Tonight I played a show with Breanna and the band at the Doug Fir, and the stars must have been in perfect alignment or something, because this show was absolutely transcendent. The band consisted of all the usual suspects, but we hadn’t ever played in this particular instrumental lineup before (DrummerAndy, BassistChris, ViolinistKarlee, AccordionistSlashCellistMe, and Breanna and Justin singing and playing their acoustic guitars), but it really felt great. Nights like this are what playing music is all about.
Breanna got a glowing write-up in the Willamette Week, too. Someone handed it around while we were back in the green room eating dinner.
I hope someone took pictures, or videos, or something. I wish everyone could have seen this show.
Thursday, June 26th was our longest day. We had a twelve-hour drive ahead of us, from Reno to a tiny town in Utah called Torrey.
I was the first one up, at 5:45 in the morning. I took a shower, got dressed, and then took some pictures of the hazy morning street scene of Reno. The haze is actually the smoke from the California wildfires. It didn’t clear up until we were well into Utah, by the way. Incidentally, all of these thumbnail pictures expand to full size if you click on them.
While I was packing up my suitcase, Kate woke up. We talked for a while, she in her makeshift bed in the windowsill and I on her papasan chair. I took pictures of the cats, and of her place, and out the window, and even some of her. The best ones were of her, waking up and snuggling with her cat Samantha.
From there, it was time for breakfast and various morning activities, which on that particular day meant more picture opportunities. Here we all are.
The water-drinking one actually has a little video too, as if by technology.
I would be remiss if I didn’t post a picture of Kate’s other cat, Secret. She and I became instant friends, and she actually slept on my sleeping bag for a while during the night.
Suddenly it was time to say our goodbyes, give hugs all around, and hit the road. The scenery in the rest of Nevada was uneventful. If you haven’t driven through it, it basically consists of many hours of rolling hills covered with sagebrush. There are only a couple of sections where it’s beautifully desolate in a good way, and the rest of the time it’s pretty much God-forsaken wasteland, broken up only by the occasional bit of run-down machinery or mining equipment, or even a power station out in the middle of nowhere. At one point there are even a couple of tunnels. Wowee! Breanna and I both took pictures of the tunnels, in fact. That’s how exciting it was. Nevada is a very strange place. Luckily, we had an especially deep (and private) conversation that day, with which to while away the hours.
Oh yeah, I just remembered. We stopped at the same rest area that Stephanie and I were so horrified by when she and I played in Elko last summer. This time was not nearly so eventful, but I should mention that each of the rest areas we stopped at in Nevada had neither soap nor running water, so we weren’t able wash to our hands. Pretty sexy, huh?
Incidentally, and apropos of nothing, the lasting inside joke from this day was when I told Justin, “I’m gonna punch your mouth right in the face.” That would have been the name of this entry, if I didn’t have the more plebeian title so firmly established already.
This trip, for all its amazing qualities, was not without tragedy. Justin realized at some point along the way that he had left his pillow behind in Reno. This was not just any pillow, either, but a super-special pillow that was bluish gray in color, weighed a ton, and was apparently the most comfortable pillow in the history of pillows. He was seriously distraught about it. I imagine that he’s gotten it back by now, because he offered to pay Kate a bunch of money to ship it overnight that same day.
Utah is as beautiful as Nevada is barren. Almost from the minute we crossed the state line, the landscape became more interesting. We drove through the Bonneville Salt Flats, which are gigantic, and a bit eerie too. We kept expecting the weather to be cold, because we were seeing what looked like snow on the ground everywhere. Very strange.
After that, the landscape became more green, the hills became more steep, and everything seemed more inviting somehow. In the immortal words of the Lewis and Clark journals, ‘we continued on.’
As we got closer and closer to our destination of Torrey, the landscape just kept getting more and more beautiful. The hills turned red, and the sun started getting lower and lower in the sky. The Picture of the Day Award definitely goes to Breanna for this lovely, cinematic shot. My pictures I had to touch up a bit with Photoshop, but this one is perfectly fine without any so-called enhancements.
We arrived at the venue and met Wendy, who was very sweet. She opened for us, and also took pictures for us during our set. At first we thought we’d play unplugged and unmic’ed, which ended up being too quiet, even for the smallish space we were playing in. So we mic’ed everything and played a normal show.
Can I just take a minute to say that while Reno was definitely the place I had the most fun, the gig in Torrey was by far my favorite venue we played. I mean, here’s this tiny little venue in the middle of nowhere, with these amazing red cliffs all around. And I’ve never seen as many stars as I did that night. We kept looking off into our surroundings the entire time. It’s a miracle that we didn’t play any wrong notes. Here’s what I’m talking about. Justin was singing, and Breanna and I were totally staring off into the distance. And yes, Justin and I did the same thing on Breanna’s songs too.
Between the cliffs and the stars, and the interesting people, we had a total blast. Afterwards, Wendy put us up at her place. We all stayed up for a little while, and then Justin and Breanna went to bed. Wendy and I stayed up talking, and she asked if I played with any other groups. I told her about the people I play with, and the various instruments that I play, and when I mentioned the accordion, she said, “Oh, really? I have two accordions. Maybe you could show me some things.” I agreed to do that, and we pulled them out. So after getting up at 5:45, driving twelve hours, and playing a gig, I stayed up until about 1:30 giving an impromptu accordion lesson. After a while, exhaustion got the better of me, and I had to give in and go to bed. The room I stayed in was very warm, so I opened the window and the blinds, which meant that I fell asleep staring at the huge canopy of bright stars, in which the band of the Milky Way Galaxy was clearly visible. That’s a nice way to fall asleep, by the way. I totally recommend it.
More to come in the next installment of. . .ON TOUR.
Day Three of the trip started with a surprise knock on the door around 7:00 a.m. from Breanna. “We gotta bounce. We have eleven minutes.” We thought we had plenty of time to sleep in and take our time, but Karlee’s parents were leaving, so that meant we had to leave too. I took a quick shower and packed my stuff in record time. We said our goodbyes and headed out to Country Kitchen for breakfast. After so much ice cream and stuff the night before, we were ready for some real food, which came in the form of eggs, biscuits, and potatoes in various forms. Good stuff.
As we were getting ready to leave, one of the other waitresses stopped to tell us, “You guys look like rock stars.” We all laughed and said, “Well, we’re musicians, actually, and we’re on tour from Portland. We’re on our way to Reno right now.” The waitress chatted with us for a second, wished us good luck on our trip, and then walked away, but we talked about it among ourselves for a while longer. Justin said, “I guess you look like what you do.” I replied, “Yeah, she didn’t say, ‘you guys look like bankers’ or anything else. She went straight for ‘rock stars.’ ” It was a funny and nice moment.
On our way out of town, we stopped at a Safeway gas station. This was the first time I’d ever seen a Safeway gas station, so I commented on that fact, and got out of the van to take a picture of it. Breanna and Justin both piped up, “Oh yeah, they have them all over. There’s even one in EasternPortlandSuburb,” so it suddenly lost its appeal as a novelty. Sure made for a good story, though, no?
Incidentally, there was a closed business that we drove by in Redding called Smart & Final. We all thought that was a strange name for a business of any kind, and we wondered what it was. I just now looked it up, and it appears to be sort of a grocery close-out warehouse.
So finally we headed out of town. The acrid smoke continued with us for the entire trip, as we had to drive through the mountains, where there were countless wildfires. Some were even burning along the side of the road, and we heard when we stopped at a little convenience store (where gas was five dollars per gallon!) that the Department of Transportation was considering closing the highway.
Our rental van had a GPS unit that we absolutely lived by. It could calculate our route for us, and then it would speak various commands when it was time to turn or whatever. Our favorite thing it said, if we got off course to go to a rest area or a gas station, was, “When possible, make a legal U-turn.”
In the late afternoon, we finally arrived in Sparks, Nevada. The three of us split up and went our separate ways for a while. Justin and Breanna went to find a wi-fi hotspot, and I made a couple of phone calls. My brother and I talked about funny childhood memories, and somehow started talking about steampunk too. We thought it would be funny if I dressed in that Victorian style and wore a monocle and marketed myself as the Accordionist With The Monocle. I don’t know how that conversation started, but we were cracking each other up with that.
Across from our venue was the historic and cultural hub of the city of Sparks. There was the old train station, an old locomotive and cabin cars, an old schoolhouse (not in its original location), and a good-sized modern amphitheater right next to each other. Across the street were the modern library and the spruced-up old buildings, and that’s where we played.
We spent a bunch of time taking pictures and screwing around in the amphitheater. It was really hard to choose which pictures to share, because there were so many good ones, but here are a few.
I started doing a stand-up comedy routine, telling a heightened version of one of the stories that I’d told in the van already, but telling it as if the audience was there, and ‘working the crowd’ and all that.  It was very funny. Breanna took a million pictures of that. Suddenly, it was time for us to head across the street to eat dinner and get set up for the gig.
We played with Kate and her band, and we were completely blown away by them. Kate’s songs were beautiful, and GuitaristEd and BassistGia were great as well. Here are some pictures from the show. There will be many more from this night in my upcoming ‘best pics of the tour’ blog entry. Again, it was hard to choose from so many great pictures, of both groups.
Afterwards, Kate put us up in her apartment.  This could be a whole gigantic entry by itself.  Kate was an extremely generous, friendly, and accommodating person, great in every way, and her apartment was absolutely stellar, located right on Reno’s main street. Justin and Breanna were anxious to listen to the mixes of the songs for Justin’s upcoming CD, so they stayed in and listened on Kate’s computer while I went for a walk to take pictures.
Reno looks like a regular city during the day, but it completely comes alive at night. I walked around for over an hour, until well after midnight, and took almost three hundred pictures. Â Here are some of my favorites.
When I returned, Bre and Justin were still sitting in front of the computer with the music cranked up, listening intently, and Kate was lying in the windowsill.
After they were done listening, Justin and Breanna turned off the computer and the lights and went to bed, and Kate and I sat in the dark and talked for an hour and a half. We talked about music, and what it’s like living and being a musician in our respective cities, and about life in general. I also took a few more pictures. Here’s the view from her window.
This is the day I remember most fondly from the tour, and it’s days like this that make it so exciting to be a musician on the road.  I wish every day could be like this one was. I feel incredibly lucky to have had even one day like it in my life, and this is only Day Three of the tour.
I took the day off from work today, so that I can go to my friend Dori’s wedding at the beach. The ceremony is going to be on a cliff overlooking the ocean. I’ll be playing accordion. They had a bonfire last night, but I had to give it a miss because of bad planning on my part. I hadn’t arranged a place to stay, and I’m kinda broke again this month, so I thought I’d just go over today. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s kinda cloudy, but it’s supposed to be nice. Road trips are the perfect environment for Sigur Ros’s music, so that’s what I’m going to bring. That and a few compilations that I found, but haven’t had a chance to listen to yet. I’ll try to take some pictures, but since I’ll be playing also, no guarantees about that.
Last night I was invited to join Andrea and CellistSkip out at the Edgefield winery. It was a nice surprise for all three of us. It was also quite possibly Andrea’s last Portland show, so I jumped at the chance. She’ll be moving to Europe in a little over a week. I’m totally happy for her.
Since the highway goes right by the hospital my friend is in, I’m going to stop in and surprise her on the way out of town.
[EDIT, 6/7/08: For some reason, I’ve suddenly gotten a bunch of referrals from AOL to this particular entry, which is quite possibly the lamest throw-away entry in this entire blog. I’d like to invite you to the top of the blog, where you can read some real entries. Thank you.]
I just have time for a quick entry right now. I know you’ll be excited to know that my tag cloud over there is all up-to-date now; all entries are accounted for.
While I was at work yesterday afternoon, as if on cue, I got a text message from A that said, “How about a movie? My treat!” And yes, she’s also a beautiful girl. So although she didn’t read it, it’s as if my blog entry from yesterday came true. We went to see Persepolis, which was beautiful, and funny, and sad and true. We were completely enthralled by it.
Today I slept until 12:30 in the afternoon. Sheesh. I must have been even more run down this week than I realized.
Tonight is a house concert that my friend John is hosting, featuring John Vecchiarelli and Kristi Martel. It promises to be a blast. I was going to go and just listen, but I just now found out that I’ve been invited to bring my accordion and play with John V. on a song or two, which I’m totally looking forward to.
I’d better clean up and go, but I’m glad we had time for this little chat.
