TrickyKid – Ween – Texas….The Oneness (Summer/2010)

 We pull up to the ol’ HOB in downtown Dallas, after checking into the W Hotel across the street, which for this camp is way too freaking fancy and not the vibe at all. The last time I was here with Ween was in 2007 and I snuck over to see Rush right before the show.
Actually had an opener for once on this leg, as the Meat Puppets  who were great every night. After they were done Kurt Kirkwood, Claude and I are standing outside smoking and I swear every person that walks by is someone I haven’t seen in 10 years, so every 5 minutes is another High School reunion.
We chill out upstairs for a bit, and Aaron is showing us a video of this crazy talented girl from Austin that sent him a video message via Facebook of her singing What Deaner Was Talking About. And says that he was so impressed that he invited her to come sing tomorrow night when we get to Austin. Someone is about to shit themselves.
Finally its showtime and the band hits stage –

During the show sidestage, I was joined by a motley little crew – as one of my best friends (and hands down the best guitar player I have ever seen) Neil and his fiancée came (I’m DJ’n their wedding next week) as well as my buddy Ziggy who I had hired to pass out fliers to the crowd promoting Claude’s upcoming Amandla dates here in Texas in a few weeks.
The band played a great (and long) show –

Pork Roll Egg And Cheese
Exactly Where I’m At
Spinal Meningitis
Gabrielle
Transdermal Celebration
Wavin’ My Dick In The Wind
Mr. Richard Smoker
Take Me Away
Bananas and Blow
Buckingham Green
Did You See Me?
Tick
Wayne’s Pet Youngin’
Sketches of Winkle
Object
What Deaner Was Talkin’ About
Roses Are Free
She’s Your Baby
Learnin’ To Live
My Own Bare Hands
Your Party
Let’s Dance (David Bowie cover)
Pandy Fackler
Ocean Man
Polka Dot Tail
The Mollusk

Encore:

Fiesta
You Fucked Up
Touch My Tooter
Homo Rainbow

Afterwards, we all headed to the upstairs dressing room sans Neil and his gal as they had to bail before the last song.
We hang up there for awhile before Gabe (Claude’s drum tech) comes with the van to take everyone to the hotel. We get there and everyone comes to Claude’s room. Mickey, Dreiwitz, this really hot, tattooed MMA fighter (that’s designing the cover for the Amandla record) and her boyfriend, and about 10 others. I plug in my Ipod, crank up the Prince and the party is in full swing. So much so that less than an hour into it, security is knocking on the door telling us to get out. Mickey is insisting that we all go to his room and keep rawking. You would think this kid had never seen a mini-bar before haha, he was like a kid in a candy store! – Asking for drink orders and just having a great time and things were starting to get a little out of hand. Not long, once again hotel security is bouncing us from the room. Some people we had just met invited us to their room as they had a large suite so we all proceeded to go there, only once we get there, they can’t gain entry as apparently their friends had locked them out. So upstairs to the pool it is (which Mickey turns into a race!)
Everyone jumps into the pool with their clothes on, on the 20th floor of the W Hotel at 5am. Everyone that is, except for me, Claude and a few others. This one girl was innocently chatting Claude up when he calls for my attention and insists that I meet her. I realize soon that she’s the girl who’s room we tried to enter but could not.
We have a nice conversation, but its clear that this girl is quite intoxicated, so much so that she is in total crisis mode of how she is going to get back into her room as just the task of going down to the lobby and asking for a new key was too much to undertake (in her opinion) in her current condition. So she asks for my help and I oblige her. This is where shit gets downright comical. I walk her down to the lobby and she is holding on to me for support but if I was the clerk I would have thought that someone was holding this girl at gunpoint. The whole thing felt so suspicious, and he was asking her basic questions to verify her identity to which she was so fucked up, she temporarily didn’t know the answers to. I was just trying to improvise as everytime he would ask her a question, I would try to answer, though I had no clue what the answers really were. This girl’s eyes were about to roll back in her head, but somehow, the clerk, exasperated, gave up and gave us the key.
We go back up to her room, when she discovers that now, she has lost her purse. This girl is a disaster I’m thinking! but she was nice and I wanted to make sure she made it to her room ok. We finally get there, to discover a small, but pretty wild party in full swing, and their room was RIDICULOUS, I’d never seen anything like it, their balcony, no shit was larger than the previous entire room. I didn’t stay long, as it was really late, and had to get to Austin the next day. This crew was going as well, so we all exchanged numbers with plans to meet up in Austin.

Ween – August 28th – Stubb’s BBQ – Austin,TX  

So in a flash, cause I don’t even remember the ride,make it to Austin, and before I can say poof the Meat Puppets are already onstage.

Since this was the last night, I had picked up a rental car cause I was gonna stay in Austin for a few days as Amandla was going to have rehearsals here before that tour starts in a few days.
Ween at Stubb’s has become more than a concert, as it is a right of passage – it really does boil down to this. Their is something about the Austin sensibility and the Ween irreverence that have conjoined as one and they are bigger in this town than anywhere else they play, even in their own hometown. They have several live albums that were recorded here, as no fan base for this band in any other city is more rabid. Its really just become a part of the landscape, an exclamation point at the end of the sentence, so it goes without saying that their is a certain pressure when playing here, that at the same time is met with an overwhelming excitement that seems to relieve it.

My buddy Sam who is from Austin but now lives in Los Angeles and where I stay when I’m out West came as well. Tonight my hetero-lifemate Matt and his friend were on Amandla flier detail, and speaking of Sam, I hadn’t seen him since April when I took him to Coachella, where he introduced me to a friend of his, and when he couldn’t go the second day (technically the 3rd) I gave his pass to her and we hung out all day and had a great time.
The band takes stage and the place goes absolutely batshit! The special-ness was in the air and you could feel it.

To get to this perspective, you have to walk upstairs in this tunnel that is literally pitch black, can’t see your hand in front of your face. and then their is a small opening that people crowd to be able to see. Right next to us was this girl, that was overtly excited and I quickly learned why as THIS was the girl that Aaron had shown us the video of last night in Dallas. He calls her out to sing Freedom of ’76 which she nails perfectly! A great moment for her and yet another notch in the annals of storytelling of Ween at Stubb’s. The anticipation for a “moment” was high and here it was.

The HIV Song
The Golden Eel
Baby Bitch Play
Bananas and Blow
Piss Up A Rope
Learnin’ To Live
With My Own Bare Hands
Take Me Away
Transdermal Celebration
Gabrielle
Stroker Ace
Voodoo Lady
Kiss (Prince cover)
Mutilated Lips
Buckingham Green
Booze Me Up & Get Me High
Touch My Tooter
Mr. Richard Smoker
Johnny On The Spot
Even If You Don’t
Freedom of ’76 (with Sarah Jones)
Let’s Dance (David Bowie cover)
Your Party
Woman & Man
The Mollusk
Spinal Meningitis

Encore:

Fiesta
Sorry Charlie
Ohio (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young cover)
Roses Are Free

The end of the show comes, and its right at midnight which meant it was now Claude’s birthday, and I thought Glenn was gonna play him out with some Happy Birthday on the keyboards, but he didn’t do it (or forgot).
We goof off for a bit with some of the dudes in the Moistboyz who are hanging, before heading off to the Parish. The guy that owns it, is a good friend of ours and promised to keep it open for us for Claude’s birthday.
So we make the trek and I text everyone to meet us there and while sloshing thru the madness of 6th street Saturday night, I run into a girl I hadn’t seen in years and her friends who I didn’t even know were into Ween, let alone so much so that they had come all the way down from Dallas to see this show. I tell her where we are going and why and invite them to join us. This was a good decision as they basically were the party and the ones that administered Claude’s birthday spankings.
They close us down, but Claude wants to keep rawking. These 5 dudes had been up on his nuts all night, one of them looked like David Cross, they were offering us all this awesome shit, to any sober person, sounded like a pile of bullshit. Claude was in no shape to make these deciphers so as they are giving us all these directions I”m yeah, yeahing them trying to lose them, but David Cross insists on riding with us to ensure that we don’t lose them (namely him). We get to my rental car and I give Claude his birthday present, a bad ass Miles Davis boxset.
Come to find out Cross and his friends live way out past Parmer and the awesome night of hi-jinx they promised, turned into us sitting around this dilapidated apartment drinking actual moonshine mixed with apple juice out of mason jars, while this dude is breaking off a large piece of hash to pass around. Thankfully for Claude I don’t partake as he would not have had a ride home this evening.
I wanted to leave the minute we got there but Claude was enjoying himself and it was his birthday so I let it go. Finally at almost 6am, I made a move for the door as we headed back downtown for the hotel. He and I had one of our deep conversations that can only seem to take place in those wee hours at night.

Claude Coleman Jr’s Birthday Bash – Lustre Pearl – Austin, TX – August 29th

So after trying to recover from the debauchery of the last 3 nights, we get an early start on the action as Mr. Coleman is celebrating his birthday (which is actually today, though we got a head start last night) today at this fun little spot in Austin, that has a great courtyard in the back with ping pong tables and stuff. Drewitz and crew came on thru as well as the Moistboyz and we enjoyed a lazy day catching a day buzz, playing ping pong and telling great stories.

We have a fun day, and laughing and quoting Eastbound & Down, but now we are hungry.  Matt and I are the only ones it appears ready to eat. He suggests this ill little Indian place across the street.
He and I go to eat, and then their is another spot on the way that he wants to stop off and have a drink,  We hang out there waaaayyy too long before Claude calls me and asks where I am. I tell Matt we gotta split and that takes forever, and then we make it across the street and retrieve Claude.
I tell him whether he likes it or not, that we are going dancing and that’s that. The last several times I’ve been in Austin, Matt has taken me to Barbarella where consistently, we have had the most unforgettable times so naturally I wanted to go there. He warned that Sunday night it would be super dead and it was. So we opted for the Elysium where it was 80s Goth Night haha, you should have seen Claude’s face.
I tried to hang with him at the bar, but he just seemed to be in a funk and a bit loaded. Fuck it, Matt and I hit the dance floor. It gets close to closing time, when Matt suggests that we hit Barbarella right before closing. We grab Claude and get over and we are the ONLY people there. So a request won’t be hard to get right? I tell the DJ to rawk Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall as it was also MJs birthday today and I know that all 3 of us love that song. The minute the first beat hits, I can’t fucking believe Claude after refusing to dance, comes running out on the dance floor and starts finally loosening up for his birthday. We got the DJ to do whatever we wanted after that – we ran Hall & Oates You Make my Dreams and tons of other favorites and had the occasional straggler that mosied on in out there with us till the place closed down.
Now sometimes Claude gets these bizarre ideas in his head that you can’t talk him out of. His fierce independent streak and stubbornness will having you throwing your hands up in defeat, as we were leaving the club he his fucking fixated on getting some money out of an ATM – why? I have no idea, it was after two and nowhere to go but to call it a night. So we stroll towards 6th St, and he spots one in front of Emo’s. As Matt and I are just chatting while he’s getting his money, I hear him cursing at the machine like Yosemite Sam, so I look over to discover Claude urinating on the ATM machine in retaliation!!

Ok I gotta get this kid to bed before anything else happens. We make it to the car and he’s screaming that he’s hungry so we hit the Taco Cabana off Guadalupe and head to drop him off at the hotel (I’m staying at Matt’s tonight) when we get to the hotel, he has no idea why we are there and suspects that we have another party to get to and seems disappointed to be at the hotel. I finally get his ass inside and say goodnight. We go back to Matt’s place and hang, play records, watch Beverly Hills Cop and just have a general fucking blast. At the end of the evening, Matt goes outside to get his cat in for the night, when he comes rushing in like he just saw Jason fucking Vorhees, with his face flushed, he says “your not gonna believe what the fuck I just found outside in the woods!!” and holds THIS up –

Amandla – September 3rd  – Double Wide – Dallas, TX

So Chip and “Pistol” Pete Kaufmann, who round out Amandla, came into Austin for a few days of rehearsals, while I retreated to Dallas, to attend and DJ a friend’s wedding and chill for a few days before the next leg began. I meet the gang at the venue for soundcheck. I was excited about tonight because now it was just the four of us and it always feels special. I had put this whole tour together and it was starting tonight in my hometown with all my friends there and I enlisted some great people to join us. Opening were Here Holy Spain and Record Hop, two of my faves and who’s members are some of my best friends.

First was the ‘Spain who killed as always –

followed by Record Hop whose drummer Tony Wann is one of the best I’ve ever seen and is also one of my oldest and dearest friends, so having us all together was a great moment for me.

That vibe continued as Claude, started the set with a really nice shout-out to me, and extended genuine gratitude about our friendship and the work I had done to get us all here.
Then he got the show rolling and it was a great start and was happy that so many people had come out to support and see what I have been talking about for almost four years.

We had 230 people thru the door and was a great night. I get everyone back to the hotel and say goodnight – first night down. Here is a great poster of the event designed by John Paul Hossley –

Amandla – September 4th  – Haileys – Denton, TX

 Claude and Pete showed up at my house (Chip was hanging with a friend and was meeting us in Denton later tonight) early enough. We had a fun day of lounging around, watching documentaries on the Police, napping and when they woke up, treated them to one hell of a meal. They were in my family’s home in my hometown and I wanted to give them a meal they would remember, so I rustled up a righteous crawfish boil, complete with shrimp, potatoes, corn and sausage, the works. We then slept that off and headed to Denton.
Ok, so I had pretty big hopes for this show, as since Denton suffers from Austin envy, and Austin worships Ween, their was a good chance that their was gonna be alot of love at this show. It was a Saturday night, no one in Denton owns a fucking car so I know that they were not at the show last night in Dallas, so this was gonna be good right? Dead fucking wrong, and the temptation to burn this place to the ground was almost too irresistible. One fuckup after another by this place and suddenly I would go into a trance a la Drew Barrymore in fucking Firestarter. Let’s go thru everything that went wrong with this show and this club –

1) They didn’t do anything to promote this – not even put the name on the marquee, on their website – nothing.
2)  The soundguy was TWO HOURS LATE!!
3) Out of spite or some other agenda, someone here had told our openers that the show was canceled.

This was only the beginning of the insanity – let’s start with securing the openers:
Before the Ween tour started I flew into Fort Worth a few weeks back for a memorial for an old, dear friend of mine, Kelly Parker, whose influence on the local music scene here had become legendary over the years, so it was a who’s who of musicians at his remembrance. I run into an old acquaintance, Quincy from a popular local band Dovehunter and offer him the slot right their on the spot. He calls me a few later, very excited about doing the show etc, only to call me just a few days before the show to tell me that they can’t do it. In his defense, he had referred several people to me to pick up the slack. After going thru no less than five more confirmations, then cancellations, I get a call from Daniel Huffman who’s all keyed up about doing the show with his new outfit, The New Fumes.  I meet him  at the Amandla Dallas gig, where he tells me (the night before the show) that he can’t do it as, his new project isn’t quite ready yet, but he too has some sure-fire replacements. Regina Challew calls me up by Daniel’s recommendation and is interested in playing. I had remembered seeing Regina play with Ruby and a few local favorites like Captain Audio, who became the Secret Machines of Captain Audio, and then without her, just the Secret Machines, who went on to global acclaim (a point that I’m not so sure she has entirely reconciled). Anyway, hey it was somebody and someone I had heard of so I told her to bring it on.

As I was having a smoke outside, she arrives, with this girl in-tow and Regina was really cool too, so my mood began to lighten. I helped them load in, and they were not only commiserative of the misgivings of the club but also supportive of my intent to burn it to the ground. So sisters-in-arms as it were and we certainly had plenty of time to hang and shoot the shit as I previously mentioned the soundman’s unacceptable tardiness.

After waiting over two fucking hours after the show was supposed to start the soundman finally arrives and the show starts with one of the dudes from Dovehunter doing a cool, noisy little solo thing.

It was now Regina’s turn and Jenn was going to sing backup on a few songs. Regina does a couple of numbers that I thought were cool and then Jenn joins her but I couldn’t hear her voice…like at all…so the next time its her turn to sing I listened intently and still nothing. She comes up to me after, while Regina is still onstage playing and says, “I don’t think that mic was on at all”. I head to the soundbooth to confront this tardy motherfucker and drum…roll…please…, the motherfucker was SLEEPING!!! – I am not kidding and gawd I wish I had taken a picture. I was filled was visions of arson and pillage. I went to retrieve the production manager/bartender and led him to what we saw so he could see firsthand that the guy was asleep. He wasn’t embarrassed, made no apology and even seemed amused that this had happened. Burn Motherfucker Burn.

So it was finally our turn to get up there, as it was well after midnight and their was seriously something like 20 people there. Claude is good at making sleepers like this pretty fun and uses them as just a live practice. He’s got that in-between-song stand up comedian thing down flat and its easier with a small intimate group, and the ones that were there, were very appreciative.

Pic of Amandla in Denton

Then after the show, the club does NOTHING to offer us any sort of compensation for them dropping the ball so hard on us, not one dime. We all head back to Fort Worth to crash.

Amandla – September 5th – Rudyard’s – Houston, TX – 

Just when I think last night’s shit couldn’t get any worse, the depression was just starting to get deep. We wake up, and my family treats us all to wonderful brunch. It was great to see Claude talking music with my mom and them laughing together. Chip was still at a friend’s house. Now Houston is my least favorite city in Texas (and one of my least fave in America) so going there is never really anything anticipatory. We also had a few planning issues as the car Claude had rented for the drive up from Austin and to do the tour in was too small to fit everyone in with the equipment I had rented. So I had to call down to Houston and secure some more equipment so we could all make the trek. While I was busy with this, their was some confusion as to when we were going to pick up Chip as we really couldn’t until the equipment was secured. Once that was done I drove 90 mins round trip to retrieve him, and let me tell you the ride back was pretty tense. He had been waiting for almost 2 hrs in some pretty severe heat, so I don’t blame his temper.
So we are all together and are off to Houston. This ride wasn’t much more comfortable than the ride with Chip, I guess last night’s bullshit was still ringing,
We get to Houston and get checked in and head to the venue – to discover that they had not used any of the posters I had sent (I actually found them behind the bar) and they had booked two DEATH METAL bands to go on before us, one of whose equipment we were gonna be using.
This place we discover is largely a restaurant and the owner, at the very least, treated us to dinner, which we knew was going to be the only highlight of the evening. During dinner I look in the paper to see that they had made a mistake and listed us as playing here tomorrow night – I can’t catch a fucking break.
And now we had to sit through two shitty Metal bands (one had a really insane name that I wish I could remember).
By the time Amandla gets on their is less than 15 people in the room, most of whom I recruited from downstairs to come watch. Just depressing.

Their were two cute foreign exchange students that sat with me during the show. They could barely speak English and were only being polite but we had fun talking with them after the show. The one that could speak a bit of English was from Peru, and the other I think from Korea, who couldn’t speak any English, and had just arrived in the States, and now she’s hanging with these freaks. So we sat and had the kind of conversation you would expect, observations about the difference in our cultures, etc. Some people showed up and recognized Claude and some said they thought we were playing tomorrow and others didn’t know we were playing at all, which I have no choice to take some responsibility for. We get back to the hotel after unsuccessfully trying to find something to eat and crash.

Amandla – September 6th  – Beauty Bar- Austin, TX 

Ok so this should be an easy day as its a quick jaunt over to Austin and though sadly its the last day of a holiday weekend and everyone has to be at work tomorrow, we were still hoping for a bit of a turnout. Also our buddy Nick Oliveri (QOTSA/Kyuss/The Dwarves/Mondo Generator) was meeting us in Austin too. He’s going to join us for the Moistboyz run we are doing next week.
We get to Austin and get loaded in – I was hoping for a guest tonight, as I had been in contact with Jenn from the Denton show pretty much non-stop from a few nights ago and she said she might come down for the show to see me, but called and said she was unable to make it.
Since we were just here with Ween, I knew the show was fresh in alot of people’s minds so I was confident that we would have a good show tonight.
I forget the openers’ names, but they were good and really cool, and the staff at the Beauty Bar treated us really well, (Matt also works here too). Their was still the situation with the bass amp, and thankfully our buddy Jeff Pinkus from the Butthole Surfers (who is also joining the Moistboyz trek) came thru.
Check out the photo below – I hope that the gravity of two brothers playing in a funk band with a bass amp that says Honky (Pinkus’ other band) on it, isn’t lost on anyone.

This was a good show and was well attended by a very enthusiastic crowd – Austin freaking loves Ween, so it was good to see. Sara Jones, the girl from the Ween show the other night got up and sang Little Jimmy with Claude and it was another great moment. Great having Oliveri, Pinkus, Guy and my main man Steven, all from the Moistboyz there along with about 100 others. Glad that this little jaunt had ended as well as it began.
After the show Sara Jones had invited us to come party at her place – remember the dude I was talking about the night of the Austin Ween show at Claude’s little birthday thing that got in the car with us to ensure that we were gonna hang with him and his friends? Well apparently that dude (as he constantly reminded us) had done a gig on bass for the Moistboyz at some point and he was on us again tonight like white on rice. We went to go drop some stuff off at the hotel first before following Sara to her place and I look over and this dude is following us on his motorcycle…creepy.
We get to Sara’s, who is a gracious host and treats us to some great Scotch. Claude was taken aback as he knows that sipping on straight liquor ain’t really my scene, but this shit was good and he and I had a good time.
The night ends with Chip getting sick and us trying to stay out of the rain and shaking motorcycle dude loose, who even followed us back to the hotel. Chip and Pete were catching a plane back to New Jersey in a few hours, out of San Antonio so we had to get a car service that would pick them up and take them that far. We say goodbye, and tell Claude I will see him in a few days back in Fort Worth.

The Moistboyz  – September 9th – Lola’s – Ft Worth, TX 

Ok so I went to Fort Worth for a few days while the band was rehearsing to complete this trifecta of Ween-goodness and to get ready for opening night. Boy this was fucking easy, when I pulled up to Lola’s I found out the show was already sold out to the max (where were you fuckers the other night in Denton?).
And let me tell you something, the brownest of the brown were out for this show, and the place was fucking moist. Their had been a tornado reported in the area earlier but it did nothing to detract from nor compare to the tornado inside.
I hadn’t really seen Oliveri in almost three years, so it was great that we had a chance to catch up and have some great laughs.
Anyway, its now showtime, and the place is fucking packed. These fuckers are rowdy and ready for the band to bring the ruckus, and that’s exactly what they do.

However, Claude, who is notoriously one of the hardest hitting drummers in the game, is playing on this set that I think his Ween drum tech, Gabe had brought down, but I don’t know where the hardware came from, but the hats were not in good shape and were constantly coming apart (sometimes several times in a song) and suddenly I’m on stage detail putting them back together. Claude and I shared a funny moment when I’m fixing one part of the set, he’s trashing the other and then back again, like an episode of I Love Lucy. I was having to do it from the front of the stage that was packed so it made it a little difficult. Also theirs a dude, that I can oddly say that I equally know and don’t know at the foot of the stage being totally annoying. Meaning that, this kid and I have because of growing up in the same small town, interested in the music scene, crossed paths at least 3 times a year for the past 15 years.
Well here is how our rapport usually goes: (this is largely pre move to NYC)
I go to a show – I see him from across the room.
I prepare for his eventual hello and do my best to keep it brief and spare myself his ramblings.
I resign myself that I have no real control over this matter and its only in the fate of the level of alcohol he has consumed that evening.
I spend good portion of show with him talking in my ear, only to later wonder what keeps me from telling him to fuck off.

On this evening his alcohol consumption made this task easier to do, but even more painful to endure, especially when this little snot was actually taunting Guy. If you have seen Guy, let alone know him, its almost immediately clear that this is an unwise thing to do especially for this little piss-ant who I’m praying that his folly I’ve been the victim of for over ten years will suddenly come to a crashing halt by one swift impalement from Guy’s mic stand.
Well Bozo the Clown takes it upon himself to try to take Steven’s boom mic stand and address the band. I was standing right next to him and immediately diffused the situation, again somehow without my fists (or Guys’) coming into play.

The show was a fun, raucous affair and the after-party was even more of a cluster-fuck.
Some guys at the show had promised us some after-hours speakeasy kinda shit, that turned into a convoy circling downtown Fort Worth on a wild fucking goose chase, that almost ended in a fight, us against them.
When we finally made it to a friend of Oliveri’s, it was the funniest yet most pathetic thing you could picture. All of us sitting on the porch of this rundown house eating Jack N The Box tacos out of the sack, and this really heavy-set girl that was as drunk and country and she was fat was the entertainment. Apparently she had taken a real liking to Pinkus, who is one of the funniest motherfuckers I know, and the laughter was uproarious. Just those weird things that happen on tour. Claude found a book on Astrology that he and I were taking turns improving the words from and inserting our own prophecies in hilarious detail much to the delight of our closely knit court. Good times.

The Moistboyz  – September 10th – Red Eyed Fly- Austin, TX  

So the crew get to Austin first thing in the morning but I don’t get there till late afternoon. I went back to my family’s house last night, to get some sleep and to retain a bit of my sanity. I meet up with the gang and we decide on Stubb’s for dinner which is across the street. Oliveri and I had another great talk and we all had a great meal and told a bunch of fun stories. We make it to soundcheck and immediately the club is giving us shit about the guest list and a slew of other unnecessary things. Austin is one of the most hospitable towns and not to mention largely the hometown of 3 of these 5 guys, so I had no idea where this shit was coming from, and they basically gave us an ultimatum that they cut our list or our pay, so their were a lot of people we invited that we had to embarrassingly tell that we didn’t have a list.
The bartender wouldn’t even give us drinks, and I was standing right next to the stage and he didn’t trust that I was giving the drinks to the band, just that kind of shit all night from these dudes.
But the place was another sell out and the full house was ready to rawk, and you could tell this being hometown for Stephen that he was ready to make an impression.

Pic of Moistboyz in Austin

Some friends of mine from Dallas had come down to see Sleep, who were playing a few blocks away and came over after to hang with me. All night long my phone was doing weird shit, and at one point it just froze, produced a weird screen I’d never seen before that I couldn’t alter no matter what I tried. I had half of the club and everyone in the band trying to solve this fucking mystery with no results.
Afterwards again we all went in a different direction with most going to Pinkus’ place. I was exhausted and went to Matt’s place for a party.
Look at how disabling nostalgia can be –

The Moistboyz  – September 11th – Numbers – Houston, TX  

This show was a crazy sell out and a befitting end to a short but sweet little run – for Claude and I, it concluded a month of shows in Texas with three different bands, tons of friends, lots of laughs – and years off our lives.

Photos –

Roy Turner
Jeff Barringer
Nicole Laca
Matthew Beamesderfer