the sound of davis

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

Tric set w/ actresses

There’s a popular TV show called One Tree Hill, along the lines of Dawson Creek and 90210, and somehow Blind Pilot spent our day off taping a special appearance for the show’s Series Finale. The day was chaotic. We woke up at 5:30 at an airport hotel in Boston, took a shuttle to our terminal for what was supposed to be a short flight to Wilmington NC via LaGuardia. Approaching New York, our pilot informed us that fog would delay landing and he was entering a holding pattern. After an hour of circling and far too late to catch our connection, we landed instead at Newark. After exiting the airplane and waiting in a long line to reroute our travel, the US Airways staff told everyone that we had technically never been dismissed from our plane and that therefore the flight was still in progress and they had no obligation to reroute us. After some phone work between our management and the airline, we found ourselves on a flight to Charlotte NC. Then we took a third flight to Wilmington, arriving about 5 hours later than planned.

our view

After checking into our hotel (everyone got their own rooms!) and checking out the USS Carolina on the riverfront, we were picked up by a shuttle from One Tree Hill. Arriving at the set, we found a dizzying full scale production facility in an old factory building. After being redressed by wardrobe, getting my latest facial tour-scar covered with makeup (by a man that has done makeup for Janet Jackson and Cher) and having my hair done (the hair guy was dismayed when upon asking me how I like my hair, I just gestured upwards, adding that when I don’t shower for a week it gets taller), we headed inside to do our scene. It turned out that our band was playing at the fictional club that one of the characters owns called Tric. We were actually written into the script as ourselves! The set was incredible- a full scale rock club complete with a bar and lots of fake drinks, sound system, lighting rig, real techs, etc, and they had even rented our full stage set up. The drums were engineered to be quiet- the cymbals had disks welded to their bottoms to deaden their sound and the toms had felt heads. There were several hundred extras to play the role of fans- they were all dressed in club clothes, holding fake drinks and cheering at us more convincingly than any real audience. It was actually really eery- although having never heard of us, the girls were taking their role as adoring fans very, very seriously.

view of uss carolina from hotel

After the character Haley (blonde on left in above picture) did a “give it up for blind pilot” line about 100 times, we were to lip synch our recorded version of Half Moon. We did maybe fifteen takes and it was actually really fun to get a huge crowd response without worrying about playing well. The recorded track has 6 trumpet tracks, so it was interesting playing along with myself- would that I could produce 6 tones in real life. After this was all over, we headed back to the hotel and woke up the next morning at 5:30 to catch a flight to Toronto to meet up with the bus. The flight was smooth but a few band members were brutally chastised by immigration because someone had failed to advance our work visas properly. I was lucky though- I walked right through. Coming off this morning and the general discombobulation from spending our day off in such a manner, last night’s Toronto show was a bit odd, but the 500 folks in attendance seemed to have a good time all the same. Now we’re in Ann Arbor feeling a little ragged but committed to keeping the good shows coming, but I sure am getting excited to get home!

Posted in Ever Evolving Blind Pilot Tour
Tags: Blind Pilot, one tree hill, toronto, us airways

new orleans

Yes yes, I’ve been neglecting to write lately. Life goes on out on the road; we’ve settled into a routine of knocking it out of the park every night with the band.  I’ve got my smile epoxied to my face and hardly stop jumping through the whole set. Good good. Tomorrow we fly down to North Carolina to lipsynch a song from our record for the series finale of the TV show One Tree Hill. Then fly to Toronto and wrap this very long trip up with a final week or so of shows.

Picking up with Brett Dennen, we played a couple great headlining shows in the South, hit New Orleans for Voodoo Fest and stayed for the weekend, and opened for the Local Natives at Duke University. In New Orleans, once the comfort loving hotel dwellers debussed, we parked in front of Luke’s friend Uriah’s house just to the East of the French Quarter. Uriah, in between renovating his 1836 house and playing tourguide in the French Quarter, cooked us a nonstop barrage of rich and fantastic Southern food. We heard great local music, saw one of the city’s biggest second lines- it was pretty great.

nyc

After the Duke show, we met up with opener Gregory Alan Isakov in Philadelphia to begin our run of East Coast shows. Greg and his band are awesome- I definitely recommend looking him up for those of you at home. The next day, we hit New York. The two Bowery Ballroom shows were both sold out and lots of fun. We (again, the tough folks in the band) slept in the bus on Delancy street in The Bowery between the two shows and it was a good time. Sleeping on the bus is a strange portal into any given location- under no other circumstances would we be allowed to sit in the midst of a bustling urban center drinking beer and cooking meals. Pretty cool. The DC show was sold out and great. The Brooklyn show was sold out and great. In a nutshell, things are pretty exciting right now. More to come, and sooner this time..

Posted in Ever Evolving Blind Pilot Tour
Tags: 930 Club, Blind Pilot, Bowery Ballroom, Gregory Alan Isakov, Local Natives, Voodoo Fest

mobile al

We’ve completed our tour of duty opening for Brett Dennen and are now back to headlining our own shows. I’m very excited about this. It was a strange few weeks that fell into a distinct pattern: wake up in a new city, look at the map on my phone to gain bearings, read in a coffee house for an hour or so, go running, eat, load in, practice trumpet while waiting for Brett to check, frantically sound check until doors, loosen up my stage persona with beer, play the set, frantically load out, cook a grilled cheese on the bus, sign stuff at the merch booth, go to bed as the bus pulls out of town. Our last show was in Knoxville and we joined Brett and company on stage for a rousing version of his closing tune Celebrate.

In a nutshell since the last update: Kansas City was a strange venue- a big square 1000ish capacity room that was about half sold. It was in a neighborhood called Westport that had at one point been considered the Western edge of civilization and was where the California, Oregon, and Santa Fe Trails diverged. Doug and Geej from Fromanhole came down from Omaha and were able to handle 2 songs of Brett before retiring to the bus for some wine. St. Louis was at The Pageant- the same venue that we played with The Decemberists.

from mobile pd

We played an awesome show after checking out the city’s gigantic Washington Park. The next day we headlined a show in Columbia MO at a beautiful old theater called the Blue Note. I got in an amazing run through a lightning storm on the MKT Trail- a beautiful Missouri Kansas and Texas Railroad right of way that headed out of town into the woods. Rejoining Brett in Memphis the next day, we were at another newish-big-square-room venue. The stage was solid concrete and they had to close off part of the room with curtains because it was so undersold. Mobile was a beautiful old Southern city along the Gulf Coast. My run took me along the bay past Civil War fortifications, through the old wrought iron balcony filled downtown, past the oldest school in Alabama (1836 and still in use) and back to the venue. The Soul Kitchen was completely disgusting- there were a bunch of ‘no smoking’ signs handwritten on printer paper masking taped to the walls, apparently for our benefit, but as we sound checked and observed all of the security staff smoking cigarettes, we knew we were in for it. True to form, the mens room toilets had no seats or paper and I saw a cockroach within a minute of entering the building. As we sat on our bus out back, three mounted police officers somehow had their horses defecate right next to us so that the smell wafted in through the windows for the rest of the night. Moving on, Birmingham was another cool old city- I went for a long run to the Elmwood Cemetery in search of Sun Ra’s grave, but was not able to find it amidst the endless thousands of headstones. In Knoxville, I was surprised to find the remains of the Knoxville World’s Fair, including the Sun Sphere. I was aware of this from a Simpsons episode, but had no idea it was actually real. It was great getting to know Brett’s band, hopefully our paths will cross again.

Posted in Ever Evolving Blind Pilot Tour

green room art

Last night we rolled into Des Moines to play at a room called People’s Court. A pretty big square room with a nice stage and an extraordinary collection of ‘fertility idol’ art on the green room walls- nothing too special. However, realizing the club was actually called People’s and in the Court building, some memories crept in- Kieskagato had played at a different location of People’s (apparently an Iowa bar/venue chain) in Ames on our ill fated Minneapolis tour booked by our ill fated record label.

Kieskagato had just made its one record for Iconic Rocket, a label started by a Nike Marketing VP as a pet project and whose roster included only us and The Forth, a long defunct band led by Blind Pilot producer Skyler Norwood. Having released our album in Portland, the label owner’s grand strategy was to have Kieskagato play lots of shows in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, where he was from. It didn’t quite pan out. A week before we were to start the 2000 mile drive from Portland to Ames for the first of our 6 shows, our bass player Adam cut the tip of his finger off at work. Very determined not to hold the band back, he learned all of his bass parts on a second Rhodes piano and hit the road with a formidable bandage covering the spot where they had sown his finger tip back on.

The Grasshopper Takeover

Arriving at People’s in Ames IA, we found an immense bar with picnic table style seating and two stages. The big stage was for the headliner, a Christian rock group called The Grasshopper Takeover, and the small stage was for us. Both bands were set up at the same time and were to alternate sets. To be sure, the Grasshopper Takeover’s loyal Christian meathead following did not appreciate Kieskagato’s music, the fact that we weren’t down with Jesus, or our bass parts coming from a crippled keyboard player. However, they felt the spirit move them in a BIG way when GTO played. The night ended with us sitting in some college kids’ apartment. They had consumed a gigantic jug of whiskey and were thrilled to have us involved in their guitar, bongo drum and rain stick jam session. Oh, the good old days..

Posted in Ever Evolving Blind Pilot Tour
Tags: Blind Pilot, grasshopper takeover, Kieskagato, peoples

The days of headlining are on hold as we’ve plunged into a few weeks of opening for Brett Dennen. Like Bruno Mars, nobody I know has ever heard of him but apparently he does very well with the market characterized by university Greek systems far and wide. So far, the cross over hasn’t been very good- most of his fans are nonplussed by Blind Pilot and we’ve busted several Blind Pilot fans leaving after a song or two of Brett’s. However, we’re getting exposed to a lot of new Southern college towns and Brett and his band are all super nice guys. Musically, they’re like a jam band that doesn’t solo with vocals reminiscent of a suburban white Al Green.

Our first show with Brett was in Covington KY, across the river from Cincinnati. As openers, our schedule is different- from load in at 4pm until after our set, we are at the mercy of a variety of factors, so all exploring and running must be done during the day. Running and exploring in Cincinnati was a lot of fun- the banks of the Ohio River were beautiful and I was able to stop and read many historical markers about things like Procter and Gamble and the Civil War. The next day in Bloomington IN we all hung out on the beautiful campus and I had a great run on a Rail Trail that took me deep into the wooded countryside as the fall colors were at their best.

Walking around in Madison yesterday, I indulged in a flood of college memories. Each house, block, street, and storefront seemed to bring back a long forgotten adventure or relationship. I can’t tell whether my love for Madison is more rooted in the actual spirit of the place or a deep nostalgia for a part of my life where life was easy and nothing was impossible. However, I know its easy to feel this was for a day’s visit- I’d probably be ready to go back to Portland after a week. I went on my favorite run from old times, out across Lake Monona on John Nolen Drive and back into town across the Wisconsin Southern Railroad causeway. The show was our best so far of the opening slots and the Capital Theater was quite beautiful. Onward.

Posted in Ever Evolving Blind Pilot Tour

dan mangan band @ stickyz

Stickyz. What a name. We made grim jokes here and there leading up to our Little Rock debut at yes, Stickyz Rock and Roll Chicken Shack. The venue and town turned out to be a pleasant surprise though- the shack was actually a standard brew-pub style establishment of recent and competent construction and Little Rock itself was a beautiful city along the Arkansas River. The water front had the most impressive display of recent public works projects I’ve seen in the United States, all centered around the Bill Clinton Presidential Library building. I went for a run at dusk along a river trail that traversed two fantastic railroad lift bridges that had been converted to strictly pedestrian use. It was beautiful until darkness descended and I found myself in the woods, afraid that I might get attacked by some kind of ‘down south’ animal.

The sound system and house sound person were another matter though- they were abysmal. The after running lines for our stage set up, albeit very very slowly, he complained to me, “y’all have more stuff than The Doobie Brothers.” Dan Mangan didn’t get to sound check at all before doors because the club wanted to play the Razorbacks game instead. The club wouldn’t turn off another football game on the house speakers through most of Dan’s set. When we took the stage, all of our inputs were lost because another piece of the PA had broken.  There was an owner’s birthday party happening, so they had set up and decorated a bunch of tables on the floor of the venue which never moved once the music started. This meant a crush of kids between the stage and the birthday area, a bunch of old people doing their best to talk over Dan Mangan and Blind Pilot taking up the majority of the floor, and another crush of fans at the rear of the venue pressed up against the bar. Given this, we had a lot of fun and played a decent set. It was our last show with Dan Mangan and they absolutely killed it. I’m going to miss listening to their band quite a bit- they are the best and most inspirational players we’ve toured with to date. JP Crocker has been an inspiration for me to see because he’s not only a monster of a trumpet player but endlessly creative and a super nice guy. He makes me want to spend more time practicing just thinking about it.

crowded stage

After the show these two brothers named Mason and Tucker came on the bus and shared a, er, nightcap with those of us looking for a good sleep. They had driven up from Baton Rouge for the show and Mason had played football for Louisiana Tech. He was enormous. I gave him my last can of Game Day Ice. They were such sweet guys and had fantastic Louisiana accents and mannerisms. A good end to another nice day.

Posted in Ever Evolving Blind Pilot Tour

Three awesome days in Texas, a state that for all of the bad raps it gets never fails to be beautiful and full of nice people. Arriving in Austin after 18 solid hours of driving from Phoenix, it took me a while to shake off the half asleep daze of the road. We had 2 radio things and an in store before our 5:00 load in, and this tight schedule helped to force the matter. I went for a run along the river, did the in store show in my smelly running clothes, and felt a little bad in retrospect that there was a wall of teenage girls about 7 inches in front of me who must have smelled everything. The show was sold out and we all came off stage feeling that it was our best performance of tour so far.

Unfortunately, the bus had stopped starting outside the venue (bad connections between the battery and the starter solenoid due to a stripped copper lead terminal) and we couldn’t get it going before the show, so we weren’t able to leave that night as planned. After sleeping on the bus in front of the venue and waking up early next morning, we were able to get the bus going by jerry rigging a connection with some hunks of old jumper cable a construction worker gave us. Spirits were high as we drove toward Dallas, but out of nowhere, the engine completely cut out and we coasted down an off ramp somewhere near Waco. I ran down the bus to the starter bay and my grim worries were confirmed- the connection had come loose on the road and the battery leads were arcing over the starter cylinder. Things were smoking really bad- after disconnecting the batteries, we found the copper battery lead connectors melted, a body ground completely melted through, and the second ground to the starter had melted off all of its shielding. Seeing this, it looked like a quick fix had done the bus in for at least a few days. We called AAA and started planning to rent vans to get to the gig in Dallas. However, hope grew as we trouble shot the fact that the 100 amp fuse had not blown and theoretically, as long as we could fix things a little better this time, the bus could potentially be fine. Two AAA tow trucks showed up- the first one had just heard the call and was curious to see our bus. His rig was too small anyway, but he happened to work on diesel engines and by the time the big wrecker arrived, things had changed from towing the bus to fixing it. The AAA guy was able to “read the sparks” coming off the solenoid connections and see how to fix everything properly. So, after all this, we made it to Dallas on time.

Once in Dallas, I went for an 8 mile run. Over did things a little, but it felt really good. We played a great show at the Grenada Theater, although not as good as Austin, and I got my first shower since Santa Ana. Pulling out that night, we drove to Galveston so that we could avoid spending a day in awful Houston. It was a great move. I woke up late, and in searching for a toilet, stumbled across the Galveston Railroad Museum in the old art deco Union Station. It was a really cool collection- strings of Pullmans in various states of restoration, a Fairbanks Morse H 12 44, some steam locomotives- but unfortunately the model exhibits had all been destroyed in recent hurricanes. After this, we went to the beach and swam in the Gulf of Mexico. The water was almost as warm as the air and we were able to wade out many hundreds of feet, jump fantastic waves, and attempt to body surf. We had another in-store show where I took this picture with Beonce. The actual show was another great one- awesome crowd, the metal show downstairs had ended by the time we started, and a cute grey kitten came into the green room from a balcony and let itself be adopted for the evening. Now it’s on to Arkansas.

Posted in Ever Evolving Blind Pilot Tour

phoenix

If San Diego was a hot morning to wake up to, Phoenix was an oven. Making it all the worse, somehow I managed to sleep until noon. I woke up to an empty bus parked in an alley, once again covered in sweat and bursting of bladder. Looking around at the environment- gravel parking lots as far as the eye could see, bums dumping trash out of their shopping carts nearby, and an impressive row of bank skyscrapers on the horizon, I didn’t even bother to find a proper bathroom. That was ok because I’m pretty sure everything evaporated before it hit the ground.I needed a break from the heat though (it hit 100 at midmorning), so I found a coffee shop and read more Game of Thrones until load in.

Our show was the first ever at a brand new Crescent Ballroom venue. As we loaded in and soundchecked, I had Pizzicato flashbacks as I watched all of the new employees trying to look busy in front of the owner while not having any clear direction or idea of how to be truly helpful. Despite being a new venue, it sold out. However, the crowd was a bit stiff and I had a hard time wriggling free of a troublesome fan that insisted on showing off his hippie “inspiration” medallion and explaining how it had changed his life. He also was dropping mad “M” gang signs, which he described were for music. Awesome. After collecting my stinky running clothes from where they had been drying on the wrought iron fence by our bus, we were back on the road for Austin.

Posted in Ever Evolving Blind Pilot Tour

belly up solano beach

We drove down to Belly Up in Solano Beach CA after Santa Ana’s show. It was only about an hour drive so we arrived at around 3:00 am. The next morning I awoke covered in sweat and hotter than I can ever fathom when I’m not already that hot- my bladder (among other things) was on the verge of bursting, and it took a bit to figure out how to improve my situation. The solution was to strip off my unbearably hot pants, put on my swim trunks, put in my contacts, find a coffee shop, use their bathroom, well- you get the idea. After this I headed a few more blocks to the beach, where after a submersion and a long walk in the surf below 50 foot cliffs I came upon Luke, Kati and Swann. We had spent much a good amount of time jumping waves when a pod of dolphins showed up about 50 feet away, soon to be joined by a group of dive-bombing pelicans in their harassment of some invisible school of fish. It was a grand morning.

Back at the bus in front of the Belly Up, we ate sandwiches and made fun of rich old-person fashion before the others left me to read and relax. I was jolted from the fascinating world of Game of Thrones by a very aggressive knocking on the bus door. I opened it to a barrage of angry chastisement from the manager of Belly Up with the owner standing behind her. Apparently the rich old ladies we avoiding the open air cafes nearby because they didn’t want to come too close to our bus. Also, we were using shore power from Belly Up and that constituted theft. The police would be called momentarily, she said. I couldn’t tell if she knew we were the band headlining her club- it seemed obvious enough, but Solano Beach is very rich and maybe they just view bands as servants. After not reacting, feigning innocence and asking whether load-in was still in an hour, she nervously changed her tone and said we could stay, but never actually apologized.

The club was another Belly Up- we’ve played the one in Aspen- and true to form, there was a TV screen lowered over the stage. This one was showing football. The club also had a hokey giant papier mache shark hanging above the bar. A perfect microcosm of the affluence and taste of Solano Beach. The show was fun though.

Posted in Ever Evolving Blind Pilot Tour