Summer of ’08 was an eventful one for us, taking us from one coast to the other in a short period of chronological time. We ran as much vegetable oil in our bus as we could, engaging in many interesting conversations with folks about it, and also saving mad cash. The West Coast tour was a string of amazing shows mostly at outdoor festivals and the weather never washed us out. We also made it back to New York City, where we’re most likely returning this fall. Looking forward to the summer of ’09 already.
Wild Hare this week, East Coast tour on the horizon
We retrieved our bus this last weekend from the post WestCoast tour storage in Colorado after performing at the Carbondale Mountain Fair–a truly awesome time for the band. It’s getting harder to leave these western states, but we still like coming back to Chicago after these jaunts. No worries for the homies.
We’re performing Tuesday night (July 29th) at a fundraiser for One World Africa along with Zeleke and Funkadesi at the Wild Hare in Wrigleyville. Starting around 11pm ourselves, but don’t miss these other guys either. We have a few guests joining us including local hip hop artist Antar. Don’t miss it folks!
Back from the West
Our big summer tour has brought us safely back to Chicago with a lot of crazy tales to tell. We put about 5500 miles behind us with stops all over the western US along the way. There was a string of festival dates to kick things off with a few club stops scattered here and there. Our Salt Lake City arts festival gig was completely off the hook, to name one, but our shows in MIchigan, Idaho, Montana, and southern Utah (Cedar City) were also super memorable on the way out west. The weather was basically perfect the entire time save for the haze and smoke created by the extensive forest fires in California. We spent four days at the High Sierra Music Festival in Quincy, CA with two performances–a late night set and an afternoon slot on the main stage.
At High Sierra we had a few impromptu jams with some of the members of Gamelan X and Sambada at the bus camp as well as a slew of percussion jams sitting on the back of our gear trailer. Other stops in California included a great show at Yoshi’s in San Fran where we loaded up on Sushi and a little waste veggie oil fuel for the bus, and stops at Temple Bar in LA where Jason Thor (trombonist virtuoso) joined us, and a show at Winstons in Oean Beach, San Diego. The band also stopped in for a show at a great venue in Crystal Bay, Nevada on Lake Tahoe at the Crystal Bay Casino. We rendezvous’ed with our good friends from Chicago-based 56 Hope Road in Denver at Cervantes Ballroom before playing a great ‘finale’ show at one of our favorite clubs to play anywhere–the Fox Theater in Boulder, CO.
A lot of hard work went into keeping us rolling along, much of which revolved around the many ‘Veggie Quests’ we emparked upon, i.e. trolling alleys for sources of veggie oil fuel for our bus. We scored over 500 gallons worth of essentially free, low emission, low socio-political-environmental impact ‘recycled’ fuel. And we’re looking for someone to design our band veggie oil fueling team suits, so drop us a line if you have any ideas. I’m thinking rubber shirts / pants (or jumpsuits) with our logo on them and some clear plastic tubes wound around them maybe with oil permanently trapped inside (but I’ve been on the road for while and can’t trust my own thoughts).
We have a show at Duffy’s on Tuesday July 15th that is free, and (get THIS) giving away free draft beer from 7 to 9pm before we hit at 10pm. Duffy’s is in Lincoln Park in Chicago at Sheridan and Diversey St. In a few weeks, we’re back to Colorado to get our bus and play in Carbondale, Colorado.
Thanks again to our Western States fans for a great summer tour.