Pagosa Springs; still no new pictures. So freakin sue me, huh?

Today was spent pretty chilly; went for a hike up a nearby mountain, which was beautiful, but proved to be right underneath the flight path for gliders being towed up to altitude before being released from their tow lines. A rather majestic, though noisy, sight.

After that, rolled up to Pagosa Springs, where i would be playing at Kip's Bar and Grill, out on there patio. When I walked into the place, I was dumbfounded to discover that they were playing Todd Snider over the bar stereo. Fuckin crazy. Once again, good music at a bar I'd be playing at shortly, and once again it was the cook who got to choose it. Crazy; a trend I've not noticed anywhere else, that restaurants would let the cooks choose the tunes. Rather cool. Oh, this requires that I mention that at the Balcony, last night, Uncle Tupelo was playing over the house stereo when I got there; and during my set break, Wilco (Sky Blue Sky) got played - at the hands of, yes, the cook. Awesome. In both cases I gave them copies of my latest under the 1) assumption that, liking music I like, maybe they might perhaps like my music, too, and 2) hope that they might play it at the venue, should 1 pan out to be true.

The gig was awesome. People were receptive, responsive, and great. I love crowds in Colorado. Ended up getting asked to play a house party on Monday; actually, they were looking to have me do something tomorrow or Sunday, but I've got shows to play, and so the only possible date was Monday. Turns out the guy who approached me about it is from Sedona, and is hanging out with the guy who owns Oak Creek Brewery down there. Too funny. People were friendly, interested, bought CDs, and tipped well. Someone dropped a RMH cookie into the tip jar; I asked one of the waitresses, "Is this what I think it is?" and she said, simply, "Yes." Medical marijuana, alive and well in Colorado, changing the way people relate to intoxicants. Too funny.

There was one guy at the gig who looked kind of like a Hunter S. Thompson type - weirdly psychedelic mountain folk. I'm pretty sure he dropped the cookie in there.

Anyway, a satisfying and fun gig; which, I realize, makes for slightly less edgy blogging; but it made for a great night. Can only hope the trend continues.

An Eventful Departure, and Now Two Gigs In.

Well, well well. Here we are again. Oh my.

So leaving town was, somehow, once again... well, anyway.

One screwed up brake-job, two failed attempts to order the right part (third time's the charm!), one extra day spent home meticulously, obsessively organizing my crap for the tour, writing up flyers for every damned gig I'll be playing, and one strainedly, barely civil final conversation with Midas later (as I've said elsewhere, incompetent mechanics should be crushed for eternity in Satan's thorny sphincter), I'm on the road, in Durango. Two gigs later, and not enough pictures; none in Dolores, because the rechargables were dead in the camera, but several in Durango, which I've been far to uninterested in uploading onto the computer. Anyway; here it is.

I got on the road at almost exactly noon on Wednesday; which, if you do the math, and account for daylight savings time (laaaaaame; one thing I truly appreciate about Arizona is that it doesn't subscribe to changing the damned clocks twice a year), you will realize I had exactly five hours to make it to my appointed gig, set up, and begin playing. Hah.

300 miles, torrential rainstorms, and psychotic fellow motorists. All behind me; somehow, Google Maps had the distance listed as 280 miles, or is it just that the odometer is wrong on my car? Who the hell knows. Rolled into Dolores, which proved to be a delightful town; at least, what little of it I got to see, since I got to Colorado a day later than intended, and didn't get to hang in Dolores during the day as I'd intended. Ah, well, the vicissitudes of fate.

The Dolores River Brewery proved to be everything other people had purported that it was. (Oooh, that was a fun sentence). While I believe I erred in getting the pulled chicken sandwich rather than their wood-fired pizzas (duh. Maybe the wood-burning pizza oven should have been a clue), the atmosphere was great, the people were cool, and Billy and Deb (of the Porchlights) came out with a buncha folks and were listening attentively. In fact, they stayed around til the end of the night, which was awesome. Had a great time bullshitting with them, and talkin about "the biz". So insidery, it makes me sick, too. No, it was seriously great to hang out with them and talk to them; Deb hosted a local music show in Flagstaff nine years ago when I first got to town, and had me in on various guises a couple of times (once with Don't Feed the Bears, and once with Zen Bike Lock). Gave them several Song Walk CDs, and one of mine as well. The crowd was pretty big, and very responsive; there were tons of smiling, friendly faces. A great way to start a tour.

Packed up the gig, and headed out toward Durango that night; where I learned that finding your way into Durango is not necessarily easy. The main road runs around town, along the river, and you only have a couple of opportunities to cross into town, none of which really say anything like "Downtown Durango - turn here, jackass" (or they probably do, and I just missed them. I was sleepy). Passed out for 12 hours straight, woke up around the crack of noon, and screwed around, trading music, for a while; then borrowed a bike for a brief spin through Durango (the pedal of which fell off on the way back; imagine my embarassment. Turns out Travis had gotten it as a kit, and put it together himself; and hadn't, apparently, been quite so meticulous. At least, that's my story. Well, it was his story, too).

The Balcony was on... a balcony. Upstairs, a pretty long slog with lots of gear, particularly in light of my new, expanded merch and lighting setup. (I've been a busily creative little musician, I have. I'll doubtless post smug pictures of my somewhat slick, but more importantly highly compact and portable new display setup). There were a fair number of people there, pretty friendly; including a chain-smoking, whisky drinkin waitress from the local Denny's, complete with polo shirt, name tag, and - yes - apron. She was there with a cowboy who was the closest I've ever seen to a Sam Eliot look-alike - well, at least his mustache could have won a Sam Eliot's mustache look-alike contest. The staff were friendly, and gave me the most expensive thing on the menu without batting an eye (I think the fact that I don't drink, and had mentioned that I wouldn't be utilizing my free drinks, had some thing to do with that. Well, she told me it did). A combo barbecue platter, which was indeed awesome.

The gig there was a gruelling, 4 hour monstrosity; and for a crowd that, apparently, was more accustomed to seeing cover songs; and, perhaps more importantly, were so right on the beaten path (Durango being the largest town of some consequence near Mesa Verde National Park, and home to a college), that they had just enough of that big-city air, that they were inclined to clap politely, unenthusiastically, and grudgingly in most cases. I commented that they sounded all tuckered out. That's the tough thing about a gig like the one last night at the Dolores River Brewery - the people at the next show are rarely capable of showing the same kind of enthusiasm. Maybe it was just the crowd.

Anyway, after two songs, miss Denny's waitress (cigarette in hand) asks me if I play any Stevie Ray Vaughn. Now, my friends and many acquaintances know I can't stand that fucker; so I looked right at her, and just said, "no". Then she asked for Eric Clapton; again, now. I then proceeded to tell her my philosophy of performing, which is, I try to get the crowd to respond to my own music, and then work covers into the equation if I'm feelin like it. This is to say, I do whatever the fuck I want on stage. I didn't quite put it that way, but I think she got the point. Well, I did ask if she knew John Prine; when she said no (which, in a person of her years (I'm guessin around 50, plus or minus) is always a shock to hear. And it makes me lose some respect for them, or at least a desire for/interest in finding compromise. If John Prine ain't gonna do the job for you, then I'm pretty much stuck, there, and I'm not gonna work too hard to find an alternative.

Later, in between songs while I was talking to Travis, his girlfriend Jenny, and his buddy Louis, Ms. Grand-Royal-Slam yells, "Play some blues!" (by which she meant, something that would sound like Stevie Ray-ClapHendripoff). I said, "OK!" and proceeded to play The Sultan's Smile, which is definitely not blues, and could perhaps be termed jazzy, but not in a bluesy way. It's my way of handling requests; agree, then play whatever I want.

Abuse of power? Well, they had already agreed to pay me; the only real question would be, would they hire me back? Pertinent to that question being, did I care? The answer being, No! Fuck 'em. I only do this on my own terms these days; if I can't get away with playing just exactly what I want at these places, I don't bother to go back. There are plenty of joints that will hire me to do what I do, doing what I want to do; why should I do anything else? She was nice enough, just not imaginative, and not interested in seeing something new. Yer cigarette smoking, fiftyish alkie generally wants one thing from their music: familiarity. I am not that; and the sooner they can accept that, and move on with trying to get into what I'm up to, the better. She sat there and stared at me during that whole song, trying to figure out a way to call it blues. God only knows if she managed to. When I finished, I said "That was blues tune called The Sultan's Smile". Then moved on to play Cruel Water, which is also not particularly blueslike - though it does feature ninth chords. Which would be funky or jazzy. My point is, I was playing stuff that was fun, that I felt like playing, and so there you go, and people liked it, I believe. Did OK with the tip jar, though not as well as in Dolores. But that's the problem with a tourist place, which is what the Balcony is; there's always going to be a certain element of some hard-to-pin-down awkwardness about the whole thing. To tell the truth, I think that place owes much of its popularity to the fact that, being a patio place, you can smoke there; cause every damned person there, almost, was smoking like a fucking chimney. It was bugging me while I was onstage; I'm so used to playing indoors, or on patios where smoking is prohibited (thank you, Cafe Ole), that I am not used to having to deal with any cigarette smoke at all any more. Strange!

During the second set break I had a nice little chat with a fairly conservative, glassy-eyed couple from Ohio, near Columbus; I told them my Dad's family was from Columbus, and whatnot. They were highly complimentary, and we exchanged some stories. I had sung My Best Friend Used to Be, which was inspired by my moving out of a house because the new roommate and the one old roommate planned to conspire to get cable TV - an abomination I will not share shelter with. And so we talked a bit about what I didn't like about TV, and they sort-of-but-not-really made apologetic noises over being materialistic, and having TV (which was interesting, in that they basically immediately equated owning a TV with materialism. Which is not to say that they in any way were cognizant of the causal relationship which exists between those two things, i.e. that having and watching TV will make you more materialistic). They were nice enough, though when I mentioned that one of the lines was an oblique reference to the book of Revelation ("the beast with a billion flickering eyes is telling us all what to be"), adding the caveat that I was not religious at all (not bothering to get into the question of "spiritual" "mystical" "philosohpical", or "psychedelic"), they cooled noticeably cooled. (Don't talk to him, dear! He can't be saved!) Ah well.

After that, things were pretty slow; the sun was well-down, and it was getting rather chilly. Though the funny little awning/windshield/operashell looking thing behind and over the stage, combined with the stage lights, did a good job of keeping me a bit warmer than everyone else, I was a bit chilly by the end; that, coupled with the place being pretty empty by the time I got set up to do my last set, had me cut it short at 8:40 (twenty minutes early), and call it good.

Kip's Grill in Pagosa Springs tomorrow; which everyone tells me, is a great spot. Can't wait.