Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Tour Wrap Up

Yes, I'm (again) a bit late getting this out. We've been back in PDX for a couple days now - but I was enjoying my 'me' time, dammit! The last thing I wanted to do for a couple days was anything band related. But, here I am diving back in with new pictures, new blog, and updating the website.

We had a great time in Cottonwood. Pigstock came off as good as we could have expected. It was a bit crappy weather-wise, so we had to play indoors. But we still had a bunch of fun, nonetheless. I bbq'd a pig for the better part of the day, which surprisingly came out rather well. All in all, it was a success.

Yet, there is no rest for the weary! This Friday we play Oregon City, then we have an Music Millenium in-store appearance on Saturday. And I thought I was done for a bit!!!

We truly thank everyone we met, played with, took pictures for us (especially you McCall girls!), housed us, bought merch, danced, clapped, screamed, 'WOOOOOOT'ed, and pulled us out of ditches - it was a grand time. We hope to meet up with y'all again real soon.

cheers!
DF & SBSD

Friday, June 6, 2008

Stale!

So, um, the blog went a bit stale, eh? Well, it's been hard to get reliable wireless around the West (since Colorado, anyway). I've updated the photo blog when I had small opportunities, but just didn't get around to getting a new post out.

We are one show away from finishing this tour up. Pretty crazy, really. We have a day off before Pigstock (held in my hometown of Cottonwood, Id). We drove from Bozeman, MT to Lewiston, ID in the middle of the night. It was the first time we did that since our initial jaunt down to Davis at the beginning of the tour. Those are always hard nights, but we also have a day to rest up before tomorrow.

The shows have been quite pleasant. Lakeside on Flathead Lake is absolutely beautiful. (The female contingent is also quite stunning.) In Bozeman, we played in a relative hay barn of a bar, but it had character coming out of the rafters. Very cool place. All our shows in Idaho were fun. Pocotello was tough in regards to sound, but it was a fun show as we had a good crowd that were out dancing. Boise was the same way. Last night in Lewiston, we got rained off the outside stage, but we still had a blast playing to the droves inside the bar.

Still can't believe this thing is almost over. Pretty soon we'll have to go back to our 'normal' lives. I'm not exactly looking forward to it. Ah well - we'll be back out again soon. We are already planning the next tour this fall. Should be even more fun with an extended stay in the southwest.

Till next time, take care - thanks for reading!

cheers,
SBSD

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Things To Do In Denver When You Are Dead

Well, we wrapped up a 6 show - 7 night run here in the Denver/Boulder area. Last night we played in Nederland, which looked like it was stolen from the Alaskan panhandle. Scotland and I both felt that they way the city was laid out, the wooden achitecture, and dark color schemes made it seem very Alaskan, which we both enjoyed. It was very high up in the mountains at 8300 feet above see level. It wasn't too drastic of a jump from Denver, but I could tell it affected me a little bit.

We've got a few days off before our next scheduled show in Salt Lake City. We are trying to pick up a show in Rawlins on Tuesday, since we have that day off and will be driving thru there as it is. We had an excellent show there last fall. We would like to go back and reprise that event. The Rawlins patrons were very receptive to our wares, which is always nice and not always the case.

Tonight the band plans on taking in the new Indiana Jones movie...provided we can herd us all together on an off day. We generally like going our seperate ways on these rare occasions, which I think is natural. As much time as we spend together crammed like sardines in a van, it nice to garner a bit of personal space from time to time.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures from the Chautauqua trail and the Flat Irons. It was wildly beautiful. I'm really glad we had an opportunity to do some hiking. Everyone survived with the minimum of blisters, bruising, and/or falling.

That's it for now. If we hadn't just spent a week in the area, I would say that I can't wait to get back...but I think we are all ready to move on down the road. Until next time, take care!

Cheers,
DF & SBSD

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Free PBR!

Hello New Denver Friends!

We wanted to thank you all for an awesome Monday night at Sancho’s Broken Arrow. Playing new towns can be tough and you never can tell what you’re going to get until you commence playing. You all made it a great night for us and, hopefully, we returned the favor in some way.

Now, we would like to thank you again by buying you a beer. That’s right FREE beer. As you may know we are playing Dulcinea's 100th Monkey this Thursday night and we would love to have some familiar faces there. So here’s the deal - just come on down and mention this blog and the band will buy you your first pint of PBR. If you bring 2 people with you we will buy you all a pitcher of PBR. It's that simple.

Free beer and live original music! Hope to see you there and thanks for supporting the arts.

Scotland Barr and the Slow Drags

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

My Name is Sancho!

Hey everybody - our new record All the Great Aviators Agree is released nationally today! You can now go into any music store here in the US and Europe and buy (or at least order) a copy for yourself! Our eternal thanks go to Frank at Burnside Distribution for all his support and help he has generously given to get us to this point.

We had a tremendous show in Denver last night at Sancho's Broken Arrow. It was in stark contrast to the gig in Boulder on Sunday. Last night, there were people actually paying attention to us. At one point, we had half the bar dancing to Fall Hard - it is what I dream about and my face was smothered with the biggest smile ever. Scotland and I just grinned at each other as we watched all this unfold before us. You have to keep in mind, the patrons in Boulder tipped us pennies (which is mockery of the lowest level in my book)... having a complete reversal of fortunes at Sancho's made it even more enjoyable.

Pictures will hopefully be up soon. There will be a lot of great ones from Sancho's. We had an able and steady hand womanning the camera(s) last night. I have yet to see them, but I'm sure they will be awesome.

Today is an off day. A few of us are thinking about going to a baseball game (Rockies & Giants at Coors field). It's another beatiful day here in Denver. Low 80's, light clouds in they sky, and loads of sunshine. Pardon me if I'm glowing...

Wednesday night we play Dulcinea's 100th Monkey, which is located literaly 50 yards down from Sancho's Broken Arrow on the same block. It will be interesting to see who shows up from last night's show. That was only a $1 cover, Dulcinea's is $4... it will be an interesting test of our 'draw' and/or 'retention'.

That's it for now. Take care - hope y'all are doing well!

cheers,
DF & SBSD

ps - we'll give a free copy of our new record (All the Great Aviators Agree - released nationally today, May 20th, nationally and internationally!) to the first 5 people that know what movie the title of this blog is referring to.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Rocky Mountain High

Been a while since I was able to do a blurb out here. I do want to point you to Bryan's Myspace blog. It's got some great photos over the past couple weeks.

We arrived in Denver a bit after 3pm today. We are staying in this palacial high rise condo in which you can see all over downtown. Talk about feeling like a rockstar...anyway, we play out in Boulder this evening. Strangely enough, it's a late night show (10pm) for a Sunday night.

Last time I checked in, we had just played the Cowgirl in Santa Fe. Since then, we extricated the van from the caliche(spanish for clay). The guy who owned the car wash was at our show in Tijeras and allowed us to vacuum and wash the van for free. Now that is rockstar treatment.

It took most of Friday to get everything straightened out, so it was nearly 5:30 before we got on the road for Trinidad. It was a late night, but it was nice to have the whole day Saturday to relax, do laundry, get the van serviced, sleep, and see the sights. Trinidad is actually a rather remakable town. It was a major cog on the Santa Fe trail, and it has a rich history. The downtown area still holds a lot of the original adobe structures that were erected over a hundred years ago. Rather fun for a guy that craves such things.

The show in Trinidad (at the Trinidad Brewery) went pretty well. It was outside, which was okay for the first set, but everyone's fingers started seizing up by the end of the second set. The crowd amazingly ebbed and flowed, even in the chilly night. Or maybe it's because they couldn't smoke inside. Either way, we at least enetertained the peoples when they came out. Interestingly enough, Trinidadians were fans of the slow songs. They wouldn't dance to anything fast, but they were all over anthing that they could stumble about slowly too. One guy actually requested such a song...on account that he couldn't dance. He was right, he couldn't. He nearly knocked over two tables during his one turn on the dance floor.

I'll get some photos up later this evening. Hope all is well.

cheers,
DF & SBSD

Friday, May 16, 2008

Snapshots from Arizona

We drop down into the next valley, on the road from Los Angeles to Flagstaff, Arizona. The mountains are red around us. Scattered throughout the valley floor are the roofs of houses and trailers, still tiny in the distance like whitecaps on a mottled brick-red sea. In a few hours we will be staring into the Grand Canyon, a gash in the earth so inconceivably immense that it must be a Hollywood set, an enormous painted backdrop. Look, the other side of the canyon is hazy, blurry. Even the high-def presentation of actual real life can't handle this scene.

Three days later we drive away from Phoenix, on an immaculately paved two-lane road laid like a carpet over the rolling land. This is the high desert, with grass and brush instead of dirt and cactusp; the elevation is 6000 feet, and everything is short. Anything of notice is lying below the horizon. No, there is a strange factory there in the distance, like a run-down Emerald City, but we are not getting any closer to it. We don't seem to be getting any closer to anything. Occasionally the road rolls enough that we can't see over the next hump, but inevitably it is the same.

As we grow nearer to New Mexico, the ground lifts up and exposes jagged rocks and dirt, a world of red and gray replacing the yellow and green of dried grass and scattered bushes and trees. Rain begins to fall, as if to fill the cracks in the earth and the crack in our windshield.

The sun has set. In the dark the world here is both more and less lonely. We now know there are other people out there, because the lights from their houses can be seen in the distance; in the daylight they would be invisible. But that's all that can be seen beyond our headlights. Looking off to the starboard side, I count ten specks of light in a sea of black. Oh, there's an eleventh. But, no, the first has disappeared. We haven't done almost any night driving on the tour so far, and it is a completely different feeling. It's harder to sleep, for me. At night I'm supposed to sleep in a bed.

- Chris