So we just played our last show with This Bike is a Pipebomb last night. I heard it was good, but I spent most of the show that wasn’t our set sleeping in the van because I was feeling really ill. Rymodee said my voice went from Jeff Ott to Tom Waits and its degrading. The advantage of playing in a band with 5 other people is that its easy enough to avoid singing. The shows have all been really rad since I last posted. Liberty Hall in PDX is a great, huge space that not only does shows but has community meetings, support-group type meetings, square dancing and more. Still, Mike who did the show and works closely with the space says that its pretty under-utilized and could use more people breathing life and new ideas into the space. We played 2 shows about 10 miles apart in Arcata and Eureka, both at really interesting spaces – the bike library and an arts space called ink people. It was good to see old friends who used to live in Ohio who now live out in CA. They all seemed happy. I got to skate for a little with Morgan and Paul, but I think that may have not been the best thing for my illness. Despite feeling pretty terrible, I had a good time at the park show on Saturday. It was awesome. We played round robin sets with a bunch of great bands. Jimmy Shotwell has some kind of miracle generator because the thing is like the size of a 24-pack of beer, weighs less than 80 pounds, and allowed 4 bands to play about 12 songs each for less than $1 of gas! The cops never showed up. It was sweet. It was nice walking around the mission yesterday. I got to see some really nice murals in an alley. One thing that I realize that I’m missing out on living in a small midwestern town is multiculturalism. Certainly, Bton has some good ethnic restaurants and there is some interesting multi-cultural programming that happens at the university, but its entirely different to walk down the street and just hear a bunch of different languages and accents and to see signs in a bunch of different languages. Something that I feel like I don’t see in Bloomington, ever, is people who look really, really wealthy looking people who aren’t white. I can’t really assign any value to that either way – it was just something that really stood out when I was walking around yesterday. We play in Santa Cruz later today and then start driving back east. Hopefully the homeopathic remedies that Ivy gave me after the show last night will help me feel a little better so I can enjoy the trip back.
-Geoff