March 12 - 20, 1999
RENO/BERKELEY/MONTEREY/LOS ANGELES - The St. Patrick's Month tour continues. We had a couple days off in Tucson after the Folk Alliance and Texas tour. Then it was up to Reno for a week at Fitzgerald's Casino. We, as last year, played the main floor casino bar stage. And, unlike last year's gig here, and the typical casino band experience, we had a crowd that listened to us intently - most nights. I managed to make it through the week without drinking green beer or buying anything in a pawn shop. I blew a quarter on a slot machine, but lost. I didn't do that again.
Paid to hang out in a casino for a week, you say, sounds like quite the deal. I'm not griping. The pay is good, the food is free (three meals a day - your choice of the buffet or Mollys Garden, I kid you not.) But after a couple days of the constant drone of slot machine beeping and clanging (kind of a modal thing, but works out to a G major, which is just fine, execpt when you're playing in F# or B or something) and neon ballast hum, we all switched to a mode where we'd hang out in the room and watch CNN or read until show time.
The morning after St. Patrick's Day we load up, check out and head over the Donner Pass for the Bay Area. Beautiful drive. The Beast, which just turned over 200,000 a couple weeks ago, eats up the mountain like it's a speed bump and next thing you know there's the bay with San Francisco peaking through the fog.
The Starry Plough in Berkeley was a welcome job because we've built up a following playing there, as well as La Pena and Freight & Salvage. Although it was the night after St. Patrick's Day, we pretty well filled the place up and had a great time. I think we did a pretty good job. It's a good sounding room with an experienced sound engineer and they treat musicians well. Add a crowd made up of established fans and open-minded newcomers and you've got it made.
We had friends there, too. Andrew Freeman, a Bay Area musician we've known (and mooched lodging off) for years was there. And a great jazz bassist, Fred Marshall, came by to hear us. I met Fred through an Internet connection last year while while looking for that Zeta Uprite Crossover bass I play. Last time in town, last August I think, I called him up, went over to his house and bought the bass from him. I had such a good time that night I was late for the gig - first time in my life. So this time I wanted to tell him how much I was enjoying the new instrument and invited him over. It was an honor, and a bit intimidating, to play with him there. What the hell was I thinking? Sometimes when there's a great player in the audience it actually makes me play better. This night I was all thumbs, but they were falling in mosty the right places. No brilliance, but no major clams either. That's one of the "joys" of bass; if you're playing great or just havng a monumentally mediocre night, it doesn't make much difference - nobody but another bass player or drummer notices. But if you suck, you're in the limelight. That's why, at least it's my theory, that that's why bass players are generally the low-key (excuse the unintended play) types they are - you play for your own satisfaction (which is the thing to do anyway) or you're beating your head against a wall. After a few years, assuming the bassist has half a bran or more, he/she realizes this and maybe begins to enjoy it. ("Nobody else may know it, but I could change my playing ever so sligtly and screw up this groove and turn this tune into a stumbling wreck.") As Fred put it (paraphrasing Mingus, I think?), "It's the bass player's job to kind of be the guy who holds the rest of them over the toilet so they don't get any on their shoes."
We didn't get any on our shoes. We packed up and headed over to Andrew's for the night. I slept in the van. Not a bad bedroom when it's not moving. In the morning we head down Highway 1 along the coast (beautiful beyond words...last time we came up this way instead and saw whales spouting off-shore) to Monterey.
Tonight we're at Morgan's Coffee & Tea in Monterey. It's a fne looking place in a scenic town. It's a very small room, but Morgan gets an amazing line up of musicians to play here. No kidding, the posters on the bathroom wall read like a who's who of upcoming and progressive ethnic folk Americana whatever. He keeps apologizing for the size of the place, but when you have a place this nice, it's like they say, "Size doesn't matter." We already hope to play here again. We'll see how it goes.
A few hours later...
Small crowd, but very vocal. Some of them were even dancing. This certainly is no tea room. Morgan Christopher, the owner, is definitely into the music. Very cool place he has here. It's an old flagstone building, dating back to early in the century. The city's first hotel? Something like that. Anyway, the performance space is cramped, but the people make the place.
Because of the limited elbow room, Gary just used a snare and his sock cymbals. That left me working my butt off. But, that was OK (except for the strings on both my basses dying a sudden death from the pounding and leaving me tone-free for most of two sets.) Without that bass drum, a lot more of the percussive and time-keeping work shifts over to the bass. The crowd seemed OK with it, and we actually were doing OK, except for a couple of what Kevin refers to as "disontinuities in the space-time continuum." Got a serious, persistant encore.
Morgan says he's going to have us back. We're heading out for some cheaper motel space down the road from trendy Monterey (much as I'd like to stay here for a couple weeks eating seafood and looking at the ocean). Tomorrow, actually later today, we'll be in Mollywood at Jack's Sugar Shack. Let you know.
Meanwhile...
We stopped about an hour down the slab (101, I believe) to get a motel, or, I should say a Motel 6 (which is not to be confused with a place where you pay to get sleep).
Time for a pop quiz. What's the difference between spending a night in a Motel 6 and a night in the county jail? (Because of the difficulty of this question, insert a two-minute pause here). Answer: There is none, you say. Well, not exactly. Actually there are several. Let me count the ways.
1. The people in the next room are less likely to have weapons in a prison.
2. The people in the next room can't urinate off the second floor balcony onto the cars below.
3. When you call the front office in the prison to complain, they actually do something.
4. The prison chief isn't that annoying "I'll leave the lights on" guy.
5. In prison, they actually have hot water in the showers.
6. In prison, there's enough room in the shower to bend over when you drop the soap (though this may inadvisable for other reasons.)
7. In prison, there's less chance of having someone drive through your wall if they go a couple feet too far onto the shoulder the Interestate.
8. In prison, the building construction is much better; you can't hear the guy in the next room's watch ticking - and you get more channels on TV.
10. In prison, if you're good, they'll actually turn the lights off; at Motel 6, they can't turn them off because they're too damned cheap to buy light switches.
Am I pissed? Four hours of off-again, on-again sleep will do that. (On the positive side, you handymen can use a Motel 6 towel to do rough sanding on auto body filler.)
This place was so cheesy that I could hear when a Ford went by on the Interstate by the sound of its defective power steering pump (a Ford joke which I don't find particularly funny). So, what's eating me, you ask? Well, we check into this human version of an ant farm about 1 am. No sooner do I get to my room (tonight, lucky me, was my night to get third room - the solo room) when I notice that the room is moving. And, honest, I've had nothing but a glass of wine all night. Yes, things are moving off the crappy crudboard desk/TV stand as I watch. Could it have something to do with the shrieking next door, I ask myself? I think so. Yes. Yes. So it would seem. Looking out the window I see four mid-teen males jumping up and down on the balcony (that's such a fancy word for a two-inch thick slab of concrete with a rusted railing) whilst screaming permutations of the words "dude," "f**k," and "woo" at the top of their lungs. To increase the difficulty of this Idiot Olympics event, one of these pinheads is urinating off the balcony at the same time, causing the other pinheads to admiringly add "Woh!" to "woo," "f**k," and "dude."
After an hour of this, I figure, why not just go out there and throw two of them off the balcony? The others will probably take the hint and leave, or puke on me. But then, I figure, they're just young and everybody was young and did things like this, didn't they? But, after I realized that I was nowhere close to that stupid or obnoxious at any time in my life, I figured why not throw two of them off the balcony figuring the rest will take the hint and leave. Cooler head prevailed and I called the manager. The person who answered said she'd send the manager. I waited 20 minutes. Unless the manager was the Jason who had just joined the others in shotgunning beer and peeing off the balcony, while jumping up and down and conjugating "woo," "f**k," and "dude," I assume the manager didn't make it. Another call to the front desk about 15 minutes later got me the audio equivalent of a blank look. Finally, she said, "The police are on the way."
Yes, indeed, the police came within a half-hour and within two hours of hanging out with the screaming urinaters (while they continued to yell and jump up and down, as well as welcome their late-arriving girlfriends) they finally sent them home with their parents. Some of the parents showed their concern for the trouble their children were causing the other motel victims by relating to them understandingly at high volume for about half and hour right outside my window.
It's time to head for the last night of this run, at Jack's Sugar Shack at Hollywood and Vine.
A few hours later... Hollywood is nuts for those movie awards that are happening Sunday night. Things are goofier than usual around here. Still, it's Saturday night and the joint is ours. Jack's Sugar Shack is right on the tacky corner of Hollywood and Vine. Searchlights piercing the smog, star-shaped things in the sidewalk commemorating stars (Lassie, Rin-Tin-Tin), porno shops, the whole works. It was our first time here and we were wondering what to expect. Interesting beach decor (a bar on 55-gallon drums, grass shack motif and autographed pictures of the impressive selection famous and not-so-famous folks who've played here - we're in great company). We're also, it turns out, opening. Still, we got a best bet or some kind of a choice pick in one of the papers and some people showed up early. Meanwhile, we couldn't get on stage for a sound check because some other band was planning to record and there was an endless bunch of self-important standing around going on (while I'm not sure what was accomplished). We played with a ghost of a sound check, but the house mixmaster pulled it off on the fly. The band was cooking at a higher than typical first set temperature (because we were the openers and there wasn't going to be any second set), as so often happens on the last night of a tour, and we got a howling, raving demand for an encore. It was one of those nights and we were floating off the stage to meet some new fans when what do I hear but, "Hey Dan, Dave Alvin's at the bar." It was Kevin. He knows that I think the sun comes up somewhere around Dave Alvin. (Want to find something worth buying? Check out "Interstate City" and in particular the cuts "Thirty Dollar Room" and "Jubilee Train" or the amazing "Fourth of July," although I don't remember which album that is on.) Went up, said "Hello," told him I once wrote him a letter because I was so knocked out by one of his songs, but didn't send it. He says, without missing a beat, "Yeah, but I got it anyway." (I couldn't be that cool if I fell into the damned imported beer cooler.) He said someone was talking about The Mollys to him, but that he walked in after we were done and hadn't heard us himself. "Did that thing they said about us include the word "suck" in it," I asked. "Naw," he laughed, "they sure did not use the word suck." With that settled I slipped him a Mollys CD and got out of his face.
We basked, packed and drove, arriving in Tucson at 8:30 the next morning. It was a good tour and now we get to hang out here at home for a couple weeks while doing a bit of recording before heading out again. Hope to see you somewhere over the upcoming spring and summer.
Over 'n' out,
dan s - the mollys