Adventure #60: Summer Tour 2012 Dallas, Texas

We left Amarillo sad to leave our friends behind, but in good spirits. Then we hit Clarendon, Texas. Friends, I want to tell you about the town of Clarendon, Texas where this happened there. They got three stop signs, two police officers, and one police car. And that police car will not hesitate to pull you over if you fail to notice where the highway goes from 70 to 55 to 35 before immediately shooting back up to 55 then 70 again in the span of half a mile. So I slowed down to 50 but never saw the sign for when it goes down to 35. So $215 later and my unsuccessful pleading turned into a whole lot of unfavorable comparisons to farm animals. Well, one farm animal really. This is Pen Pen getting a great idea for a Sammy Hagar / NWA mash-up.

A cloud of dispirited silence hung over the rest of the drive to Dallas. The silence occasionally punctuated by sentences that start with “and another thing about cops...” But we got to the venue and there was a pretty decent crowd there. Opening Bell Coffee does a songwriter night on Mondays, and the host's daughter was playing a set and had brought a lot of her friends out. She opened and had a killer voice. She told me she was applying to schools in New York for musical theatre with an embarrassed chuckle. “Funny,” I said, “I write musicals in real life.” We got along great after that. Joshua, Holly, me, Pen Pen, Joshua's friend Shannon and Holly's friends Tara and Patty headed to In-N-Out Burger for veggie burgers after the show because Opening Bell is the only coffee shop venue in America that doesn't comp performers food and screw that. My moral compass makes less sense the harder you think about it, so it's best not to think about the fact that I took a stand against pay-to-play at an otherwise nice locally owned business by eating GMO at a chain fast food place... This is Pen Pen feeling slightly less bad when he discovered that In-N-Out employees get a living wage and benefits.

This is a song I wrote one time. You should download it and share with your friends.

Adventure #59: Summer Tour 2012 Amarillo, Texas

I woke up on Saturday in a pile or clothes and boxes in a basement in Albuquerque, after having spent the past day off recording with my friend Tap in his studio. This is the glamorous life. My morning ritual on tour is to double check all the details on that day's show. Mostly this is to figure out what time we need to be there / leave wherever we are. So looking through my e-mails with The 806 in Amarillo I kept noticing a curious thing: the date said September 9th. That's not possible. We're playing in Austin on the 9th. Amarillo is on the 8th. And oh crap. This is Pen Pen wishing we'd slept in a little less and maybe been high on slightly less morphine while booking this tour.

So I did what I do best in times like this: I panicked. Once I'd done that for a little while, I did what I do second best in times like this: I internetted. I started cold calling places in Amarillo that had music and didn't look like they had anything on the schedule. Amarillo's got a pretty big music scene, so thankfully there were a lot of places to play. Steve from Moe Dogs said they didn't have anyone and if we showed up with a PA we could play and they'd give us some free food. This is why I bring a PA on the road. It was about 10 minutes after I hung up the phone, relieved that I realized this was a hot dog joint on Route 66 and odds are good there would be no food I could eat there, and more importantly that they'd not really be that into an effeminate Jewish animal rights activist vegetarian with a bright pink mohawk and his nails painted blue. This is Pen Pen realizing we might be walking off a cliff.

But oh Amarillo, way to prove us wrong about basically everything. Texas has a lot of stereotypes. Most of these are reinforced by former presidents, recent primary presidential candidates and King of the Hill. Amarillo doesn't conform to any of them. My friends Dave and Molly who put us up are really rad bohemians, and even the bikers at Moe Dogs dug our stuff. Sure one of them made a crack about my fingernails, and when one of them asked for an 80's cover I asked if he liked Prince, because I'm really good at reading people. But whatever. We had a pretty great night, and decided we'd rather stay in town and keep our obligation to The 806. This is Pen Pen both being and visiting a Route 66 roadside attraction.

It was strange having a whole day without having to drive anywhere. We've only done that twice on this whole tour. We drove up and down Route 66 looking at some of the roadside attractions and exploring Amarillo. Then got back to Dave and Molly's with some time to actually hang out and spend time with my friends before the show. How novel! The show itself was fun, but small. Sundays. Whatareyougonnado? We made a few new friends and mostly just heckled each other and used it as an opportunity to play songs we haven't really been doing on this tour. It was funtimes. Add Amarillo to my list of places that are always rad. This is Pen Pen and a giant red hot.

This is a song I wrote one time. You should download and share it with your friends.

Adventure #57 and 58: Summer Tour 2012 Mesa and Flagstaff Arizona

This is the week of shows booked while still effectively bed-ridden from surgery. And very very high on morphine. So it hasn't really been surprising that each of them has an asterisk, or a crucial detail I missed, or just sort of sucked. Mesa was weird. Really weird. It turns into a ghost town after 5. Our show was at 7. There were a ton of bronze statues all over the place of people just hanging out and sitting on benches which combined with the marked lack of people on the street gave the whole town the impression that it had been struck by some sort of bronze Vesuvius right before we got there. This was one of those (disconcertingly large number on this tour) where the show fell through then un-fell through at the last minute. Sam, the guy who runs the place, is a really rad guy though and did everything to make it not bad. So it was just weird. This is Pen Pen and a boy who was tragically turned to bronze while doing his homework.

Sam's venue is part of this complex with two other stages. What we didn't know was that The Ataris were playing their first show in a long time in one of those other stages. So in the most technical possible sense, we opened for the Ataris in Mesa. Which also meant that basically anyone who would be interested in punk influenced folk music was watching that other stage. But a few folks came in, and they made up for it. First this girl walks in wearing a Bomb The Music Industry shirt. “Oh cool,” Joshua said mid-set. “Do you like Bomb the Music Industry?” “Sort of. I used to be in Bomb The Music Industry, so I guess. Yeah.” Later while I was playing, some random guy walks in and talks to Sam for a little bit. Sam keeps trying to get my attention, but I'm not really that good at paying attention to things. It turns out it was Kris Roe from the Ataris. He stuck around for a song or two before heading off to do something. Probably involving playing to thousands of people 30 feet away from me. Whatever. No big deal. This is Pen Pen and a cloud that looks like my dad's mustache.

The next day we had to drive up to Flagstaff, which really isn't that far from the Grand Canyon and none of us had ever been. So that's what we did. We were slightly taken aback at the $25 entrance fee (what no broke touring musician discount? How rude.) but whatever. It's the Grand Frickin Canyon. What else were we going to do? The Canyon is very much Grand. I went off hiking trying to find a path that wasn't paved and covered in tourists. I finally got to the end of the paved path by the time it was time to turn around, which means I'll just have to come back next time. This is Pen Pen contemplating his own insignificance in the face of millions of years of geology.

We played at a place called the Green Room, and it was cool for no reason other than because GZA had played there earlier. Also they had an apartment above the bar. I think if every venue had an apartment above for bands touring would go from being a surreal occasionally wonderful and often stressful adventure in vagrancy to the glamorous funtimes people seem to think it is. But it's still better than being covered in tarantulas. This is Pen Pen staring down a tarantula.

This is a song I wrote one time. You should download it and share with your friends.

Adventure #55 and 56: Summer Tour 2012: Los Angeles and San Diego, California

There are some shows you play for money. There are shows you play for exposure. There are shows you play because artistically you think they'll be good. There are shows you play as a flimsy pretext to see old friends. And there are shows you play for their proximity to the beach. The show in LA was the latter. I was under no impression that a show on Labor Day Monday would be anything special, but the venue seemed really cool, and what else were we going to do? So the show was OK. Enough people to make it worthwhile but not so many that we were in danger of being mobbed by adoring fans and trampled to death by the sheer force of their adoration. But you know what was better than just OK? The beach. This is Pen Pen living beside the ocean, leaving the world behind, swimming out past the breakers, and watching the world die.

We spent the next day on the beach in Santa Monica. Then drove to San Diego and promptly spent the rest of the day on the beach. Because we've been in the mountains for weeks and I never got to the beach when I was with my family on the Cape. Priorities. Besides, the show had fallen through and then been resurrected at the last second, so my expectations were pretty low. This is Pen Pen trying to convince a flock of seagulls to come to the show.

Dan, the guy who put it together, is a super rad dude. And against all odds it ended up being one of the most fun shows of the tour. Joshua and I decided both to screw the PA and play totally unplugged in the bar area. The crowd seemed to be into it and participating in all the right bits. Also I'd never played on a bar before, so that was fun. Afterwards we crashed out at this girl Morgan's house who works at the zoo(!!) and said she could get us in for free next time we come through. Also she had chickens and could hypnotize them probably for the same reason that I can sing “Row Row Your Boat” backwards. This is Pen Pen winning at cock fighting through the power of hypnosis.

This is a song I wrote one time. You should download and share it with your friends.

Adventure #53 and #54: Summer Tour 2012, Sacramento and San Francisco, California

Touring can be so bipolar sometimes. You're playing and you're getting a good response and you're just on top of the world. Even if there's only 30 people, you're really connecting to those 30 people. And then a guy walks by in a wife-beater that proudly shows off the giant swastika tattoo across his chest and the day is just ruined forever. So that was Sacramento.

We were doing 2 shows. The first on a stage at a mall because I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm really into corporations. I mean, some of my best friends are corporations. And then a second show at a fancy bar downtown. The Nazi was in the mall. Mall Nazis are like Mall Goths, except, you know, they want to exterminate me and my family. Whereas Mall Goths just want to write poetry about their feelings. It's a subtle, but important difference. This is Pen Pen looking for Electric Tree Nazis, but only finding artichokes, which are roughly three times smarter.

The show at the fancy bar was better, if only for its pronounced lack of Nazis. Joshua's brother (not a Nazi) met up with us and was a lot of fun to hang out with. But I decided the most responsible thing to do was to do my nails and get very very drunk to try and forget about the Nazi and have a good time (didn't work...) so the rest of the evening is a little blurry. I probably sang a few songs. Odds are good “Family of Ghosts” was one of them. This is Pen Pen having stolen an artichoke from a tree on the capital mall to throw at Nazis because no matter how many times he types IDKFA, nothing happens.

It was as the show was wrapping up that our place to stay fell through. Being clear headed and sober, I did what any responsible mature adult would do and started to panic. We decided we had 3 options. Drive an hour and a half inn the wrong direction to stay at Jesse (Joshua's non-Nazi brother)'s place, spend all our food money on a hotel room in Sacramento, or see if anyone in San Francisco could house us. I figured it couldn't hurt to send out a tweet to some of my Occupy Oakland friends that I'd been planning on meeting up with to see if anyone had a place we could crash. Amazingly, a guy named Bob who I'd never spoken to before got back to me and said we could stay at his place. I know there are people who have their beef with Occupy, and there are as many fair criticisms as there are unfounded ones. But one thing you can never say is that Occupiers don't take the principal of solidarity very seriously. I make a lot of stupid jokes in my blog, but I remain honestly and sincerely speechless with gratitude. This is Pen Pen bored already of Nazis.

We got to Bob's place, who turns out to be one of the kindest and most generous humans alive. He and I stayed up talking till 5 or so. The next day I decided to head to the Occupy Oakland General Assembly to see if I could connect with any of their puppeteers. None of them were at the Assembly, but someone gave me the phone number of a guy. After, I headed back to Bob's and Holly trimmed my mohawk. For the first time in 3 months, I felt like myself again. Barely 24 hours from being sent into existential shock at the sight of a Nazi in Sacramento during my show and my faith in humanity was mostly restored. This is Pen Pen making a wig because maybe skinheads are just angry that they're going bald and can't grow a luscious Jewfro like me.

The show in San Francisco was fun, though the guys at the venue clearly couldn't care less about it. But a few #OO friends showed up and there was a decent built in crowd. Punkboy livestreamed it and I got some really nice comments from a bunch of folks who watched it online. Talking to Julie Meyers, who was playing after me, I realized there's a decent chance we're remotely related through our Ukraine Jew families. So that was awesome. After the show, we headed off to Punkboy's husband's birthday party and I finally got to meet a bunch of people I've only known through twitter in real life. An essentially perfect day ended back at Bob's place. I can't say enough about the spirit of generosity and support of the Occupy Oakland community (even EastBayRadical...). So touring is pretty bipolar. There aren't a lot of just OK days on the road. But sometimes a really upsetting day can turn into one of the best days I've ever had on tour. This is Pen Pen looking out over at Oakland and wondering if it wouldn't make more sense to cancel the rest of the tour and just not leave ever.

This is a song I wrote one time. You should download it and share with your friends.

Adventures #51 and #52: Summer Tour 2012 Bend, Oregon and Eureka, California

The road to Bend is paved with good intentions. We'll leave it at that. The show didn't happen, but the venue owner was super apologetic and made it really hard to be angry. So we decided to make the best out of a crappy situation and record an EP with their gear. Joshua and I each did 3 songs, and hopefully a few of them will come out all right. This is Pen Pen masking his disappointment through the magic of song!

So we got up in the morning with a long drive ahead of us which would have been much shorter had we not driven out to Bend for no reason. (See? I'm totally not bitter. I'm very professional.) Holly spent the whole drive trying to see a bear from the road, and I've decided to embark on a psychological experiment where I remind her every day about how we saw a baby bear through the trees about 100 feet out from the road. It was about 2 or 3 feet tall, and wasn't doing much, but it was still pretty cool to see a bear in the wild. See? It's like Inception. This is Pen Pen with a baby black bear in the distance, but it's sort of hard to see the bear.

While Holly was trying (and succeeding!) to see a bear (it was in the distance, about 100 feet from the road. Like 2 or 3 feet tall. It wasn't really doing much, but still, we totally saw a bear from the side of the road! How cool is that?) I was trying to see some big-ass trees. We were about an hour north of Eureka when BAM! Big Ass Trees. Everywhere. I got out of the car and literally started skipping aimlessly into the woods. That happened for about 20 minutes when I remembered that my friends were somewhere behind me and I hadn't been following a trail, and I didn't particularly need to see two bears in one day, especially not one closer than about 100 feet away. Luckily there was a Big Ass Tree that made it pretty easy to spot the entrance to the grove so I wasn't abandoned to the plentiful bears of the Crescent City, California region. This is Pen Pen with a Big Ass Tree.

The show itself was fun, though nothing epic. A half full bar. Some random patrons and a bunch of Jarrod West's friends. Following the great West Coast tradition, we were pretty sure the headlining band wasn't ever going to show up. But they did and closed out the night loudly. It was good times. This is Pen Pen finally seeing the actual real Pacific Ocean.

This is a song I wrote one time. You should download it and share with your friends.