Three days of straight travel had us ready to kick things off with a show in the great city of Seattle, WA. After some time spent sightseeing and the discovery that even within sight of T-Mobile HQ the reception still doesn't exist, we headed over to Studio 7. A 900-degree room during load-in made setting up the drumset a little unpleasant and Tyler's favorite guitar mysteriously committed suicide during the show, but those were probably the only downsides to the tour's opening performance.
The next night found us at Portland, OR's Backspace, a downtown coffeehouse/internet cafe. The room was a bit smaller and the stage was a bit shorter, but the energy of the Portland crowd was through the roof and made for a truly memorable night. Any time you have fans driving upwards of 10 hours to see your band play, you feel inspired to play your tokus off, and when they show up with the kind of excitement and energy that they brought with them to Backspace, you play your tokus off.
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| The drumstick tree @ Backspace; truly, a work of art. |
After a couple more days in the van we landed in Riverside, CA, on the campus of California Baptist University. Twerp week was kicking off (don't ask) and they invited us to help them get the party started. The crowd was great, the weather was great, but the power was not, and about 30 seconds into our first song, the PA system lost the juice. The only thing the kids could hear was my drumset, and, while I would never deny anyone the sheer awesomeness of such an opportunity, that wasn't exactly what they all had come to see. During a quick impromptu acoustic performance, the hard-working sound techs got the power back on and we started up again. Mary Song was once again rockin' like it does, but this time around, about 60 seconds into the song, the PA died.... again. For Round 2, Tyler took Jess, Alex G, and Eppic out in front of the stage to give a raw, unplugged performance of the band's acoustic montage and the crowd was gracious enough to dig it and hang around.
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| Sights like this one as well as the Solyndra HQ building make the drive through California a truly sentimental experience. |
Once again, the techs (now running around like proverbial decapitated chickens) plugged-in this and rewired that and got the whole show up & rolling again. The third time turned out to be the charm, and we were able to ride that wave all the way to the end of our set. Gina and the rest of the crew that took care of us at CBU could not have been easier to work with, and the entire tech team busted some serious hump to make sure that the show did indeed go on. 4th-and-long turned into a touchdown because of the hard work of everyone around us, to be sure.
We're one week and three shows into this tour, and so far the T-Ward Crew fans are proving that they are indeed some of the best on the planet. The support has been tremendous, and most everyone's been kind enough to bring along their cell phones and video cameras so that every tinsy, winsy little mistake we make will be entombed forever upon the hallowed digital manuscripts of YouTube. I'm sure one day a casual perusal of the internet will have us shaking our 60-year-old heads and saying to ourselves, "What in the world were we thinking....?!?" Or maybe we'll be the first band in history to compile an entire live DVD from footage obtained solely by the fans. Who knows? The sky's the limit at this point, people.
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| The Big Party |
Can't wait to see everyone else in the other mainland time zones over the next few weeks... be sure to bring your cell phones!
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