Weekend Tour (Repost from Myspace)
AMCB hit Northern California this weekend to play Oakland and Sacramento. As it turned out, Evie was sick with a bad cold and couldn't make the trip, but we didn't know she wasn't going to be able to go until less than 2 hours before we had to hit the road. We made a few calls and e-mails to try to find some poor willing victim we could kidnap for the weekend and teach the songs in the van on the way up, but there just wasn't enough time to catch anyone. So, we ended up rejiggering things in the car and performing for the weekend as a power trio. It was a different kind of thing from our more polished, 4-piece line up, and we were a little worried that the folks who had come out to see the more, pretty, harmony laden type of songs would be disappointed, but we are happy to report we managed to slay.
Friday at The Stork Club in Oakland brought out some old friends from Adam's solo touring days and a few of T's Bay Area homegirls as well...
The opening band was Polly Panic, a cool, artsy, angsty cello drum duo from Seattle.
Then came the "Adam Marsland's Chaos Trio" (thanks Mieka for taking these pix)....
Closing was local band Sean O'Brien and His Dirty Hands. Many thanks to them for being such an excellent, enjoyable band and for the use of their drums and bass rig.
T taking late night photos of her bandmates in various states of undress....
Despite missing 1/4 of our band, the show went really well and had a very respectable turn out. We also had excellent CD sales. Even those there specifically to see Evie or the Beach Boys type stuff expressed being very pleased with the preformance.
After Sean's band finished we packed up and headed for Davis to our friend Bob's daughter Vicky's house. There was a lot of constrution around the front of her house and at first we had a bit of indecision as to which home was hers - til we saw this...
After close to 8 hours sleep and a morning hang at Vicky's house full of cool collectables, including some very nice vintage bass guitars (and 3 very cute kitties), we headed into down town Davis for a very yummy lunch at an Afghanistan restaurant and browse through a cool used record shop. Then we split up with Adam meeting his friend Kris for a stroll around Davis while Kurt and T bought new windshield wiper blades and camped out at an internet coffee house to sip hot chocolate and check e-mail. We rejoined an hour or so later and despite the cold, rainy weather, took a brief and quite visually unpleasing walk along the Sacramento River. We then headed to Old Ironsides to get set up, rehearse a bit and teach Warren from The Onlymen the background vocals and guitar for the chorus of one of our new songs "When I Lied to Everyone" which he had agreed to sit in on.
Old Ironside's is a very cool little bar which Adam and Kurt had both played before during the Cockeyed Ghost and solo tour days. The crowd was a little on the light side due in part to the weather, but not a bad turn out. Our friend Doug from Rush Hour Soul, the band who's record Adam is currently producing, was a nice surprise.
Opening the night at Old I was our friend from the previous night's show in Oakland, Sean O'Brien. This time he was solo, and we were impressed by how well the songs still came off without the band.
Next came the local band to whom we are very grateful for putting the night together, as well as for backlining the drums and bass amp, The Onlymen. They gave a great performance, as usual.
We followed with another strong trio performance, highlighted by a new, longer piano solo in "Other Than Me" (one of the many things practiced in the van on the way up) that brought down the house for the second night in a row. Warren did a great job on "Lied to Everyone." Here are a few photos taken by Vicky.
Closing the night was local band, Seventy. Vinnie, the lead singer, opened their set with the story of how he met us when he randomly showed up at Taix one night after hanging out with John Doe. These guys were very tight and polished and put on a great set.
We had been slated to stay at Vinnie's house that night, but opted to drive back to LA instead, mostly to get Kurt home to his family sooner and because we all had lots of stuff we needed to do on Sunday.
The drive home was split between Kurt and Adam. The first half was a fairly harrowing drive through the rain and the later half was DJ'ed by Adam on his laptop while Kurt drove. It was a bit of a challenge to stay up all night, but we made it home safe and sound.
As much as we missed Evie, both on and off stage, this weekend was a great exercise in rolling with the punches for us and good to know we can pull off a high quality performance with 3 if we have to. We are pleased.