#59 Maxwell's on 5-25-11

We lingered in Sacramento for most of the day, as we stayed with incredible friends. The drive to Redding was full of a lot of open plains, but beautiful. A freak rainstorm and fiery sky hit us a the end.

The show was set up by a Redding band called Avenue Of Escape, who were going to play after us. The bands were supposed to play after an open mic night event, but I got a call saying that was cancelled and that AVEofESC would probably play first since the owner wanted the music to start. We were in full agreement with that so it came as a surprise to arrive at the club and find the sound equipment not set up and the band playing pool. They said we could go ahead and play first, so we started setting up. The 2-piece Active Set takes much longer to set up than the full band for some reason. I overheard some of AVEofESC's posse complaining about us taking too long and it saddened me. The bartender was nice enough and helped out when asked, but I pretty much had to set up and soundcheck myself.

We started playing and the singer from the other band watched half a song with his girlfriend, but then everyone walked out, except for one lone person at the back of the room. We didn't see the other band for the remainder of the evening, or hear from them. By the end of our set there were a few others, all who said, "Oh man, I could hook you up with a better show!" We discussed the politics of touring and such.

We found people to stay with, who turned out to be irresponsible, so much that at 3am, having invited us to stay at a house asked, "So, where are you guys gonna stay?" Michael and I left and argued for a bit before settling on sleeping in the van.

#29 California Music Fest @ San Souci on 7-3-09

We were accepted to this festival via Sonicbids, an online submission service for bands. Here is the description for the event:

California Music Fest is the celebration of the California Culture: Music, Surf, and Art. It takes place Independence weekend in the beautiful city of Ventura, CA in conjunction with the already established and very popular Ventura Street Fair. Last years street fair featured a massive turn out of over 45,000 people. This year with the City of Ventura’s inclusion of the California Music Fest, over 150 bands will be featured as well as a surf contest and visual artists from all over the country. The city is expecting an even larger attendance for 2009.

What the event was in reality was a cramming of too many bands in too many venues with the ensuing chaos. There is an outdoor stage with 'bigger bands', but the rest of it is silly. San Souci is a tiny dive bar in Ventura, and the corner we played in restricts the view of most of the crowd from seeing anyone but the person in front, namely me. We were one of 7-9 bands (!) playing, and the set was short and sweet. We played with too many bands to recall most of the names, but one was 80lb Gorilla(?). I sold an EP to a drunk couple at the bar, who insisted paying $20 for it. I was also instructed to come to San Diego.

This is yet another SonicBids disappointment, and has assured our disinterest in continuing using it.