The tour left Mountain Time and we entered Pacific Standard Time in Eastern Oregon. Our van (that Cam has illustrated, above) crossed and re-crossed the tufted grass and scree in the canyons of the Snake River in Idaho on the I-84. Famously, Evel Kneivel plummeted into the Snake River in 1974 during an unsuccessful stunt jump. In Eastern Oregon we were sensibly cautious as we crossed the pine-lined Rogue River. Due to road works in the Washington State mountains we progressed at snail’s pace thru the beautiful snowless passes near a town called Cle Elum. At rest stops on the journey we got out and tossed around the mini American football we’d bought from Walmart. We threw it between pine branches (in Oregon) and shiny SUVs (in California). It’s hard to get the ball to spin properly, torpedo-wise, but Toby is the most skilled at this. Then leaving the Pacific Northwest we drove past the massive Mt Rainier and Mt Shasta, two awesome glaciated volcanoes that abut the I-5.
West Coast Junk Food Blitz: In Seattle hotdogs come with cream cheese. Wes ate two in succession out on the street from the venue. Fletcher (from Wes’s band the Devoted Few) had warned us (via Twitter) to keep him away from Cheese In A Can and Double Doubles but we had to let him loose on the Seattle Dogs. Then in Southern California we all ate Double Doubles at In ‘N Out at every opportunity, sometimes Animal Style, sometimes not.
Portland was a town overrun by hipsters the night we played the Music Festival North-West (MFNW). After our gig we watched a band called Portugal The Man play our stage. They were like Dr. Dog but more cosmic. Their keyboard player Ryan and his buddies took Danny and I to watch this powerful indie-metal band called Red Fang. As metal as they were, The Fang’s lead guitarist, weirdly, played a Thinline Telecaster which is the guitar that Jonny from Coldplay uses and the guitar that Toby plays on Forever Young ie: the most indie of guitars. We were mightily impressed, buying a T-shirt each. When they played their song Prehistoric Dog it was obvious they had a hit. Danny stuck the CDs in his knapsack which he promptly left at a party that Portugal The Man put on. This Ryan guy was nice enough to post it back to him the next day along with the T-shirts and a CD of his younger brother’s band.
San Francisco we stayed on Divisadero in Lower Haight, not the grimy Tenderloin at the Phoenix Hotel as usual. Both nights in SF we went to a great bar right across the road from the hotel, peeking through the SF fog, called Page Bar. The second night, after the gig at the Fillmore (which fucking ruled in mine and Toby’s opinion – more on that later) we got royally flogged on the Page Bar’s monthly special, Finian’s Irish Whiskey – $4.50 a glass – and staggered back to our hotel. Roger from Pretty & Nice either was too drunk to walk home or couldn’t fit into their band’s doss house so we offered him a space on our floor. As repayment he showed us a really cool cat video . We declined his offer to show us some youporn.
We were greeted in Southern California by a heat-wave, conducted royally on the Fahrenheit scale. After six gigs in seven days and a thousand miles we could’ve done with a rest. But when we turned up at our hotel, a back-packer’s hostel in Hollywood, I was on edge as we tried to check in, surrounded by “them”, drunken backpackers braying at each other 1am.
“It’s karaoke night so it’s a bit crazy,” the guy at the desk shouted to me over the din. The next morning the “craziness” had been stultified as the young guests sat around smoking cigarettes with their feet up on the balcony rail in the mindless time-wasting boredom that passes for relaxation at the backpackers.