Diablos West Coast Tour Part IV - On The Way Back Home
Day 8 - Ladies & Gentlemen, we're nearing the end of our fun-filled virgin trip out West, and I have to say it's been a gas. Today we wake as refreshed as we were the day we stepped onto our planes for Portland; not usually the way one feels after a week on tour. Califor
nia living does a body good. We wake at The Buckley residence and - what's this?!?!? breakfast has been cooked, coffee has been made. Sweet Jesus, the Buckleys have adopted us!
After breakfast we decide to do as the Romans and hit some wineries. Always a good idea to get in at least 5 hours of wine tasting before a show. We meet up with some of Buckley's old friends in Sonoma and hit some bottles. Splendid, indeed. That's us at the oldest winery in Sonoma. I would have jotted down the name if I hadn't been so loopy...
Tonight we're
playing at The Glaser Center in Santa Rosa. It's a large Performance Center attached to a UU Church. Again, I'm not sure what the usual clientele are gonna make of us. But it happens to be run by Lee Templeton's brother David (the one who had us over for Turkey Day) and he's been so supportive and confident that we are extremely excited to see how it unfolds. Plus we're finally playing with the notorious Culann's Hounds, a Bay Area Celtic Punk band that I contacted months ago when we first started planning this trip. It's all coming together. We get to The Glaser Center early for an extensive sound check. It's a large, live theater, and requires some delicacy with the mix. We sound check for what seems like an hour to make sure everything's a go. Then we have a few beers backstage with The Hounds, meet and greet some folks and the show begins. The Hounds sound fantastic - it's a great space for their acoustic sound and they get folks up dancing and clapping a couple of times. We head back and wait for our introduction. The rooms not very full, but there's still quite a few people here to see us for the first time. We're pretty pumped up. We get out on stage and, wha?!?!? all of the mics on my drums have been taken away as well as my monitor. Uh, why did we bother to sound check?!?!? Man, how to make a musician nervous 101 - get his/her sound down exactingly before a show and then, when they start, change it all without telling them. now this is starting to resemble a Los Diablos tour. We blaze through 75 minutes of our greatest hits (plus a couple misses) and people tell us afterward it was great, so no harm done. And we even got a chance to invite the Hounds onstage for a couple tunes: Irish Rover and Dirty Old Town. Very cool.
After, we hit a pub called The Black Rose under the freeway. Good Guinness + Black Horse Blues Band = Sure Fire Fun! We close the place with Josh singing tunes with Renee and Michael from The Hounds. Pretty awesome. Now how do we get back to where we're staying...?
Day 9 - Our final Bay Area show. Could we possibly have missed anyone in the area?! Tonight we're at The Starry Plough in Berkeley. We're splitting the night with The Mad Maggies again. On paper it looks like one helluva fun evening. At some point in the afternoon we drift down to San Francisco and do some arranging for our trip home. Josh and I head to Berkeley in the afternoon and poke around. One of the Maggie's has invited us over for dinner and his apartment is just a couple blocks from the venue. People here are just way too nice. They better not expect any reciprocation when they come back East. Doesn't work that way in Boston.
We're on first tonight - a good plan if ever there was one. That way we can get pie-eyed jumping around to The Maggies after we're done playing. A friend named Sol takes some fine photos of our set:
Turnout this evening is again less than expected, but boy folks are appreciative. And they know how to waltz! As planned, we jump around like idiots to the Maggies fine ska-klezmer-polka set and get drunker than, uh, last night. Which is pretty drunk.
I'll spare you the part about waking up hung over at the ass-crack of dawn to get Pete to the Oakland airport and just move along to the nice bit about how much fun we had out on the West Coast. thanks to all of you who came out and supported us, bought us a round, let us crash at your place. We truly had about the best time we've ever had - and that says a lot coming from Los Diablos. See you next time!
There are more photos on our MySpace page - go check em out as well as a live on air cut of a new song from the KPIG radio show in Santa Cruz. Cheers!
nia living does a body good. We wake at The Buckley residence and - what's this?!?!? breakfast has been cooked, coffee has been made. Sweet Jesus, the Buckleys have adopted us!After breakfast we decide to do as the Romans and hit some wineries. Always a good idea to get in at least 5 hours of wine tasting before a show. We meet up with some of Buckley's old friends in Sonoma and hit some bottles. Splendid, indeed. That's us at the oldest winery in Sonoma. I would have jotted down the name if I hadn't been so loopy...
Tonight we're
playing at The Glaser Center in Santa Rosa. It's a large Performance Center attached to a UU Church. Again, I'm not sure what the usual clientele are gonna make of us. But it happens to be run by Lee Templeton's brother David (the one who had us over for Turkey Day) and he's been so supportive and confident that we are extremely excited to see how it unfolds. Plus we're finally playing with the notorious Culann's Hounds, a Bay Area Celtic Punk band that I contacted months ago when we first started planning this trip. It's all coming together. We get to The Glaser Center early for an extensive sound check. It's a large, live theater, and requires some delicacy with the mix. We sound check for what seems like an hour to make sure everything's a go. Then we have a few beers backstage with The Hounds, meet and greet some folks and the show begins. The Hounds sound fantastic - it's a great space for their acoustic sound and they get folks up dancing and clapping a couple of times. We head back and wait for our introduction. The rooms not very full, but there's still quite a few people here to see us for the first time. We're pretty pumped up. We get out on stage and, wha?!?!? all of the mics on my drums have been taken away as well as my monitor. Uh, why did we bother to sound check?!?!? Man, how to make a musician nervous 101 - get his/her sound down exactingly before a show and then, when they start, change it all without telling them. now this is starting to resemble a Los Diablos tour. We blaze through 75 minutes of our greatest hits (plus a couple misses) and people tell us afterward it was great, so no harm done. And we even got a chance to invite the Hounds onstage for a couple tunes: Irish Rover and Dirty Old Town. Very cool.After, we hit a pub called The Black Rose under the freeway. Good Guinness + Black Horse Blues Band = Sure Fire Fun! We close the place with Josh singing tunes with Renee and Michael from The Hounds. Pretty awesome. Now how do we get back to where we're staying...?
Day 9 - Our final Bay Area show. Could we possibly have missed anyone in the area?! Tonight we're at The Starry Plough in Berkeley. We're splitting the night with The Mad Maggies again. On paper it looks like one helluva fun evening. At some point in the afternoon we drift down to San Francisco and do some arranging for our trip home. Josh and I head to Berkeley in the afternoon and poke around. One of the Maggie's has invited us over for dinner and his apartment is just a couple blocks from the venue. People here are just way too nice. They better not expect any reciprocation when they come back East. Doesn't work that way in Boston.
We're on first tonight - a good plan if ever there was one. That way we can get pie-eyed jumping around to The Maggies after we're done playing. A friend named Sol takes some fine photos of our set:
Turnout this evening is again less than expected, but boy folks are appreciative. And they know how to waltz! As planned, we jump around like idiots to the Maggies fine ska-klezmer-polka set and get drunker than, uh, last night. Which is pretty drunk.
I'll spare you the part about waking up hung over at the ass-crack of dawn to get Pete to the Oakland airport and just move along to the nice bit about how much fun we had out on the West Coast. thanks to all of you who came out and supported us, bought us a round, let us crash at your place. We truly had about the best time we've ever had - and that says a lot coming from Los Diablos. See you next time!
There are more photos on our MySpace page - go check em out as well as a live on air cut of a new song from the KPIG radio show in Santa Cruz. Cheers!
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