The Hurricane Lamps Blog

2 days to drive the 17 hours to Chicago. Not much happens except for numerous bathroom breaks and long drawn out conversations about various movie subjects and best of lists. Best time travel movies, best episodes of The Outer Limits or Twilight Zone, best Rolling Stones riff of all time and why.

The Abbey Pub was a nice place to play. The staff there, while a bit cynical, was on their game. The soundwoman, April, could easily have a 2nd job as a dominatrix. Her cheery name was in stark contrast to her dictator like control over the load in process, placement of spare gear, and sound check. My type of girl.

Eric was a bit nervous to play his ever improved solos in front of our friend John Troutman, whom he holds in very high regard as a guitar player. He seemed a bit shaky at first, but everything went smoothly during the set. Afterwards we got to hang out a bit with John downstairs and catch up on old times. Not a bad evening for the last night of the tour.

On the way home, Eric had his wallet stolen. He left it on the counter of the convenience store at a rest stop and by the time he noticed, someone had take it. He got lucky though and someone found it in the trash the next day, sans $40 that he had just taken out of the ATM.

This is gonna be one big diary update. Sorry it took so long to get up... J.

After spending some time in Portland with Eric's brother Adam and his wife Stacy, we headed up to Seattle. The drive was relatively short - a welcome relief considering the long drives we had made up to that point. We arrived in Seattle on Halloween evening and stayed at our friend Greg's house. The on-air at KEXP the next day went rather well. Eric played guitar like a man posessed and his soloing had the perfect mix of J.Mascis-ey sloppiness and creativity. After the on-air, we made our way up to the venue and killed some time shopping for records and watching a movie. The show that night was less than spectacularly attended. The show was at a good place, but not many people came out - we figured it was a combination of the rain, the post Halloween night, and the coming election night.

We had 3 days of driving to go the 1200 miles to Albuquerque. Sadly, the most beautiful part, driving through Moab, was done at night. At the various rest stops we alternated look at the millions of stars which were visible in the night sky. Amazing what you can see without light pollution. At one rest stop, I was approached by a native american man. He proclaimed that he was drunk and just wanted some change so he could get some food. After giving him about $2 in change I had, he continued to pester me for more money, asking me to buy lunch for him and spouting out weird drunk indian pseudo-philosophy at me. We had to get going, so we got in the van and just left him standing in the parking lot, staring at us intently, continuing his rant, apparently mad that I would not give him more money.

Albuquerque was a bust - the headlining band had van trouble and the show was cancelled. This was relayed to us in an email about 4 hours before we arrived into town, thus we didn't get the messgae until after we pulled up to the venue only to find it closed up and nothing on the schedule for the show that night. We contacted the club owners and found out the scoop and drove onward to Oklahoma City.

The Oklahoma City show was pretty cool. The bands we played with sounded great and the turnout was good. After the show, as we were waiting to get paid, we sat in the corner and watched two girls flirt shamelessly with members of the headlining band. It was pretty much a free 1/2 hour show on flirting techniques. One girl, when feigning boredom, kept crossing and uncrossing her legs, lifting up her skirt in the process. On our way out of the parking lot, she stepped in front of our van and performed a Karate Kid crane style leg lift. Though we never spoke, I felt like I knew her for a long time.

Onto Austin where we met up with our friend Beatty from Fivehead. As always, the show at The Carousel went well. Afterwards, we went over to Davis's house (drummer from Fivehead). He wasn't home so we let ourselves in and grabbed some beers. It was odd starting a party in someone elses house, but Davis was late getting home from a Holly-Go-Lightly concert and told us to let ourselves in. In the back yard we were greeted by a half empty keg and a large metal sign that said "Hot Freaks". More people showed up and by 2am it was a full party. A good time was had by all. After the party we went to Beatty's house to crash. I promptly fell asleep but was greeted in the middle of the night by one of their cats who crawled inside my sleeping bag and cuddled up next to me.

The next day we stopped off for some Thai food and I swear I saw two members of the Barenaked Ladies come in and sit down near us. Checking their website I'm not so sure now, but there were definitely two guys in full on 'we're rockstars' gear eating with a really attractive woman. They had on the requisite Ben Sherman shirts, one with spiky hair separated into various tufts, the other with blonde highlights in his short hair. Both with sunglasses, nice watches. A bit too much for noon on a Sunday. They were there with a purpose.

Chicago entry coming soon.

The show in Denver could have been better...well, it would have been better if we had actually played. The original plan was that we were the headlining band on a late show that would start at 10:30, after an early bill which was supposed to start around 7:30. But as we all know, plans are for suckers. The sound guy was wayyy late and the early show didn't start until 9:30 or so. If we were to stick around, we would not have played until midnight or later. That fact, combined with the apparent lack of promotion for the show and our 13 hour drive to Boise the next day led us to bail on playing and pack it out without playing. The only positives were the Sox winning the world series and having a few drinks with my good pal Joey before we left.

Boise was good if only for the fact we actually got to play. The show was at an all ages space called 'The Venue'. The family that runs the Venue was really nice and made us feel welcome even with the lack of a crowd. It was a great space, but seems to be more suited for shows aimed at younger crowds and hardcore/goth type bands.

Portland was a different story. The show was a benefit show for Orlo and was held at the Bossanova Ballroom in downtown Portland. The opening act was an art/marching band with everyone in full costume. Dancers, stilt walkers, 8 person drum line, horn section and more. It was pretty cool. The sound guy at the ballroom let us run line outs from the sound board to our portable recording equipment so we could record the show. Our set went well and was well received buy the costumed crowd.

We're just about to head to Seattle now. We'll be playing on KEXP at 1pm PST on Monday and later that night Sunset Tavern. The good part of the tour seems to be kicking in and hopefully we make up for the not so good shows we encountered on the first half of the tour.

Sometimes, on slow news days, TV newscasts are replete with stories about orphans finding homes, cats getting rescued from drain pipes, and, if you're lucky, something that includes monkeys and flying poo at the zoo. My friends, if this blog were a newscast, we'd be at the flying poo portion of the hour.

Not much has happened on this tour so far. We left DC at noon on Sunday, drove for about 12 hours, slept at an overpriced TravelLodge where the clerk creeped me out with his lazy, wandering eye when we checked in. Before Monday nights show in Lawrence, we were saved from absolute lack of anything to discuss here by the simple question of a 4 year old girl. As we hung out in front of Replay Lounge, a mom and her daughter walked by. The daughter asked, referring to a bunch of Replay regulars, "Mommy - what are those people doing in that store?" The mothers reply was nothing short of perfection. We all were expecting something along the lines of "Sinning and killing themselves slowly", but we were treated to a much more thoughtful "Well, honey, they're um...enjoying their beverages." The show went along those lines as well. As we played, people, for the most part, enjoyed their beverages -- on the back patio. The smattering of polite applause was gratifying for a while, but we packed it in after 45 minutes. The next band, "The Low Flying Owls" didn't have much better luck. They played a pretty awesome set of droney buzz pop akin to Calla or The Jesus and Mary Chain, two bands I dig pretty much. Near the end of their set more people came inside from the porch to listen, but for the most part the nice weather and ability to smoke outside kept people out there.

We're in Denver now killing time before our show at Larimer Lounge this evening. We're playing a late show at 10:30 and hopefully people stick around after the early show. Though these first few shows were really setup to get us through to the west coast, it would be nice to have a good crowd. We know we can bring the rock.......

We played at Galaxy Hut in Arlington, VA on Monday night, 7/19. The schedule was supposed to be our friends Fivehead (from Austin, TX) first and then us. The Van Gods thew a monkey wrench in that plan. Fivehead were coming from Boston or somewhere up north and had to get a brake job on their vintage 1980's Ford Econoline. After that delay, they blew a tire in New Haven, CT around 5pm. This put them about 6 hours away from DC for a 9:30pm show. Lucky for them, we're crafty and resourceful. The logical thing to do was to stall..stall...stall..then play first. The first few songs threw me for a loop as we played some backup songs to pad out the set. After the 3rd song or so I settled in and think the show went pretty well. Fivehead arrived at 11:40pm and quickly loaded in their guitars to play a short but spirited set before the midnight music curfew.

Well, I've moved the blog from our website to blogger.com for stability sake. I had been running it on a custom PHP/MySQL app that I designed, but I didn't really feel like re-designing the wheel when better blog software is already in existance. Plus, blogger allows comments, which should be fun to read.

Here are some updates since you last read a diary entry:

*We finished our new record and it should be back from the pressing plant any time now. In case you didn't see the front page of our website, it's called "More, more, more" and should be out this fall.
* We're in the planning phases for a late October-Early November tour. Possibly 3 weeks.
* I got married in June and love it.
* Eric and his wife had a baby. We'll see if we can train baby Dash to take my place on reunion tours a-la John Bonhams son.
* Greg got his 'free' 1984 corvette running. All that is missing is a worn out cassette of REO Speedwagon's greatest hits. Somewhere out there, Rod is smiling. Ask us about it when you see us.

We arrived in Athens, parked the van, and headed to eat at a Thai restaurant we had been to the last time we were in town. Eric called our friend Dave Barbe, formerly of Mercyland and Sugar, who had invited us to tour his recording studio. Dave met us for dinner at the Thai place. During dinner, Dave told us some stories of life on the road with his bands, as well as how he dealt with being in a touring band and being a father at the same time. This part of the discussion was if interest to Eric, who has a baby due in about 2 weeks. After dinner, we headed down to Dave’s studio where he gave us a tour. Studio tours are always interesting – every studio does things a little different, and it’s always a good way to pick up a few recording/engineering/building hints or tips. Most fascinating was the control room, which Dave had rebuilt with a control room specialist to minimize room reflection and even out the sound. It’s amazing how much goes into that.

After the tour, Dave headed home to tuck in his kids (he would return to the club to catch our set) and we loaded in. There was some confusion as to who would play first, but we worked it out. We expected more of a crowd – we were hopeful that we weren’t playing against Rainer Maria and Denali again, but those that were there dug the set. It turns out we were playing against a much bigger show at the 40-Watt Club down the street – Hayride was playing, and since they are local favorites and don’t play that often, most people in town, including the Caledonia locals, were at that show. My Education played after us – they played a great Mogwai-ish instrumental set that sounded great. I listened from the patio outside the club – my ears were a bit worn from the constant noise of the past few weeks. A local band played after them.

After the local act, we packed up and loaded out. We gave our thanks to everyone, said bye to Dave, then hit the road. The original plan was to drive 2-3 hours to get a head start on our way home, but we ended up driving all night. I napped in the back seat and woke up in time to take over driving duties from Eric and Greg. The sun rose, the fog cleared out, and soon enough we were back in Virginia. A few hours later, we pulled into my driveway. The work was not over as we still had to unload the van and return it to the Airport, but the tour was officially over.

Overall, this was the best tour we had been on. As a band, we really tightened up and it was evident in the increased crowds and crowd reaction during the tour. I don’t recall anyone flipping out too much over anything – all in all we’re a pretty amicable bunch – and, most importantly, we made it home alive.

Whew.

Days out: 17
Shows played: 13
Miles driven: 8250
Average miles driven per day: 486
Games of Civilization II played: 5
Games won: 0