Last time we played here, we were in sort of an emotionally tight spot, and I was kind of dreading how those feelings might be dredged back up. Turns out they weren’t - it was a great gig with some real soul food, just feeling the joy of letting some music rip through us. Char […]
A nice show tonight, we really enjoyed the Laughing Goat. Good coffee, for one thing. Nice cappucinos with that subtly sweet foam, mixed with the leaded stuff in a delightful fashion. We played well tonight. It was hard to get soundchecked and I seem to get slower at this as the tour goes on. We […]
I had a djembe student once who called the day before our ensemble had its final performance and said, “Robby, man, the wind just totally blew me to Callie! Sorry I can’t make the final and all…” Well, now it’s my turn. We got blown away. Santa Cruz was a horrendous pain about which I […]
Last night was the gig at Epic Arts Studios in Berkeley. The building is a beautiful old house, the studio on the upper floor - big opening windows - one in which the turnout was unpredictable. I was delighted to see some friends from way back, some friends from not too long ago, and some […]
I’m being mildy annoying and typing while sitting around with the friends in the kitchen after gig. It was a great gig. This city is beautiful and strange. There was an amazing crowd out and about today, it took us 45 minutes out of our allotted hour sound check to find a parking space. I […]
We drove all the way from Seattle to San Francisco yesterday, utter madness. There were a few thoughts in that day I wanted to remember and write down - Stopped in Portland for lunch, had a coffee which Jon recommended - Ottmar had recommended it to him as being the best coffee in North America. […]
It was a good show last night at Lo Fi. After driving into the wee hours in our own cloistered insanity the night before, and staying with our friends, the lovely and inspired Keni, Ester, and Jonah, we were totally toast yesterday. We managed to get to a Kinko’s and send some posters out for […]
Well, it was a joy to get away from the voracious metropolis that just keeps eating mountain range after mountain range - we’d keep thinking “this must be the end of LA” and then it would just end up being a little smoggy mountain island in that vast sea. It’s exciting, now that we’ve been […]
Well, it seemed like everybody we talked to in Culver City had a little glaze of uncertainty about Altadena, a glaze which I began to understand after seeing what it was like to drive there, even without rush hour. Bob Stane, the visionary behind the Coffee Gallery Backstage, seems like a cool bloke. He decried […]
Well, what a joy to play here in Culver City. All my conceptions of the impersonality and pay-to-play hubbub of LA have been turned on their ear. Not that they don’t exist, but more that humans in their beauty transcend them. A room full of good people getting lifted up by music is the same […]