Day 5: Chords, Strings, We Brings... Melodies—Until We Don’t.
Seattle to Chico—that’s a long drive by anyone’s standards. So once again we were up early, cloudy eyed and dry mouthed and greeted with some major attitude by the hotel receptionist. She’s been surly to me the other afternoon, but I was chalking that up to her having a bad day. Yet when she gave me lip when I asked her where the water was, I started to think that maybe she was just an awful person. But then Dan had a very pleasant interaction with her, which lead me to the only logical conclusion: she hates me for no other reason than perhaps my face or my smell, some deep and primal reaction of her chemistry causing her to revolt in utter annilhilation of my very being. Or as Dan pointed out, maybe she was an awful person but she had a chemical reaction with Dan’s face and smell that tamed the beast. Either way, that’s some heavy shit for seven in the morning.
We stopped in Portland on the way through Oregon to pick up Todd, who had kept Neil company on his drive back from Seattle the previous evening. It was comforting to get one last good look at Portland, her streets and bridges once drenched in sunshine now shrouded charcoal skies, and as we climbed into the mountains South of the city, the atmosphere swallowed the roadway and we were transported to a mystical hill country where mists glower likes ghosts in and out of the wooded glens and towns appear and disappear from view like mountain mirages.
Once we arrived in California, the sun broke through the cloud cover and it went from being pleasantly cool to downright hot in a matter of miles. We took a pit stop in the lovely town of Yreka. Here’s somethings we realized about Yreka:
1. Heather was dressed very fashionably for the town in her sweat pants, t shirt, and sandals—we saw a number of women dressed this way out and about.
2. Dan was able to become an honorary HR consultant at the local McDonalds by taking an interest in an application handed in to the ‘”fry manager” who then commented, “she’s cute, we should hire her.” Dan went on to discuss the merits of the applicants’ job skills and concluded she would make a solid hire, in fact he would even recommend that they hire her. They seemed convinced.
3. The old town included an H and R Block in it’s original 1984 building, recently renovated.
4. Dudes do meth here. And cruise around toothless and bare chested.
Todd took over the driving duties and we sailed through the mountains of Mount Shasta and down into the high planes of Redding and into the heart of agriculture surrounding the Chico area, little towns named Dairyville and tiny general stores and nicknamed bars spotting the 99 byway.
The Chico Courtyard Marriott was quite lovely and staffed with a couple of guys who were overly eager to tell us what bars to go drink at and how we could buy beer from them 24 hours a day. We unpacked, iced a couple of left over beers and watched bad television for an hour or so before heading to the club. We were met at Normal St Bar by Paul Harper of Soft Crest, who gave us the skinny on band order and drinks for the evening. I got to sit and enjoy free ice cold Coors Light while watching Hiroki Kuroda lose his no-hitter bid in the 8th evening to arch-nemesis Shane Victorino (fuck Victorino!) and await our turn to play.
Soft Crest performed a loud and energetic set of wave-gaze inspired tunes to a mostly college-aged crowd. They were gracious enough to lend us a bass amp for our set so we took the slot immediately following them. We set up our shit, plugged in, and let it rip, opening with a bone crushing version of “Son.” No sooner had we hit the second verse, then Chico’s finest came rolling through shutting down the show due to a noise complaint. We were obviously in shock at first—if you can’t play loud music in a bar in a college town, where can you?—but the news was true. The bar was cited and the show was shut down.
I freely admit it to being a demoralizing feeling to have driven 750 miles on 4 hours of sleep, set up all your gear, and then get shut down before we can even finish one song. That totally sucks. But it also tests what you’re made of—after such an experience, can you bounce back? The answer for us is a resounding YES. We stuck around drinking with the Soft Crest kids and turned the evening into a huge party.
I thought upon leaving the bar for the hotel that our night was over, but I was wrong; the fun was just beginning. Dan had smuggled out his cocktail still slushing around in its plastic cocktail tumbler and was in the mood to listen to some jams. Our sober driver, Todd, happily obliged, so we cruised in circles around the neighborhood of the hotel listening to Nate Dogg and Warren G and Ice Cube and a host of other 90s gansta rap classics, laughing and singing along. We brought the party back to the hotel, and to avoid incrimination, I am going to have to say the details of this story must be relayed in person as to avoid possible prosecution, but needless to say, we ended the night in true high school fashion.
This morning was rough, two days, two hangovers. As I write this the relentless central valley sun is beating down on me and the landscape surrounding me looks as if it has just plain given up. Yet I am filled with hope for the future and the confidence that we can do this and do this well.
Writing from the road,
Ben, Chain Letter Author, and one small part of what makes Summer Darling the best band in the world to be in!
Day 4: We Are Band Name From Location
We had a small caravan headed up to Seattle, so we said our goodbyes to our Portland friends and family and went north, crossing the Columbia river via a bohemoth steel drawbridge, and winding our way through swales strewn with evergreens and switchback streams with Indian names. Our car stopped by the hotel to unload some gear while the other car took first time Seattle goers to Pike Place for some delicious mac and cheese.
We confirmed an in-store rather last minute at Sonic Boom Records’ Ballard location, so we had to track down a bass amp for the show. Luckily our friends in By Sunlight had already arrived home from their leg of the tour the previous night, so we were able to cruise by their house. With Scott from Manuok and Robert from By Sunlight in toe, we made the scene at Sonic Boom.
In contrast to previous in store performances, the Ballard location of Sonic Boom was staffed by kind, gracious people who were genuinely happy to have us. Even the owner, Jason, hung out and ran sound for us! We played on a butterfly stage that transformed back into a wall between sections when we were through. We played a quieter set, opening with a blessed out lounge version of “Son” and followed with alternate versions of a number of our jams.
The afternoon hours we spent at King’s Hardware drinking happy hour beer and eating fancy hamburgers. The group once again split up, with Heather and I taking the van back to the By Sunlight house. Their house was another three story Craftsman affair, with a rehearsal space in the basement and an large open back yard with a work shed. One by one the members of By Sunlight rolled in to meet up with Heather, Robert, Scott, John and I. We drank cold Rainers and sipped Ten High whiskey from a plastic jug. Mike and John rifled through some records and played some classics like ELO and Hiroshima at alternate speeds—the 45s at 33 and the 33s at 45.
We commented on how necessary it is to hang with other people in bands from other cities. It reminds us that while we may be crazy, we are not alone. I spent a drunk’s minute contemplating this pacifying effect. While it shouldn’t matter whether anyone else can relate, somehow it does make me feel better to know that the By Sunlight kids are doing what they do all the way in Seattle and Scott does what he does down in San Diego. Ultimately the pre-party felt like a solidification of a friendship that’s been three years in the making.
The show at Sunset Tavern was the most fun of the tour. Perhaps we played better in Portland, but we definitely connected more with the crowd in Seattle. Manuok and By Sunlight followed with appropriately spirited sets—we were all a bit soused by this point—and the mood was celebratory and festive. We left for our hotel with our hearts and heads drunk on new lasting friendships and the feeling we’ll be back to conquer Seattle in the near future.
Day Two and Three
The City That Works
Portland works. It was tough to leave this morning, I won’t lie. We cruised into Portland early Friday evening, cresting the bluff that overlooks the Willamette and down over the Ross Island Bridge into Southeast Portland. We had many faces to see, a BBQ to attend to, and a girlfriend to pick up at the Ace Hotel. Our friend Jeremy had offered up his house for us to stay at so we made our first stop there. He lives in a blue cottage off 39th with a large kitchen and cozy basement where we set up camp.
We spent our evening with old Portland friends drinking beer, eating carne asada tacos, and playing a dice game called “Farkel.” For the life of me I can’t remember the rules to this game, other than it was highly amusing to play after a few cold ones. The house that hosted this party was an old 1906 Craftsman, with vaulted roofs and a dungeon basement, filled with a century of memories, warm, welcoming.
Saturday we spent a glorious day of brilliant sunshine and soft breezes cruising around PDX consigning records and bar hopping. We started at Music Millennium then went to Hawthorne Street and hit Jackpot and Exiled Records. We had a microbrew at the Bagdad, a refurbished old theatre. From there we hit Green Noise records and then the downtown location of Jackpot, at which I found a record I’d been hunting for five years. We ended our tour at Mississippi Studios and Prost, a German biergarten in the heart of the historical Mississippi district.
When the weather is pleasant, Portland is about as idyllic a town as one is ever to find. People are out and about, shopping, dining, drinking. Bikes fly by, dogs and strollers connected to weird hybrids of yuppie-hippies populate the streets. Water fountains by the clover bubble the cleanest, freshest water in the world. The steel drawbridges gleam in the soft afternoon glaze and crisscross the blue green river water as joggers follow the trails that grace its banks. Everyone seems happy, even the homeless punks holding signs like “Your Add Here/Hobosigns.com” or “Will Rap 4 food.”
Our show was at a downtown club called the Knife Shop that sits adjacent to a revamped Biker bar called Kelly’s Olympian. The clientele of the bar is akin to a fraternity rush meeting, which at first is a bit unsettling, but then our crew starts to roll in and we overtake the scene with flannel, tattoos, beards, and long feathered asymmetrical haircuts. We played rather late, but people stuck around and we blazed through an electrifying set of jams from the album.
We capped the night with a visit to Portland’s famous Cartopia. Cartopia is a parking lot occupied by a half a dozen of the best food trucks one is ever to find arranged in a circle. Inside the circle are picnic benches strewn about for the Cartopia-goer to sit and enjoy their late night bounty. Between the four of us we had two fried pies, one savory one sweet, French fries with cheese curd and vegan chili sauce, and a fresh mint and Oreo milk shake. So, so delicious—and open until three in the morning to accommodate late night shenanigans.
A gang of is went back to Jeremy’s and drank Coors light and whiskey into the wee hours of the morning in an effort to pretend that perfect days don’t have to end, that if you just stay up it can go on forever.
