USA Tour: Part 2

And the saga continues...

During our two week stint in LA we had a couple of quick little side trips - one out east into Arizona and one down south to San Diego. The first of the two was for a gig in Tucson. But we had a gig back in Long Beach (LA) booked for the following night... so it turned out to be a brutal one night road trip across the dessert.

                      Cactus rule.

                      Two 8-hour days on the road with gigs each night will make any man turn feral.

We played at a place called Solar Culture in downtown Tucson, a really cool venue/art space. And at the end of the night Steve, the old tripper who owned the joint, showed us his psychedelic palace next door, complete with multiple tripping caves. Which were hand-built mind you.

    Trip Cave 1

    Trip Cave 2

I can't remember his exact words, but he said something along the lines of, "Yeah, we eat our cactus and then crawl into one of the tripping rooms and play didgeridoo". I couldn't quite tell if he was serious, or if he was trying to make an Australian joke... he was pretty stoned at the time.

The second side mission out of LA was for a gig in San Diego. This little trip is worth a mention because San Diego was where we had the best burger of the whole trip. And we ate a LOT of burgers, so this was something pretty special. Shout out to the Snack Shack for their out of control Triple Threat Pork Burger. Good lord, I'm getting wet just thinking about it (in my mouth, ya sicko).

Oh and we played an awesome show while we were there too... although apparently we were plan B for that Tuesday night in San Diego.

                                     Surprised they even knew we were coming to town really.

So after a couple of weeks in the LA heat, we were pretty keen to get out of the city and get on the road northwards. First stop was San Francisco. We had a couple of days to spend in San Fran so we did a bunch of touristy shit like go to Pier 39, look at the seals, eat clam chowder, gaze over at Alcatraz, and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge.

                                Dork.

Also hit a pretty bangin park which had a butt load of squirrels in it, which to us was an amazing novelty. Cute little bastards, gotta be up there as the most loveable rodent.

    "Nature wank anyone?"

Had a great gig in San Fran too at an awesome venue called Thee Parkside. Played with a local band Blood Sister, who turned out to be one of my favourite for the whole tour. Well worth checking them out.

And that's enough for now, next post we will continue up the coast to the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Thanks for reading ya'll. Hope you're having a banger.

Love Zeahorse xx

USA Tour: Part 1

Ok, so the recount of our USA tour finally begins. I will try my best not to drag it out for too long and just concentrate on the best bits… but a lot of you guys helped fund this tour, so I’ll try make sure you get your moneys worth too.

So let me start with Day 1 cause it was a bloody doozey. It was a baptism by fire, almost literally… we landed in a fucking heat wave. The entire two weeks we spent in Los Angeles the temp was pushing 40 friggin degrees Celsius plus. We went straight from the airport, jet lagged as fuck, to pick up our hire van. We dubbed the van “Sauso”, cause she was long and sausage roll shaped. And boy were we stingin for a sausage roll by the end of the trip, crikey! Americans knows how to do deliciously bad road food EXCEPT for savoury baked goods.

    (Jugs 4 Lyfe)

So anyhoo, after we’d acquired our road hog, we immediately set out on an almighty gear hunt to find an entire backline we could take around the country with us. I almost got shot in a pawn store for walking behind the counter, an innocent mistake I thought, but apparently the penalty for this is being blasted with a shot gun, of which they had two next to the register. Luckily for me they realised I was just a harmless, funny-sounding, dumb Australian. We were off to a good start.

    (Our backline crammed into Sauso. The boys are lookin pretty chuffed with their work.)

After running around in the heat all day... 

    ("Get fucked it's hot.")

...we were bloody exhausted and decided to find a place to crash for the night. The cheapest place we could find was a nice sounding motel in Inglewood (nice sounding on Trip Advisor anyway). Little did we know that Inglewood was a gnarly ghetto right next door to Compton. But being four innocent white boys from Australia we didn’t know any better. Shit got pretty real all of a sudden when we walked around the neighbourhood later that night to find some dinner. Within a hundred meters from the motel we’d already encountered a pimp and his (white) ho, dealers slingin crack, and Latino gangsters complete with authentic crip walk and mean ass neck tatts. Morgs even busted in on some dude in the toilets doing the drugs he’d just acquired from out the front of the Japanese take away joint we were in. Ha! It was pretty damn obvious that we weren’t locals. But we managed to avoid any trouble and quickly retreated back to the motel room, not daring to resurface till morning.

Day 2 was also pretty special because we played our first gig. Which just happened to be 4 hours north of LA in town called Fresno, the meth capital of America. Bizarre place for our first gig, and that’s exactly the vibe we got from the place when we got there, strange. Luckily for us the people that organised the show were the nicest bunch of people you could hope to meet. We played at Peeve’s Public House with Midwest Moms and Space Apes. Afterwards we got on the American tins! Crashed at the Midwest Moms place, and slept on the floor with the cockroaches. Big ups to Ryan and the others for their hospitality and for making our first gig experience in America a good one.

So next day we missioned back to LA, hung over AND jet lagged as fuck. Oh and hot as fuck too. We had another gig that night but this time in Murrieta, an hour or so south of LA, another slightly strange spot for a gig. We played at this place called The Dial, a really cool DIY space in the middle of nowhere. We were in the van kinda lost in some sort of industrial/business district with not a sole to be seen, until all of a sudden we turned a corner and were greeted by a sea of underage high school kids. We were a bit uneasy at first, feeling like a bunch of Rolf bloody Harris peddos, but all the teeny boppers went absolutely skitz when we played, so it turned out really well.

    (The Dial)

They were definitely the two best and most interesting gigs of the first week or so. The shows we played in the actual city of LA were nothing special, so I’ll spare you the details. I’m already at risk of this dragging out into a marathon saga of epic proportion. The next instalment will deal with our quick side trip into Arizona and our journey up the coast to the Pacific Norwest.

                      (Our best pal in LA, the Liquor Clown.)

Oh, and to those still waiting for pozible mail-outs, please know that they are not far off! We’re really sorry for the delay, there’s been a bunch of reasons for the hold up, but I’m not about to start whinging about them now. So rest assured, your goods will arrive soon. Thanks for being patient with us.

Love Zeahorse xx