Twice The Rock & Roll and Twice The Beer – Two Nights in Felton January 6 & 7

Happy New Years, folks! How’s 2017 going so far? Have you stuck with your New Year’s Resolutions still? One of my resolutions was to write more posts on our website. It’s only the first week of the year and I’ve already written one! I’m on fire!

Last week I tried to convince you all that 2016 wasn’t so bad. Some of you were not convinced. 2016 is over and 2017 is well underway so let’s start 2017 off on the right foot! Let’s kick off the new year with a bang! Let’s come out of the gates firing, or whatever new year cliche you prefer. Any of them are fine by us as long as you come to Don Quixote’s on January 6th & 7th.

It’s been a whole year since we last stepped on stage at Don Quixote’s and we’ve spent every single day since then preparing to be back on that stage. Okay, that’s not exactly true, but what makes these shows so exciting for us is that all the work that we’ve put in this year rehearsing, and driving around the country playing shows gets to be shown to our closest friends in our hometown. Along with all the new music we’ll be playing, we’ve added a few exciting wrinkles for you, and most of these wrinkles are beer wrinkles. Hmmmmm beeeeeer wrinkles.

Our good friends from the Humble Sea Brewing Co. (http://humblesea.com) will be doing a tap takeover for both nights. These guys sold beer for the first time last year at Don Quixote’s and surely you’ve tasted some of their beer over the course of 2016 as they’ve been brewing their butts off. This year they will be back with five beers on tap for both Friday and Saturday! We are also very excited that we’ve linked up with the amazing Brew Cruz http://www.scbrewcruz.com for a special ticket which includes a brewery tour and a free ride to the show. Along with all the beer we’ve also got some great musicians joining us throughout the weekend. On Friday night our friends from the North Bay, Kingsborough will open, and on Saturday local boy and our good friend, McCoy Tyler and his new band (don’t tell anyone but we are McCoy’s new band) will open.

I hope those are enough reasons for you to come out to Don Quixote’s in Felton on January 6th and 7th. If you needed one more reason to come how about that each night is only 10 bucks. 10! That’s it! We can’t wait to see all of you this weekend. We will be playing different sets each night so you might as well just come both nights. Okay, see ya January 6th and 7th in Felton at the funkiest, weird, fun little Mexican Restraunt/music venue in the land.

January 6th- 8pm Kingsbrough opens $10

January 7th- 8pm McCoy Tyler opens $10

Cheer Up, 2016 Wasn’t So Bad

It seems that 2016 has been getting a bad rep, and sure, there were some not so great things about this year. Our beloved Warriors lost in the NBA finals, the Giants’ even year World Series streak ended (which I’m pretty sure was the only notable streak that ended in baseball this year,) and how could we forget when (insert character’s name) got killed on (Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead.) Even American Idol called it quits after 33 seasons. What’s that, it was only 15 seasons? Seemed like a lot more. And speaking of reality TV, did you know that the guy from The Apprentice became the President-Elect of The United States this year? How did I miss that?  But why spend so much time focusing on the bad when there was so much good this year? Like, what about all those weddings we played this year? Those were good times, and nobody in the band was directly involved in those marriages so that’s doubly good! Join us on a short walk and we’ll show you that 2016 wasn’t so bad.

For us, 2016 began on a small stage in the middle of a street on a frigid night as we played Rock and Roll while the metaphorical ball dropped in Downtown Monterey. Shortly thereafter, we played our two biggest headlining shows in Santa Cruz at Don Quixote’s. From there we went all over California playing in Sacramento, San Francisco, Bolinas, Albany, Oakland, Petaluma, Santa Rosa, Livermore, Sebastopol, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Big Sur, Los Angeles, Lake Tahoe, Calpine, and Nevada City, before leaving the state and hitting Ashland, Bend, Salt Lake City, Fort Collins, Denver, Lawrence, Kansas City, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.

We also got to share the stage with some great bands like Blackberry Smoke, Jackie Greene, Brothers Comatose, T Sisters, California Honeydrops, Steve Poltz, Stone Foxes, Rainbow Girls, Quiles & Cloud, John Craigie, Kingsborough, Hibbity Dibbity, Little Fuller Band, Steep Ravine, McCoy Tyler, Rayburn Brothers, and Tom Petty! (Well, actually it was Mudcrutch and they were playing the main room of the Fillmore while we were playing the poster room. But still!)

So I think that just about wraps it up for 2016. Wait! One more thing. We recorded an album this year! I know you don’t believe us but it’s the truth. Earlier this year we spent 7 days in Barefoot Studios in Los Angeles with Andy Zenczak and Cian Riordan recording our third full length album. We’ve got videos, pictures, and a whole lot of new songs and we are very excited about it and are very excited to get it to you in 2017.

Sure, 2016 wasn’t a breeze. We sat on the side of freeways in the rain waiting for Triple A more than once. We sweated our asses off while driving through Kansas during a heatwave in July. We played in many empty rooms, on stages we could barely squeeze onto. We broke guitar strings, amps, pedals, sticks, drum heads, and cables. But with all the craziness that 2016 brought, we can still look back at this year fondly and remember all the new places we went to, all the shows we played (the most we’ve ever played in a year,) the new album we made, the new music videos (yeah, we’ve got some new videos to show you,) the many campfire jams that lasted until the sun came up, the new friends and fans we made, and all that other good stuff. 2016 was tough, but 2016 rocked.

We hope you had a great year and we’ll see ya in 2017.

The Life of Music Playing Sports Fans

We aren’t a band who likes to brag. Mostly because we don’t have anything to brag about, but when you are named the MVP’s of the annual Comatopia Kickball game, it becomes very hard not to. Comatopia was a blast and one of the highlights was the Saturday morning kickball game.

Sports is often a divisive topic in our band as three out of the five of us are huge sports fans, while the other two members would often rather (insert any activity) than watch whatever sporting event that is happening at the time. But being a sports fan and musician isn’t always easy to navigate. With the Olympics occurring, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at some of the most memorable times our lives as musicians have blended with sports. (Warning. If you don’t care about sports this will not be very interesting to you.)

ALL PRO TEAM (The Most Ridiculous of circumstances)

Men’s FIFA World Cup 2014– With a ten hour drive to Eugene pending, we thought it best to watch 3pm kick off of the US vs Ghana soccer game in Ben Lomond. After arriving in Eugene at 5am, we briefly slept before performing on KLCC Radio in Eugene at 11am. Getting back to sleep was put on hold briefly as we searched for a breakfast spot to watch the Mexico vs Brazil game. (It is of note that this Oregon tour concluded in Bend where we woke up early on a Sunday to drive to Redding in time to watch the US take on Portugal.)

2013 NFC Championship Game 49er’s vs Falcons– Being lifelong 49er fans, we were as excited as anyone when their dream season saw them just one game away from Super Bowl XLVII. Instead of being on a couch in front of a TV, we found ourselves in Gadgetbox Studios recording the guitar intro to Trouble Town. We spent three and a half quarters of  the game recording but wrapped up just in time to witness the 49er’s close out the game and advance to the Super Bowl before playing in one of the most memorable Super Bowls in which the 49er’s defeated the Ravens 65-3 (I’m pretty sure that was the score. No need to Google that.) Go Niners!

Golden State Warriors 2015 NBA Champions– We found ourselves in another predicament on June 16, 2015 when the Warriors looked poised to win their first NBA Championship since, like, I don’t know, a super long time. Jamie was sitting in with Scary Little Friends who were opening for Delta Spirit at the Lagunitas Amphitheater in Petaluma and the rest of us tagged along. Certain members of the band may or may not have run back and forth between Lagunitas Brewery and Beyond the Sports Bar and Grill which was conveniently located a half mile down the street during Delta Spirit’s set to see the Warriors clinch the championship.

SLV vs Soquel Women’s Soccer– Before heading to Hollywood for a seven day recording stint at Barefoot Studios, the band sat in the bleachers under the lights at Soquel High while Kellen coached the San Lorenzo Valley Varsity Girl’s Soccer team in their final game of the season.

HONORABLE MENTIONS (The times shows interfered with what we considered to be enormously important sporting events.)

GSW vs OKC Game 6 2016– Show at lille aeske, Boulder Creek. (In case you forgot which game this was, it was the really really really good one where the Warriors won.)

SF Giants vs Stl Cardinals Game 5 2012– Sound check at the Crepe Place, Santa Cruz. (The Giants were down in the series 3-1 to the Cardinals in the NLCS with Barry Zito on the mound. We won the game and eventually the World Series. Remember that?! We were down to Zito!)

GSW vs Cavs Game 7 2016– Show at Poster Room of The Fillmore for Mudcrutch. (The “We never ever ever speak about this game” game.)

There are countless other examples of games we’ve missed due to driving, playing, rehearsing etc but it’s a very small price to pay (except when it’s game six of the Western Conference Finals with the Warriors and Thunder! I can’t believe we missed that game!)