Sleep deprivation and misery rewarded with a caramel treat

Touring is hard work and doesn't always go as planned. Today was no exception. The Rodeo had to be in San Francisco for a 7pm load in at Pissed Off Pete's. This would mean a 6:30AM wake up call following our 2:30 AM check in at the Jupiter Hotel. I was up until 3:30 AM, so I got a good solid 3 hours of beauty rest. Par for the course.

Before leaving the Jupiter, I produced a heavy piece of journalism for the West Seattle Fun Blog:

http://www.westseattlefunblog.com/videos/from-the-field-brent-amaker-is-tired-feeling-emotionally-raped-during-first-leg-of-mini-tour

Can you tell I got my beauty rest?

Lucky for me Ben Strehle and Sugar McGuinn like to drive. I headed straight to the back of the Rodeo van and slept for another 3 hours. Thank you Ben. Thank you Sugar. I am older than you and I gratefully accept your display of respect. Now shut up and drive 9 more hours!

We stopped for a rest and I tried to catch Ben as he was sending top secret messages to one of his operatives. No such luck:



We've done this drive before. It's a beautiful drive, but now it's starting to all look the same. When I first moved to the West Coast I was in awe of the beauty here. It's still beautiful now, but something about the repetition of the route has robbed me of what I first saw. Damn, that sucks. Maybe I need to spend more time touring the Red states. Maybe I need another mid-west tour so I can appreciate the West as a virgin. Maybe I'm just hung over.

Regardless, the drive got done and we made it to the bay area just in time. Just in time to get shafted! We rolled in to Pissed Off Pete's, sat down for a beer and found there would not be a show tonight. What the fuck? Are you kidding me? Ben and Sugar just drove 12 hours on three hours of sleep. Tiny Dancer is popping pain pills and hobbling around on crutches so he can play this show. Brian gave up canned tuna for a week so he could be in shape to play drums. No show? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

Turns out we got caught in the middle of a massive booking vendetta at Pissed Off Pete's. Whoever booked our show is no longer booking this bar. Apparently they booked a bunch of weekends and some of the prior bands didn't show. In and act of retaliation, Pete got Pissed Off and pulled the plug on future shows. Only problem was that no one told us the show was canceled. Pete was not budging and there was no chance of us playing our gig. What a drag.

One of the patrons reached out to us in an act of sympathy. She felt horrible about what had happened and shared that this had been happening to bands for the past few weeks. In an act of mercy she wanted to give us something to make us feel better. She offered me a chunk of bay area hash. I know San Francisco is famous for it's herbal goodies, but hash wasn't exactly what I needed at the moment. I declined. She was persistent and wanted to give me something. She reached in her pocket and told me the only other thing she could offer was her last caramel. I accepted and thanked her for her generosity. It was a little smashed, but so was I. I was touched that she would give me her last caramel. I think I'll eat it before I go to sleep tonight.



The only thing we could do at this point was feed our disappointment. We trotted across the street and grabbed some Mission district Mexican food. I captured a few seconds of the scene:



Well fuck it. Shit don't always work out. I was really looking forward to meeting George from Terrorbird (the P.R. firm for our new release) at our show. Since the show was canceled, we decided to bring the Rodeo to George. We packed up and got out of San Francisco and headed across the bridge to Oakland. George lives in Oakland and we would have drinks with him and crash. Now I'm sitting in my room waiting to meet up. I'll fill you in on the rest later. Hoping for 4 hours of sleep tonight. Giddy up.

Brent