Archive Sunday #13

The Car Seat Boys head back west after a big east coast run! I was looking through these pictures and noticed how tired all of us were and then remembered that the routing for this tour was complete shit. We were booked to go Seattle, east 5 hours to Spokane, then BACK west to Bellingham, then BACK east to Boise....  Then we drove through Salt Lake City, Denver, Arizona, San Diego, to LA, San Francisco, then back up north to Portland and Eugene. It was so much damn driving. The west coast is already a bit of a show desert and you have to always drive a lot, but the zig zagging had me thinking dark thoughts against our agent. But we were a young band and had to take what shows we could get I guess?

SD: We started this run at our home-base playing at the Sunset Tavern in Ballard. This was the first show that I played with the Naked Giants, and I remember loving the energy they brought on stage. Right before we played we grabbed some tapas from Matador across the street with a friend. From there we went east to to Spokane where I remember checking out a cool vintage store behind the venue and grabbing some subs with the boys before the show.

Then we had to go back west to Bellingham to play the Wild Buffalo House of Music. We've played there a few times, but I'm pretty sure this was the time Andrew tried making a track from scratch in 10 minutes in Ableton while chilling in the greenroom. I'm pretty sure he used the last few minutes to freeze some tracks in order to "save some CPU," but we all knew he just ran out of ideas haha.

We woke up around 7am the next day to make the drive back east again towards Boise which is around an 8 hour drive. Plus you end up losing an hour from changing time zones. I think somewhere in eastern Washington we realized we were gonna be cutting it close and started speeding even more in an effort to make up time. Somewhere in Oregon Andrew got pulled over for speeding, and I remember us all thinking "Welp, there goes our guarantee for tonight's show."

After that show at the Neurolux, some drunk lady came by the van when we were loading out to hit on Andrew. She kept on referring to his drums as "boom-booms"  used a double word like "dance-dance" or "night-night" in every sentence to describe something. It was so bizarre, but we finally managed to distract her long enough to get away.

Our next show was at Kilby Court in Salt Lake City. The venue was super unassuming but had a great younger crowd that came out and made it a great show! Next we played in Denver at the Hi-Dive. This was the show where I met Andrew's dad for the first time. I don't know if we played a better set since the last time he checked us out or if the crowd was way bigger, but he was so psyched afterwards and smiling ear to ear when he came up to introduce himself :)

After that, we started heading back west and played a show in Phoenix. I think this was the show where we started to add some Teens of Denial songs into the set, cause I remember asking Ethan about a bass part during soundcheck. The next day we played at the Casbah in San Diego, which I was really stoked for because we were playing with a sweet band from the area called Octagrape. They played an awesome set and even gave us some t-shirts they couldn't sell. This venue was funny because the bathroom consisted of just one toilet facing the door about ten feet away with no stall and no way to lock the door. Needless to say it made for some awkward moments throughout the night haha.

The following day we got to the venue in L.A. super early to film a music video for Drunk Drivers. I think the plan was to have one film crew follow a group of fans on their way to the show while another filmed us preparing and playing the show that night. It was a lot of setting up and running the song a few times for the crew to get set at sound check. Several months later we realized it was all for nothing because the label passed on it, but it's probably floating around somewhere out there.

Then we went up to San Francisco to play the Independent which other than remembering that it was a fun show, I just remember driving around the city looking for parking. Next up, we played at Andrew's home town of Eugene, Oregon. This was a memorable show because right off the bat we were butting heads with the house sound guy. I can't remember what we asked, but right away he let us know this event didn't sell enough tickets to be worth any effort. The show went somewhat smoothly until the end when Andrew's kick pedal broke in the middle of a song and Will went outside to dunk his head in a puddle while the rest of us improvised an outro.

Our bad luck followed us to Portland, because I remember for our show in Mississippi Studios my bass amp was broken. I think I ended up patching straight through to the PA which rarely sounds good. But I think overall the show went over well. Our last show of the run was opening for Thao and the Get Down Stay Down at the Cobalt in Vancouver. This venue had a weird vibe stemming from it originating as a hotel then turning into low-income apartments, but I mostly remember struggling to fit even our small setup on stage in front of the rest of the gear. We made it work though and capped off a good run with our neighbors up north!

WT: I am actually wearing my Octagrape tshirt today. My first forays into the joys of XL.

I don't remember much about this run. The DDKW music video was in the works for a while, but ultimately it didn't capture the mood of the music right, so we went with the simpler lyric video instead. The best thing that came out of the Bootleg show was talking to the promoter about a Jandek show that was going to happen there that summer. I ended up performing at that show, as ye in the discord may have seen. That set is available as "Los Angeles Friday" in Jandek's discography, on DVD and CD.

The Sam Bonds show was a bit infamous among the group because for a lot of Andrew's hometown friends, it was the only CSH show they saw for years, and we weren't exactly at our finest that night. Hometown shows are often the hardest - if you slip up in a city you've never been to before, who cares? But you want a good show when you're in front of everyone you know, and wanting a good show is an easy way not to have one.