Oh man. Where do I start? Well I will certainly try to be brief with these as I can be. We drove from Van Horn, TX to Phoenix, AZ in about 9 hours. We forgot about the time zone change and got to the venue HOURS early. Surprise surprise huh? We hit up a dunkin donuts like I said and hit the wi-fi before load in. The show was a slight bust as the local band was one guy playing solo. Maybe 10 people there? The Rogue Bar is actually a cool venue to play and the staff + owner were super cool to us. They got us drinks and bought a few records. The doorgal got the record and told us what bands would be helpful to know next time Zoo Animal plays Phoenix. We stayed in Holly's family friend's guest house in Phoenix which was great because I finally got my own room. Of course...nothing against the band...but stretching out was pretty killer. Not to mention my shoulder was throbbing in pain when we were in the desert.
Alright...San Diego...perhaps my favorite U.S. city ever. PERFECT weather as the drive was sheer brutality on us and the van. Going up and down the hills on highway 8 made the van overheat for a quick second. Thankfully, it was only a slight scare. We arrived at Holly's sister's house in North Park and proceeded to get coffee and food at a Mexican joint. I phoned my Mom seeing if she'd send a message to my SD relatives and sure enough...two of my cousins (Mike and Joel) came out to the show. It had been at least ten years since I had last seen them. Another bonus was seeing my older brother's best friend from Edina, Chris Clarke, who I hadn't seen since Josh's wedding. We really didn't talk at his wedding so it really had been about 12 years since we really hung out. By hung out...I mean...he babysat me as a kid. I really enjoyed the show as the Soda Bar is a pretty cool venue and the bands were great. The first band had this guy Brandon in it who plays bass for Rooney. He was a solid dude to talk tour stuff with. Virgin Islands were a band from Seattle but we had a lot of mutual friends from MPLS: Erin Tate, Kruddler dudes, Jacy McIntosh, etc. He was in a Omaha band called The Cops. With a band name like that I think of Gus Johnson's commentary on Tennessee Titans RB Chris Johnson. "He's got GETTING AWAY FROM THE COPS SPEED". Hahahaa...I wish Gus was the announcer for this tour.
We had to be in LA at two pm for a radio interview in Silver Lake so we left SD early in the morning. Some wires got messed up and the radio thing was off so we walked around Santa Monica before the show. The record store (blanking on the name) was huge and two stories...and...had tons of people in there shopping for vinyl. Refreshing to see for sure! We finally got done walking around and made our way through the hellish L.A. traffic to get to our Long Beach show. I'm pretty sure the street we played on was the site for The Bluth Frozen Banana Stand in Arrested Development. We played a building literally 300 yards from the Queen Mary. The show was in a yacht club rented party room and while we had fun...we were for sure starting to miss home. I finally had my first alone time by walking the docks and calling Maija.
Scrambling to find a place to stay...I called my friend from MPLS who moved to Silverlake a few months ago. He was my boss years ago at CD Warehouse. Zero Selon is the name. He works on the set of the reality show "The Bachelor", and wasn't going to be home until 4am. He was cool enough to tell his roommates to unlock it for us. Unfortunately I only got to talk with him for about twenty minutes in the morning as we had to make our way to SF. We got our oil changed and headed for the city that plays host to DJ Tanner. I did text DJ and told her to come out to our show but she ignored me. Whatevs.
More to come...
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