I can't believe we're back already (and it's been 3 weeks!)... So much planning ahead and anticipation and all and bam, it's already over! It sure was a fuck load of work to put together and to keep things running smooth on the road. But was it worth it in the end? You bet!
The tour started off with 2 pretty packed awesome gigs in LA. One with The Clorox Girls at Five Stars Bar and one with Muck and The Mires / Lords of Altamont at the Redwood's. All these bands are really, really good, both live and on recording! You gotta check them out if you're not on top of it. So I guess we had one too many beers at some point because I remember we had all these plans to do a bunch of stuff on Sunday after the Muck/Lords show, but we ended up going to a baseball game instead because we were too hungover to do anything else.. Luckily, we had a few days off before heading north, so we still got to do a lot; surfing malibu and venice, eating burritos, people watching on the dogtown boardwalk, tourist shit... Oh! Cristabel and Frankie, you rule. Thanks for the good times.
The Santa Cruz / Davis /SF part of the tour was pretty good in general. The Davis house party show was definitely the highlight of that part. The Poonteens were great hosts and they put together an awesome night for us so we were really stoked to be there! Santa Cruz is awesome. This is where the southern palm trees meet the northern style coniferous climate. Interesting shit huh? SC is also home of Taqueria Vallarta if you didn't know: the best cheapest biggest burrito joint I've ever seen. Wish we got to spend more time in SC..
Pacific Northwest! Portland is the shit!! We played a show, which was organized by Ken at Dirtnap Records / Green Noise, at a place called the Know. Really cool venue and staff. The scene / people there reminded me a lot of what goes on in Ottawa these days. A bunch of really nice and ultra stoked people who love their punk, powerpop, etc. We met a lot of cool dudes; the mean jeans crew and friends, pat (who recorded the exploding hearts, the lovvers, clorox girls, etc), the cuntifiers, night gown, etc, etc! I also bought The Yolks LP (which absolutely fucking rules) at the Green Noise store. Ken knows how to run a good shop; no classic dead wood in the racks there. A true punk's paradise.
Can you believe grunge is still alive and apparently well in Seattle? I even saw a guy that looked like Geddy Lee. I know Giddy Leeee isn't grunge, but you have to be an uber-grunge if you're young and looking like the Rush half-man, half-wtf in 2010. Anyways, fun times and average show in Seattle (too many bands playing for too long i guess). The Cute Lepers were out of town so we didn't get to hang with our friend Stevie Kicks so that was too bad.. but we hung out with some of his friends and they were awesome.
The Victoria show was a lot of fun! Awesome crowd and cool place. Glad we got to meet the booker (Tiemen) who seems to know and love his punk! Check out his new record shop if you're in Victoria: Talk's Cheap.
Vancouver. We couldn't have asked for a better tour closing show. We got to play and see the Tranzmitors who absolutely killed it that night. Solid band writing solid songs.. Live, it sounds like the Buzzcocks covering the Jam. Alonside the Statues and some Ottawa bands, they're definitely one of the few top shelf bands in Canada. They have to come out east soon. Anyways, the show went well, our merch dude - jay - was really drunk and we didn't get to sleep at all before we took the plane back to Montreal at 8am.... We were green zombies when we got to Montreal. Braaaaains.
We didn't kill each other in the end so we're looking forward to our next road trip, hopefully in Europe in the Fall 2010!
