldn't open). Then I happily took a four hour nap clear through the Super Bowl.