Forest Ray West Coast Tour Day 8 7/5/2023

Woke up in a cramped apartment in SLO and grabbed a shower. Despite the difficulties sleeping the night before, I didn't feel too terrible. Next up was laundry and Misty was nice enough to allow us to use her facilities and some detergent. We also packed up the van with Nathan, as he was traveling with us to Oakland. He was a one-man show for the gig, with a keyboard amp, two keyboards and guitars, a pedalboard and a mixer. And a music stand. But we have a big van so in everything went.

We got a late enough start and had to wait for laundry to dry, so we headed back into SLO for what amounted to brunch at a Cajun café. I got an omelet and the other dudes got some skillet that looked incredible. I wanted a less unique breakfast, but I enjoyed what I got.

Said skillet thing.

After the food, we headed back to the apartment and Miles and I speed-folded our clothes. We dropped Nathan's car off at his place, then it was north to Oakland. The drive was about 3 hours or so and I napped a bit. I finally also busted out my earbuds. I've been not using them because I wanted to be present for convos, but at this point, I've heard most everything. But mainly, I'm getting tired of the same 4-5 CDs in the rotation (Neil Young, Tom Petty, the Who, the Beach Boys, David Alan Coe, and more Neil Young).

Listening to my podcasts was a nice touch. Of all things, I'm listening to KJ All Day, which is KJ Wright's podcast about football and his Seahawks days. It's really insightful and entertaining to hear his stories. They're not just about reliving his glory days, but about how he came up, who mentored him, how he's helping others, etc. It's cool to hear a human side to a football player, the fact that he's great on the podcast is a bonus.

I also have in my rotation the Smartless podcast, but the one I love the most is Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend. I started listening to that shortly after it started and can confidently say I've heard them all. And I'm not necessarily a huge Conan fan. I enjoy his humor, but sometimes it can be a little too "try too hard." That said, I do love his sidekicks/friends, Sona and Matt. I really enjoy their rapport and interactions.

CONAF does have Harrison Ford as his latest guest and I'm saving that for the ride back home, as that's gonna be our longest drive. I'm assuming there are no spoilers for the new Indiana Jones movie, as I haven't seen that yet and it will be my priority when I get home. It will be awesome to hear him on that podcast, so I'm looking forward to that.

We arrived in Oakland and it was highly reminiscent of a less grungy Pioneer Square. Some of it also reminded me of the Mission District from SF, only with less people and sidewalk poop. Me, Peter and Nathan walked around and checked some things out before we headed back to load into the club.

As with the Milk Bar and Make Out Room, the Golden Bull (apparently owned by Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day) is another shotgun style club, with a long room with a bar on the left and a stage at the end. One difference this place had was a staircase at the back of the stage that led to a nice little green room for the bands. That was a nice touch.

After we loaded in, I hung out up there and tried to get a few Zs in as Nathan was setting up and sound checking. Apparently he did the trick as I did fall asleep and as he was performing, I was trapped upstairs. I didn't want to distract by going down during his show, so I caught up on some computer stuff upstairs and chilled.

From what I could hear, Nathan had some cool backing tracks that he created with looping pedals and the like, and he played guitar and sang over the top of them. Very cool vibe and very melodic and hip. I could hear an appreciative crowd and when I went down to get set for our set, saw about 10-15 people in there.

I used my pedal that night, mainly for the tuner aspect of things. Sort of a security blanket, but better to have than not. I'm happy to say that I got through the first two songs with no bad notes, a first for this tour. In fact, I don't think I had many bad spots, getting through the entire set with a good performance. I got a bit bouncy and demonstrative on our last song, "So Many Miles," and then we finished. Some nice words from another bassist in the crowd, mainly about my singing. I do some backing vocals on a few songs. The parts are fairly simple note and rhythm-wise, but lyrically, I'm stumbling over some of Peter's words.

The last band was the Canterbury Bells, a four piece of dudes that looked like they stepped straight out of a Warped Tour pre-show opening act. The music was chill and they sang well, but it seemed like they were college freshmen (they were not) playing their first show. Decent players, great harmonies, songs need some seasoning.

The Canterbury Bells

After the show, we packed out, grabbed a pizza next door, then headed to Peter's old college roommate's place in Benicia. I hoped it was a house, but it was an apartment, but larger than the one in SLO. That said, we still all packed into the living room, where I tried sacking out early, but had to listen to my mates laughing and talking until about 2am. More snoring and shuffling about, but eventually, sleep came, and that was that.

Quick notes:

• DT Oakland seemed nice enough but people kept telling me it was not a great spot. What I saw seemed pretty cool. Fairly vibrant, but not a lot of people on a Wednesday night.
• Miles and I got dinner at a place called Oakland Street Food and got to watch some Mariners baseball as they were in SF playing the Giants. Sadly, the M's lost 2-0.
• Stopped at a gas station for a quick break. Inside were a couple of circulars with bumper stickers. Mixed in with all the aggressively conservative stickers was one that said something like, "Be Nice" or "Spread Joy" or something ironic like that.
• 
  
  
  
  

  

  Which one of these stickers doesn't belong?

  
  
• I did not know Oakland was home to both Bandcamp and Pandora; I saw offices for both when driving around.
• Oh! The bassist for the Canterbury Bells had a semi-relic'ed Squier P-Bass that sounded gnarly. Overdrive and a little grungy, reminded me of the bass tone on the "Mrs. Robinson" cover that the Lemonheads did in the late 90's. The sound guy told me that the bassist plugged into a Moog synth on stage that he had brought. After the show, I asked him about it and he said he basically used the Moog as a filter/preamp and sent the signal to FOH for amplification. Sounded really cool.

Tonight, we head to Morro Bay, hitting up a place called the Siren. There's a possibility we are gonna cram into Misty's again tonight. If so, and if it's rowdy, I'm gonna ask them to chill a bit, so we'll see how that goes.

Forest Ray West Coast Tour Day 7 7/4/23

For an off day, it was pretty eventful. 24 hours later, we're still getting curveballs, but I'll get to that tomorrow.

The 4th of July started with me waking up in the Airbnb in a room by myself for the first time on tour. I went to the bathroom and as I was emptying myself, I heard a bang at the window and saw a dude standing there. There is a narrow alley between the bathroom window and the other building and I think he was just passing through. I averted my gaze as I felt it would've been weirder for me to have seen him seeing me. As it was, I only saw him; no eye contact was made.

After that, I lowered the blind and continued with a shower, etc, and planned on finding a laundromat as I was out of clean shirts. As luck would have it, there was one about .5 miles away, so I grabbed my Target bag of dirty laundry and my backpack and headed out.

Of course, being the 4th of July and being on the main drag at about 9:30, the street was starting to fill up with townsfolk lining up to see the parade. I headed south and weaved my way through people, but then realized I wanted coffee. There was a coffee shop nearby, but the line was out the door, so instead, I decided to go to a cafe for breakfast (3 pancakes, 2 strips bacon) to get coffee that way. Pretty tasty.

I continued to the laundry, which Google maps said was open, but I should have realized would be closed. And it was. So I took a street that was next to the ocean, headed to the beach, took off my shoes and walked back to Schooners. I sat at the beach behind and wrote some of yesterday's entry, before we got the boot from the Schooners crew, as it was time for the cleaner (Brendan's wife) to reset the rooms. We got the stink eye as we moved our stuff out to the van, and then a few minutes later, off we went, headed down the coast to SLO (San Luis Obispo).

Peter took a quick detour to drive through the Cal Tech Poly campus, as he's an alumni. Campus was closed due to the holiday so we did a quick pass through, then headed to the little downtown area.

Downtown SLO was pretty cool. Beautiful day for a walkaround and tour. We walked into the Mission there and took a quiet look around. Peter said it was built in the 1500's, which I'm not entirely sure about, but it was beautiful and I could feel the history of the surroundings.

We walked through to the creek that runs through town, then hit up a crazy record store called Captain Nemo's. There were records, CDs, tapes, old stereo equipment, games, audio/video supplies, comic books, toys, pretty much anything that a collector would want or need. I looked through some records and simply marveled at the logistics of keeping a business like that running. Like what about inventory, etc? It would likely take at least a week to count inventory in a place like that. Astounding.

We walked around a bit more, killing time as we had no gig that night and were hoping to stay in town with a friend. We looked for some lunch, but since it was a holiday, many places were closed and we didn't want to spend too much. So, as we did earlier in the tour, we stopped by Sprouts for their $4.99 sandwiches. Fairly tasty and cheap, we filled up and headed back out.

Took a few minutes to try to find a laundromat. I ran out of clean shirts and was wearing a gig shirt from the other night. We found one in SLO and it didn't have a change machine or an ATM. I asked a guy hanging there how much it cost to wash and dry a load, in Spanish, no less. It was more than we had, so we bounced and thought we might be able to do it at where we were staying, so we bounced.

Peter took us down to Los Osos and the beaches there. I forget the actual name of the place, something like Montaña de Osos or something like that. I put on some shorts and my Tevas and headed down to the beach and water, dipping my toes in the ocean. The water was pretty cool, so I didn't stay too long. Lots of really smooth and thin rocks on the beach and I marveled a bit at how long they had to be tumbling in the ocean to get that way. I found a few rocks for Marci and the kids and put them away.

We jumped back in the van and headed towards the sand dunes where people will cardboard surf. It was super tall and the sand was so fine that every step up resulted in half a step down. I have not been able to exercise on this tour (which is a major bummer; I haven't gone this long without running for years), but climbing up that hill was pretty intense. We got to the top and were all sucking wind, it was pretty funny.

Off to the side were some college age kids, like 7 guys, 4 girls. The guys were all super chiseled and fit. They were playing beer pong, shirts off, pecs and six packs glistening. They had a couple cases of Coors Light and we all enjoyed being on that dune above the ocean.

After listening to Peter tell some funny stories and jokes, we saw some park rangers heading towards us. The kids didn't see them at first, but when they did, wow, they got moving. A couple kids grabbed the cases of beer and the empties and ran down the hill to get them out of sight. They then continued acting like nothing happened. A few minutes later, one ranger made it up and said hi to us. He went to the kids and was like Officer Friendly, "How's it going, guys? (fine) Whatcha up to? (hangin out) Anyone got any beer? (no officer)." And then Bad Cop came up. She stood by a beach blanket at the top the hill and asked, "Anyone over 21 here? (one raised hand) And no one has any beer? (no, Officer)"

Then Officer Bad Cop bends down, picks up a beer can and says, "Then what's this? C'mon, guys, this isn't my first time up on the dunes seeing people play beer pong." The rangers then proceeded to make the kids go grab the beer and then made the two kids over 21 (there was another one) dump out all the remaining cans. Then they got the lecture, which I couldn't really hear due to wind, but you get the gist.

We hung out a bit longer, then headed down the hill, where we got back into the van and made our way back into SLO for dinner. Of course, by now most restaurants were closed, so after driving around some more, we decided once again, Sprouts it was. One more sandwich, this time turkey, and still, quite good.

While ordering sandwiches, I told Peter about this blog and how I've been posting my escapades at TalkBass and how some readers have asked for my Venmo to help out. That if he saw some weird instances of income, that was why. Turns out, as we were waiting, one TB'er named Harry sent over a generous donation. That was super cool and totally unexpected, but very much appreciated. I sent Harry a letter of gratitude and we ate our sammies and then all called our ladies from the Sprouts parking lot.

On this trip, I've been busy with the day to day stuff and it's really when I talk to Marci that I realize how much I miss her and the kids. They're doing their thing and it is what it is, but I miss being part of that quite a bit. We talked about their kayaking trip in Bellevue, about how Kody is after getting in a through-the-fence bark fight the other day, about the heat. The day to day stuff I'm missing. It was great. I wished her a good night and we went off to find our lodging.

Which turned out to be an apartment of a young woman named Misty. She was at our Schooners show with her friend/boyfriend(?) Nathan, who we are playing a show with in Oakland. Her apartment consisted of a living area, a loft bedroom and bathroom. Nathan was also staying there and it made for a packed house. I got the couch, Peter got an air mattress and the other dudes got the floor.

We all sat around for a bit, and then at around 11:30-12:00 (? I can't remember), Simon and I turned in for the night. I had a hard time falling asleep, and then when Peter, Miles, Misty and Nathan came back in, talking, playing music, then turning on the stereo, well, it made sleeping even harder.

It must be a generational thing, with these people in their late 20s and early 30s simply staying up and chatting about all things. Also, altering their realities with various substances. I'm not judging, to each their own. They were enjoying themselves reasonably, but yeah, it was challenging to try to sleep. I faded in and out (mainly in) for the next few hours, until about 3, I think, when they finally quieted down.

For whatever reason (and it was her place), Misty had music playing upstairs in the background and though it wasn't too loud, it was a little distracting. Miles fell asleep almost immediately and started snoring. And then Nathan was also there, on the floor next to me and either he kept bumping the couch or hitting it on purpose to stop me from snoring. So it was pretty uncomfortable until after 4 or so, when I think I started sleeping a little bit.

I'm hoping accommodations are better tonight. TBD.

Quick notes:

• I keep forgetting to mention that I think I packed too much. Bass, bass accessories, rolling suitcase, backpack, giant duffel. It's possible I can get away w/o the rolling suitcase next time. Especially after seeing what the other dudes have packed. Need to simplify.
• As much as I enjoyed having the day off, I did miss playing. That experience is always fun.
• I stopped at the SLO Donut Company because I thought there was a Starbucks nearby. Donuts won out. I love donuts.
• I've been playing without my Zoom B2 Four the past few gigs for simplicities sake. But then I don't have a tuner. I was a little out of tune the other night, so I'll be using the pedal again.

Up next, Oakland's Golden Bull. I keep hearing this should be a good one tonight. Looking forward to playing.