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.
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