day four - redding

~or~

hipsters, we ain't

woke up around 11 this morning. still felt like poop, but not anywhere near yesterday. everyone else went to a greasy spoon down the street for breakfast. i didn't want to chance it, so i hung out at the house, called my son and did some much-needed laundry. i was a bit stir crazy by the time they got back, and when omarr suggested we all go to the park, i jumped at it.

chico's bidwell park is the 2nd largest metropolitan park in the united states, exceeded only by nyc's central park. it was a great walk. i took a ton of pictures, and spent the better part of an hour kicking newly-fallen leaves. autumn is in full swing here, something i don't get to really see in los angeles.

we left for redding at 5:30. it's only 90 minutes away from chico, so we got to the venue pretty quickly.

serendipity is an interesting little joint. it's a coffee shop that hosts mostly singer/songwriters. other than us and another band we we were touring with the last time we came up, i've never seen another band play there; just singers and their guitars. the place basically caters to young hipster types, but most of what we played for were teenagers. lots and lots and lots of teenagers. and being that it's a coffee shop, everyone's right there, up in your grill, just a few feet away. kind of an intimidating feeling.

it's funny - i've played at promise keepers, this men's conference thing, in front of 60,000 people, and haven't felt the least bit intimidated. i play for sold-out crowds at clubs - no worries at all. you put me in a small room with 20 people staring at me from only 5 feet away, and things get weird. i don't know why it works that way, but it always does. even omarr was a little bit on the quiet side tonight.

best way to describe the gig was "ehh." it didn't suck, but it wasn't excellent. we all made a few mistakes. my right hand had apparently decided that it was tired of holding sticks, so it just plain wasn't gonna anymore. i let three sticks fly over the course of 2 songs. and although the audience showed their appreciation by clapping and cheering after every song, the vibe was kind of dead and they didn't seem too interested.

or so we thought, until we found out that we sold 9 cd's. in a room of only 20 or so people. that's inspiring.

on another note - we found out that video from our last show is on serendipity's website. just click on "videos" to view. i'm the guy with a monitor for a head. :-)

on the way back, we drove through this little town called corning. someone remarked on the stars, so we pulled over and got out. corning's a very small farming town, and there were no city lights to impede the view of the heavens.

and then we got lost.

don't know how, or why or where we went wrong, but we did. it took us a half hour to find the right interchange to get to the highway that took us back to chico. we got in at around 1am. we then went to duffy's (yes, we includes me), and had some drinks. as my diet has been mostly milk as of late, it didn't take much time for me to get hammered. i mean hammered. i don't remember anything after brian walked back to naomi's with me.

posted on sunday, because of the last half of the above paragraph.

:-)