We are pretty much still recovering from San Diego and Riverside today. It’s been a couple day’s worth of recovery. Where are we again? Oh yes – Medford and we are on our way home.

Kimo’s in San Francisco

TSR hold a special place in our hearts. Let us start there, and then go on to say that they are some of the coolest dudes to hang out with – extremely generous and a pretty damn good band to boot. We stayed with James at his palace in SF this time around (thanks, dude). We headed out with James and Lindsay after the show and drank at a local bar until they kicked us out. THEN, it was back to James’ place for some Jameson. We simply could not refuse delicious Irish Whiskey. Again, possibly not great decision making as we pretty much ensured that James wasn’t to work on time the next morning

We got up and hung out for a while down by the water and ponied up the van on the way to Medford…

Comin’ down the mountain

The mountains just south of Ashland & I have a sordid past. Let’s just leave the back story at that. Coming off of the mountain, we ran into a little bit of trouble. Damn that mountain pass… Turns out the front tire had lost about half of the PSI of air that it had when we left SF. Slow Leak. I don’t want to nerd out and get into details, (because there’s a lot of science involved), but basically, everytime we stepped on the brakes the van would start to shake violently. Not a good sign when you are coming down off of a mountain pass that is currently under construction.

Cooler heads did, in fact, prevail. We made it to Ashland and put some air in the tire and all was well. 5 more miles up the road: Johnny B’s in Medford

Johnny B’s

This place is kick ass. That’s all we can really say about it. They took really good care of us (Mary Ann let us crash on her floor). We didn’t get a lot of lead time to rally some troops out, but we will be back and will do a much better job.

After getting up in the morning, we hit up the local Les Schwab and got the leaky tire patched. Hooray! Les Schwab= the best tire place around. They fixed our non-Les Schwab tire for free! (just what a struggling punk band in Southern Oregon needs: something for free. Now it’s onward and upward (literally) to Portland… Ducket’s Pub will be a blast.

~ Dos

Well, we have rounded the bend on another fun filled trip. Let’s see… where were we last? Oh yes, Phoenix…

Tucson – shut down by Cops

Technically, we weren’t shut down by the cops. It was technically the Fire Marshall who shut us down. But that’s beside the point. The kids rallied and put us up in the Shithole. And a shithole it is – luckily it was a house built for punk shows. Tiny-ass living room, tinier kitchen… But what the hell, we aren’t here to make an omelet. We’re here to party and play. So we did. The kids there were amazing…

The party kind of broke up and we headed down the street to the house where we were going to crash and we kicked it at the neighborhood strip mall bar. We got to know the bartenders and ended up with free drinks all ’round.

Waffle House on the way out of town – which proved to not be as bad of a decision as we had all originally feared.

Sand Ee Aygo for Halloween

Let’s start by saying that large men should probably not wear green lycra body suits. Especially when said body suit makes it impossible to play your guitar. It worked out OK, and Chris almost ended up 100% nude, but luckily we were spared that sight. A trashy house wife and a crappy wizard costume helped us seal the deal.

Quite possibly the highlight of the entire trip: Save Amos. These guys are so incredibly tight. They just got their record picked up by Rdub Records… Keep an eye out for it and whenever they are playing a show – go see them. Very, very good

Party Marty

Holy $&@*. Save Amos was the highlight of the trip band-wise. The Managerie was the highlight of the trip show-wise. All of the kids in Marty’s crew were so fun and friendly to hang out with. Plus, Marty got us all completely hammered. Sheesh. I’m pretty sure we left with our dignity entact, but man – hanging out with Marty is not for the weak at heart (or spleen for that matter)

~ Dos

We have firmed up details for a couple more shows on the “Oh my god, Vegas took me for all I’m worth ’09” tour. Which is a good thing, because between the pinball and Roulette tables, Vegas pretty much took us for all we are worth. Here’s the details:

• Oct 30, 2009 – 9pm – Tucson, AZ – All Ages at Jacob’s YMCA
• Nov 3, 2009 – 9pm – Medford, OR – 21+ at Johnny B’s pdf

~ Dos

The ZACC Gallery was a badass show – all of the kids who were out were boogyin’ and having a good time. Mardy did a great job putting together the show & Jesse from Birds Mile Home took really good care of us. We made it out of Missoula fairly unscathed – only up until 5, only collectively went through something like 78 beers. We got our asses out of bed – or rather off of floor – around 10.

We hit up the Cracker Barrel. That may prove to be the single worst decision made on the tour so far. A lot of grease. A lot of salt. Two miles out of Missoula and we need to make a stop. We stopped at a place that holds the annual Testicle Festival. Hmmm…

Chris passed out in the back seat. Travis drove, Brian sat shot gun, and I sat in the back nerding out on the ’puter. Travis and Brian really got into it regarding who the best lead for Captain America would be – Will Smith (WTF!?) or Aaron Eckhart. You can see where this is going. The heated argument almost led to us running out of gas. Awesome.

Filling Station Tonight

We are hanging out with the kids in Bozeman. We are stoked to be playing at the Filling Station with Smokestacks, Good News From France and a hot new band called TBA. Not to be missed.

Demo

For anyone who is interested and couldn’t get a copy of the CD at the show last night (because Missoula hasn’t heard of High Speed internet), you can download it at the following location:

http://www.smokejumperseattle.com/media/demo2009/demo2009.zip (11.2 MB)

blah blah blah…

~ Dos

First off, today we renamed the tour. It is no longer the “Western States ’09” tour. It is now the “Chris got laid off, Let’s party (aka this is fucking bullshit)” tour.

So… there was a mind-blowing meltdown last night at the Lion’s Lair. It was super. We were into it and rockin’ down with the best of them. A mean combination of asphalt, Sailor Jerry and a shitty promoter led to the event now known as “Crusher’s Meltdown”. It was priceless to see the promoter’s eyes glaze over as he realized that he was pretty much fucked. It was too bad, because, as I said, we were playing pretty well. Unplug and load out, boys

Sorry about that, Brandon – the show you put on was good other than that. For all the rest of you out there, check out Riverside Breakdown. You won’t be sorry.

Tonight! We are playing an all ager at the ZACC Gallery in Missoula.

~ Dos

We’ll be kicking off our whirlwind Western States tour this Thursday with Danger Death Ray. Just, you know, another fun filled night of punk rock and cheap beer in one of the coolest rooms in town.:

The details:

• Thursday, Oct 22; 9:30 pm
• The Comet
  922 E. Pike, Seattle
• w/ Danger Death Ray
• 21+, $6

~ Dos

It’s that time of year, peeps! We are heading out to visit each of you. We are going to be on a whirlwind tour that will take us through several states in the west – Thus the moniker “Western States ’09&148;. (Duh!) We’ll have all sorts of good shit in here for you and we’ll be updating this often while out on the road – (we hope!)

To start off with, here are the dates when we are coming around. We even have flyers, in case you feel so inclined to, I dunno… print and post:

• Oct 23, 2009 – 6pm – Spokane, WA pdf
• Oct 23, 2009 – 10pm – Spokane, WA pdf
• Oct 24, 2009 – 9pm – Missoula, MTpdf
• Oct 25, 2009 – 9pm – Bozeman, MT pdf
• Oct 26, 2009 – 9pm – Salt Lake City, UT pdf
• Oct 27, 2009 – 10pm – Las Vegas, NV pdf
• Oct 29, 2009 – 10pm – Phoenix, AZ pdf
• Oct 31, 2009 – 9pm – San Diego, CA pdf
• Nov 1, 2009 – 4pm – Riverside, CA pdf
• Nov 2, 2009 – 9pm – San Francisco, CA pdf
• Nov 4, 2009 – 9pm – Portland, OR pdf

~ Dos