Monday, November 17, 2008

Tour Timeline:

Tour Timeline:
7:15p 11/11/08…OakTeam gets in the van (respectfully named Evangeline)
7:16p…first wine mini-bottle cracked of Chilean red
1am 11/12/08…arrive in Charleston, WV at Holiday Inn Express
10am…get lecture on the benefits of potassium from maid at said hotel in the elevator on the way to finding out that all the Cherrios were “put up”.
11am...overhear the waitress at the table behind us at Bob Evans discussing her reproductive problems…as an introduction to her patrons. “Isn’t he cute? I can’t have children myself but…” Those ain’t the eggs we came here to talk about lady! She brought it up again later! Jeez!
3pm…arrive at Mike’s Curry House Studio in Columbus to record a track with our friend Colin Gowel from Watershed. Plug and play, sounded great! We also recorded a version of “Sunday Dress” with Colin singing it. Mike used to be Matt Wallace’s right hand man for about 10 years. He’s done a LOT of great records, yo! Including Replacements.
5pm…arrive at soundcheck for the gig at Rumba Café. Have a very nice breve.
10pm…Jump on stage and forget every lyric I’ve ever sang. The infusion of new songs created confusion in my mind like I’ve never experienced. We worked so hard on the new stuff that I forgot the old. It was a fun and silly show though as we scraped off a lot of rust and learned a lot about where the new songs should and shouldn’t go in the set. Sorry about that Columbus, but thanks for letting us work out some kinks with you.
2am 11/13/08…arrive in Cincinnati at The Millennium Hotel.
1pm…go to Ingredients, an anything-goes food court in the lower floor of some downtown skyscraper. I got the brick oven mushroom pizza (that rocked like ass!) and a large cup ‘o coffee.
2pm…go for walk by the river to the pro shops of the Reds and the Bengals. See a field full of millionaires practicing (including Ocho Loco) at Paul Brown Stadium.
2:30pm… Paul and Dave head back to hotel as Jack, Greg and I get our learn on at The Freedom Center. The exhibit was about Lincoln and slavery and had a lot of cool shit in it. Including the stovepipe hat, yo!
5pm…load in to do soundcheck to jeers and sneers of about a dozen drunk-ass bikers at The Deadwood Saloon in Covington, KY.
7pm…go next door and eat great “Korlean” food to the lovely sounds of The Beatles…done Korlean style! Waitresses were cute and informative, and mixed sunny-side eggs up with some hot sauce into everyone’s food.
8:30pm…listening to opening band, Sidewinder play “Dixie Beauderaunt” and “Purple GTO” back to back.
10pm…OakTeam goes on and plays much better than the night before. We felt like we were playing OUR songs once again. Also, about this time one of the drunk bikers got a DUI.
10:40pm…in the middle of our set the cops come and get the club owner.
11:30pm…start the second set with Sidewinder’s singer Jason singing “Battleship Chains”
“Can’t make my arms hold nobody, hold nobody but you!” Make? The whole song? Really?
1pm…finish the show to one last fan. It is only now that we find out that the club owner, while taking the DUI biker’s bike home for him laid it down and broke his arm and shoulder. Godspeed, Jeff!
2:15pm…back in Cincinnati Greg calls the Burger King back in Covington. “How late are y’all open?” “4am” the guy says. After some arm twisting they pull me away from my previously purchased bottle of wine and get back in the van. Once at Burger King, we realize that just across the street is Waffle House. If it had been Omelette Shoppe we would have stuck with the BK. We don’t patronize anything with the words “haus”, “shoppe”, “ye” or ”olde” in them. Food was…well…Waffle House. A near fight was diffused at the tables surrounding us. I think when the cops came in to eat they drew down.
12:30pm 11/14/08…eat at Ingredients again watching the girls go by.
1:30pm…leave for Wapakoneta, Interstate all the way.
3:30pm…just before arriving at the current capital of Rock and Roll, Route 33 Rhythm and Brews, we see a homemade sticker on the back window of a run-down Winnebago that says this:
We
All
Look
Like
A
sses
Chasing
Earnhardt

4pm…soundman Skip opens the doors to where Rock lore lives and lets us in. We are provided the opportunity of an extended soundcheck and a much needed rehearsal. It went so well that it worried me a little. Usually, bad soundcheck/great gig and vice versa.
6pm…pig out on Ron’s great pizza! I missed that stuff! Worth the drive to Wapak!
9:30pm…jump on stage and rock 20 songs but without playing too fast. Everything had perfect tempo. This was gonna be a great night.
11pm…begin second set of 20 songs with “Battleship”, “Goin’ or Comin’”, “Pow’ful Merka” (one that I’ll discuss at a later date with MUCH detail), 3 ass-kickers…BIP, BAMM, BOOM! It only got better from there, with the slight crowd pulling their chairs and tables to the front of the stage making it appear crowded. It also made us feel VERY welcomed and loved. The Grimes brothers were doing shots of CaboWabo and the older one went down 3 times, last time face first. Too much fun! I told him he was gonna feel “punished” the next day and I’m sure he did…until the next shot. The drunk girl with the hot body came on stage and whispered to me over a hushed crowd “why can’t...uh...don’t you…help me drink…(hiccup)this Thunderbird” “Are you ready to go?” Dave asks “’cause you know when we do that song we’re outta here!” We continue, ignoring her request until later in the show.
12:15am 11/15/08…5 songs in the encore, including Dave’s beautiful rendition of “Easy”
1am…4 Guinness Stouts and Jager shots later I help load Evangeline and go back to the Holiday Inn Express in Wapak and we dive face first into 2 large Big Ron pizza’s.
12noon…snowing sideways, we hit the worst Waffle House in the country in Wapak. Once again, the waitress seemed to be a trainee, reminding me of the nightmare visit The Yayhoos had there. It took us 20 minutes to get coffee that time. Not as bad this time, though she was still slow as molasses and kind of a smartass…or dumbass, whichever.
1pm…heading up the Interstate to Cleveland we see a few cars slid off the road in the sloppy, snowy conditions. Thankfully, we had new tires and Dave driving and eventually got through the slosh and into only rain.
7pm…arrive at Beachland Ballroom and watch the Bottle Rockets do soundcheck.
8pm…load in and do our own, the BR’s nice enough to push back and let up set up in front of them.
8:30pm…have a light meal downstairs and listen to The Wailers wailing upstairs, among the wafting smell of ganja.
9:20pm…hit the stage rockin’! It was fun to play to an actual CROWD of people (although what the folks in Wapak lacked in size they made up for in enthusiasm)! The people in Cleveland GOT IT too and screamed for more. Not wanting to step on any toes we declined and began tearing down gear.
11pm…on the road to Parkersburg, WV. It would have been a very long drive home on Sunday had we not. Props again to Dave for rocking us 3 hours closer that night and to the weatherman for giving us a clear path there.
2am 11/16/08…arrive at the Days Inn just across the border into WV. Paul takes one whiff of our room and for the first time forsakes Jack and my room for Dave and Greg’s. Benedict Franklin!...or whoever.
10am…I scream “Treason!” in the parking lot after seeing how shotily pruned the (what could have been) beautiful Jap maple was at the exit of our hotel. I saw the yard guy out there planting more trees and almost went and cussed him out. Cut the limbs FLUSH with the adjoining limb, dumbass! Not whacked off into stubs! Dumb bitch-ass-bitch!
3pm…after a gloomy and very cloudy drive with intermittent flurries we cross the border into the great state of North Carolina. Literally at THAT moment, the skies were clear Carolina blue with at times overbearing sunlight. Yep! We were back home alright.
5pm…unload the gear, high fives all around, head for home boys, all wishing we had just ONE more show to do…

By the way…check out doublenaughtrecords.com for the NEW “Pow’ful Merka” EP, which has 2 songs from the upcoming new OakTeam record on it, along with 2 other interpretations of the song “Pow’ful Merka” AND our Christmas song, “Eggnogorant” from the new Holly Raleigh Christmas record, which is ALSO available in its entirety.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow. Sounds rather... fatiguing?
Thanks for the report, wish I'd been there.

Gerben in NL