In between records and tours

I'm enjoying fall. Last year at this time we were buried in a national tour leading out to CMJ and back. Those were good times for sure, but this year I find myself enjoying fall in Seattle. Leaves are falling, folks are putting on there warm clothes, and the coffee shops are hummin'.

Don't get me wrong, I love being out on the road. We just did a quick trip down to San Francisco this weekend and hit Bend, OR on the way out. These little "one off" tours are always a good time and help justify the investment I made in our 15 passenger Rodeo tour beast.

The drive to Bend was long, but well worth the trip. We played a new venue (for us) called The Black Horse Saloon. The Black Horse claims to be the largest biker friendly saloon in the Northwest. All I know is that Bend, Oregon has good people who love music and a bunch of them came out to our show.

We played a relatively sober first set, until people started bringing us shots of whiskey. Whiskey is an unpredictable thing for the Rodeo. It usually goes one of two ways. Either the audience is seasoned and interested in a big baptism. In this case we'll receive between 20 - 30 shots which is more than enough to share with the crowd. The baptism "is on" and I get the crowd drunk.

Or......, sometimes it happens like it did Saturday night. Good folks enjoying the show see a bunch of cowboys dressed in black and in the spirit of a good time, they bring us four or five shots at a time throughout the set. This can be a disaster, because it's just not enough whiskey to share with the audience. As a result, we're obligated to drink every shot. Wouldn't be polite to leave it sitting there. So the shots keep coming and we keep drinking. Shit happens I guess, and in this case the crowd kept drinking shot for shot and everyone in the club was blotto.

We played a full set of Rodeo standards, drank some more and at the request of the club, played a second drunk set. Everyone loved it, but damn it was tough to keep it together. Good thing the audience was wasted too.

Driving with a hangover is standard operating procedure on tour, but somehow we always manage to have some fun. Nothing like tuning into a "new country" radio station to get you in the spirit. Check out Ben on this one. I think he may have a future career opportunity with Keith Urban:

So anyhow, I won't bore you with the rest of the driving stories you've heard a million times before. Pretty much all revolves around eating, peeing, and buying/reading porn. We made it to San Francisco safely and blew it out big time at Amnesia. Tons of people came out and we played one of our best sets ever. I think I may have spotted a single tear on Sugar's cheek at the end of the set. Priceless!

So back to fall in Seattle. We've got a new album coming out in 2010 with a full length comic as an optional means of getting the MP-3 codes. We're mixing the record the first week of December. Simon Young and Jay Cynik are working hard on production of the comic book now. Here is a little teaser (Pages 1 & 7):


The new material is really good. Can't wait to get it out there, but it takes time to release a vinyl/comic /digital album. Believe me, it'll be worth the wait.