Our beloved, Jacob Cole, is on tour for two weeks playing guitar with Dante Elephante. While he’s away, he’s keeping us updated with this tour diary, so we can live vicariously through him. Here’s his first entry.
It’s a 27 hour drive to Austin, TX from Lompoc, CA
We were supposed to have shows in AZ, NM and Houston, but the first few dates were cancelled due to not having a bass player available. We broke the drive up into 6/7 hour shifts, and ended up listening to a ton of new music. Heard Anna Burch, Arthur Verocai (Brazilian folk/rnb), and Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks (hadn’t checked out his post-pavement sound yet and was thoroughly into it). Lots of RX bars, ACV and avocado.
Van Life
Arrived in Austin 1:35pm
Had a turkey sandwich from a charming little coffee shop called The Hideout off 7th street. Turkey, avo, pesto, spinach, cucumber – grilled to kill. First square meal so far. Definitely better than nibbling on snack food.
…
First show of the tour at the 720 Club 9pm
Blessed, the band that played right before us, were really courteous, letting us use some of their gear to help with the transition time. Their sound was a mix of Television, early Devo (stiff guitar tones) and some nuanced rhythmic punctuation. They’re out of Canada.
We unfortunately didn’t have a soundcheck, just a quick line check and even that was hap-hazard. No stage manager so I ended helping with the mic placement, but all in all our friends said it was well mixed set from out in the crowd.
First song maybe 30 people in the venue, but about half way into our set it really picked up to at least a hundred or so.
Wesley Hill Doppelganger
Show was a lot of fun, but also kind of rusty. Only real mistakes were cues, for example, the last song was cut short. I know it will get better as we all become more familiar with the material.
Time to explore Austin at night…