the sound of davis

Letterman was thrilling. 6:30am load in, several tense hours of set up with the surly crew, about 10 runs through We Are The Tide as the sound and then camera folks got their mixes and shots figured out, and then a ride back to the apartment from a driver who was very excited to drive George Clooney’s hot wrestler girlfriend the following week. Returning in the evening, the Popperozi was lined up at the stage door for Kristen Bell; a few of them took our picture either by accident or to humor us. We got our makeup, sat in a tiny room watching the show unfold on a tv monitor, and then were hustled onto stage during the commercial break after the comedian. The ice was broken as we all laughed at Dave’s introduction of the band as ‘Blind Spot’. The song went well, I got called out when Dave asked “who did you lay off, the organ player or the trumpet player,” and then it was over and we were at dinner. Only upon returning to Portland did it sink in what a symbolic and important performance this had actually been. To so many people, especially those I haven’t seen for many years, appearing on Letterman instantly legitimized many years of hard work. That feels really great. Here’s the performance.

Posted in Ever Evolving Blind Pilot Tour
Tags: Blind Pilot, george clooney, kristen bell, letterman

It’s out there now that Blind Pilot is going to be on the David Letterman show on Jan 6th (taping the day prior). I’m kind of excited, a bit nervous (more from not knowing if I’m expected to find my own lodging), relieved (that we don’t have another NYC show that requires us to conceal great piles of stringed instruments as carry on luggage), and very interested to see how all of this goes down. Hope everyone is enjoying the holidays.

Posted in Ever Evolving Blind Pilot Tour

I don’t go to many shows outside of my job, and those that I do attend are generally jazz groups or jam bands. Listening to indie pop, folk, and/or rock outside of tour generally makes me nervous and squirmy, much like a restaurant worker going out to eat and not being able to stop focusing on the work flow and social dynamics among the floor staff and cooks (I’m also still afflicted by this- thanks Pizzicato). However last Saturday night, my friend Bryan got me a birthday ticket to see the Billy Martin/ Wil Blades duo at the Goodfoot, a very small hippie bar and dance club over on Southeast Stark St in Portland. It was great.

Billy Martin, of Medeski Martin and Wood fame, is one of the most riveting drummers alive and Wil Blades is a monster Hammond player. There was no bass player, but Wil kicked so smoothly that nobody missed it. The room was about twice the size of my living room with no raised stage, and although the club packed about 250 folks in, we got there early enough to have front row spots. They played for ever and ever, eventually joined by the Seattle tenor player Skerik, but being the old guy I am, I threw in the towel at around 1 am to avoid driving home with the bar close crowd.

It was great to see some really awesome musicians pushing themselves to their personal limits. Coming off of tour, I had not felt much motivation to practice but this show shocked me awake. As the old musician saying goes, always keep your razors sharp.

Posted in Portland Gigs

wild buffalo

I can’t speak for the whole band, but there were definitely some of us who, upon getting back on the bus and rolling out for the drive to Bellingham last Wednesday night, let out long mournful groans. As we headed North, I took a fistful of melatonin pills, snuggled up in my bunk inside of two sleeping bags, and slept the next 20 hours away. It hadn’t been long enough yet.

Waking midday in front of a stranger’s house, things got much better: Kati’s dad was picking us up in his conversion van and taking us to his beautiful mountain-side house for breakfast. Kati’s dad’s house is always one of the most refreshing places to visit on the road: lots of good food, coffee, showers with windows looking out on the mountains, affectionate animals to pet, and embarrassing snippets of Kati’s childhood such as dance competition uniforms to chuckle at.

Then there were the shows. Bellingham at the Wild Buffalo: the owner happened to be an aging hippie flautist, and he made quite a show of shredding on Van Morrison’s Moon Dance within earshot of the green room. I think we were supposed to invite him to sit in, but everyone knows how socially awkward our band is anyway and I don’t think any feelings were hurt. As I loaded out after the show, I witnessed the said owner cornering Luke and Kati and forcing them to sing 4 part barbershop vocal improvisations with him and the house sound tech.

seattle (ryan messick pic)

Seattle. Better show. Really nice theater. Kate came and we stayed with friends who had left over pizza and a coffee maker that brewed single cups. The options were coconut coffee or blueberry coffee. I picked blueberry and added soy nog to cut it a little. Wow.

Vancouver. Ok show. It was a gross dance club with a VIP area that featured fake snake skin upholstery and smelled like bodily fluids. The club employees’ “we don’t care if you sold your show out because Dance Party night does way better at the bar” vibe was loud and clear. They hurried us out at 10pm as the DJ started, Kate and I headed back towards our hotel, and tour officially ended. It feels good now, but I’ll start missing it in a few days.

Posted in Ever Evolving Blind Pilot Tour
Tags: Blind Pilot, melatonin, moon dance, neptune theater, van morrison, venue, wild buffalo

It’s so nice to be at home- when I left it was late summer but now we’ve got our christmas tree up, just finished utilizing all of the Turkey leftovers, and I’m contemplating demolishing our back bathroom and trying to finish a rebuild before tour at the end of January. The strangest part of arriving home was the seemingly absurd amount of counter space in the kitchen compared to the bus’s cooking facilities. Other things to look forward to during the break: rejoining the cast of Livewire Radio for the Dec 17th taping, the trip to NYC for Letterman in January (not sure if this is supposed to be a secret or not, so I won’t say more), and tracking the long awaited Mutton Chops record with Ralph Huntley, Jim Brunberg, and Steve Berlin. 100 or so original 15-second songs from the Livewire! houseband archives- should be quite a challenge in 2 days.

Posted in Ever Evolving Blind Pilot Tour
Tags: Blind Pilot, bus, livewire radio

Well, we did it. How ever many shows this tour was- I think about 50- they’re over now and we’re heading North on Interstate 5 towards Portland and home. We’ve still got a few Northwest shows, but they will be so much easier after a few hours of genuine alone time, a few days with Kate and Buck, and a couple of showers. Things went well in San Francisco- although the two sold out Great American Music Hall shows were fun, I think the true highlight was a visit to Chan’s Model Trains on Van Ness and Filbert with Luke and Kati. In our extreme fatigue/ boredom, we hatched a scheme to depict Blind Pilot in H.O. scale diorama format, to be sold as one of a kind art works at the merch booth. Although we didn’t find the necessary H.O. figurines to depict either the bike tour or the bus spending the wee morning hours in a Nebraska Walmart parking lot amid the truckers, Kati found a set of Model Power brand “fat people” that were too good to pass up. And this is why its good we’re all going home.

Posted in Ever Evolving Blind Pilot Tour
Tags: Blind Pilot, chans trains, Great American Music Hall, h.o. scale, model power

The last 48 hours have been a whirlwind. We played a fantastic sold out show on Tuesday at the Bluebird in Denver with our Portland friends and new openers Point Juncture WA. The bus has been having some cold-related issues concerning batteries and an air compressor belt lately, but some over night idling allowed us to smoothly complete the awful 18 hr straight shot from Denver to L.A. We were originally supposed to have two days to make this long journey over both the Rockies and the extreme deserts of Utah and Nevada, but a chance to appear on KCRW Los Angeles’ Morning Becomes Eclectic radio show on Thursday morning outweighed all fears of death due to driver fatigue.

After the radio show, the real LA action began. Being extremely minor celebrities with well connected management, we now qualify to enter the fringes of the LA gifting world. First we went to the Haus of Strauss, an unmarked house whose insides had been converted to a trendy private Levi’s gallery that existed purely for the purpose of giving product to celebrities and musicians. We were escorted in by two supermodel women and given a tour of ‘exhibits’ that highlighted Levi’s latest boutique lines, such as ugly denim jackets with cutting edge images by famous graffiti artists on the back, a line of women’s jeans that supposedly had been created after measuring 50,000 women of all shapes, and historically accurate 501 jeans from every decade since the Gilded Age. One room had a sculpture made out of a whole bunch of measuring sticks and another had a giant print of Kurt Cobain crowd surfing in Levi’s hanging over one of those cow hide rugs from Ikea. There was incense. There was a ‘sustainable’ urban garden in the backyard that had long gone to bolt, where apparently famous chefs sometimes harvested herbs to cook meals for small groups of important people like Bon Iver. Mike picked some strawberries and then accidentally got strawberry juice on the white leather couch. I wore my awful brown corduroys from Value Village in to try to startle the fashionista proprietors and it worked beautifully- one supermodel lady made a tactful comment that I had ‘thrown her for a loop’ based on the pants I was wearing. We ended up getting to each take 3 items of clothing, and since I’m down to just those corduroys and my severely worn stage pants, my three new pairs of 511′s were a fantastic score.

Next it was off to the sunglasses gifting place, which was high up in a luxury office building with a stunning view of the sun setting through the LA smog. This suite was basically like a normal high-end glasses store with many different luxury brands on display and lots of mirrors, except that once again it existed only for the purpose of giving away product to celebrities and musicians. We were told that we could take any two items, and after trying on a bunch of stuff, I settled on two pairs of Ray Bans that make me look like a cliche jazz musician in a Charlie Haden sort of way. As someone who has gotten all of his past sunglasses either as hand-me-downs from his wife (of which she does not approve) or from the lost-and-found at work, suddenly having two pairs of Ray Bans that would retail at over $100 each seems quite absurd. I’ll make do- maybe I could give them away as Christmas gifts. Or, maybe I’ll just become one of those people who consider it normal to wear $100 sunglasses.

Posted in Ever Evolving Blind Pilot Tour
Tags: Bon Iver, Point Juncture WA, Ray Ban

As the bus flies as fast as it can (61 mph) across the rolling farm fields of Iowa toward Denver, I think we’ve done pretty well for ourselves in the last few days. In Indianapolis, we were delighted to emerge from the bus to a climate significantly warmer than that of Ann Arbor. So warm, in fact, that I went running for the first time since Washington DC. A little out of shape but refreshing, and I noticed it right away when I picked up the trumpet. Our show was in a beautiful church/ community center called Earth House. The acoustics were great, we played well, sold out the room, and everyone was happy. Last night in Chicago we played at Park West, a 1000 capacity rotunda topped room with tiered tables behind the floor area. Very classy- they even had soap pumping people in the bathrooms to make you feel awkward. This was our last show with Gregory Alan Isakov- sad because our two bands really gelled both personally and musically. Another sold out room and fun show. My family brought me a care package of fresh underwear and cookies. Thanks! Now its on to Denver, LA, San Francisco, and home!

Posted in Ever Evolving Blind Pilot Tour
Tags: Blind Pilot, earth house, Gregory Alan Isakov, park west

Last night we played the Blind Pig, a famous old dive bar in Ann Arbor. Judging by the press photos on the walls, everyone from Pearl Jam and Nirvana to Buddy Guy and a young Bonnie Raitt had preceded us over the years. According to the production manager, Pearl Jam had rudely demanded that the bouncers not be present, and then the crowd rushed the stage in the first song, ending the show in about a minute. It was a pretty small room- maybe 300 capacity- but the club sold it to 437 plus 35 guests. Luke’s brilliant stage banter: “are there any fire marshals in the crowd tonight? Good.” The room was so over-packed as to be stiflingly uncomfortable and probably quite dangerous. A middle aged woman overwhelmed by the pressing crowds vomited on the popcorn machine as she was helped out by her companions. This was disturbing, but not as bad as Ian’s witnessing the bouncer at Lee’s Palace in Toronto pick up an aggressive drunk and slam him head first onto the sidewalk.

Anyhow, what a great show! We really needed it too- spirits were dragging after the chaos of the last few days but we regained precious momentum last night. Instead of running my organ through the small 1 x 10 Fender cabinet normally used, I used a giant home-made bass cabinet that the house engineer’s father had built. It had a 15″ speaker, and along with my leslie it allowed me to get tones out of the Hammond that were just heavenly. Afterwards, we slept in the bus outside the venue on the coldest yet night of tour. Luckily, we were able to plug into the venue’s outdoor AC outlet and run a space heater all night. Now onward to Indianapolis.

Posted in Ever Evolving Blind Pilot Tour
Tags: blind pig, pearl jam