A little over 4 hours to San Luis Obispo.

Revisited some hits by Madonna and Prince, and The Breeders Last Splash. Except for Ruben and I, not a lot of the dudes had heard this classic. The song ‘Drivin’ on 9′ was the perfect road song coming out of San Francisco and hitting that coastal California heat.

We got up from the place we crashed at in SF, and hit the road early in order to beat traffic, didn’t really work but it was worth a shot. Still ran into a lot of commuters, which gave us all time to nap. The heat was pretty killer, and the A/C had stopped working.

We stopped in Morgan Hill at a Red Robin for a lunch. Service was brutal and after the sweltering heat it was an extra punch to the gut. We waited for almost an hour or more for our food. We joked about eating and dipping before paying, it was that bad. They had this set up, not unlike Applebee’s, were you would swipe to pay from a little tablet on your table, however it was not working for any of us. The server refused to take our cash and said we needed to do it from this device. I told her I didn’t have a card and handed her cash to pay for my tea and she begrudgingly took it. Everyone paid on the self checkout device, and we headed outside,and  back into the heat. Our server comes running out accusing our drummer of not paying – he had, in fact ran his card several times and had trouble, but she said it was fine. So, we were all very confused by this accusation. Welcome to the future.

Gig was at The Warehouse On Mars

Just a quick line check by our buddy Graham who just recently moved to SLO from Ventura. A welcome and pleasant surprise. It was a positive response. I think over all it actually sounded better then the Bottom Of The Hill Show, even though our monitor mix was more on point in SF.

I’ve known Pancho And The Wizards since they started and have watched them continue to grow as people and a band. Their sound is something like Black Sabbath meets Surf/Punk. They also recorded their first two records at Certain Sparks, so they definitely hit close to home. They go for broke and are aware of the rock and roll culture that they readily draw from and continue to pay homage to those that came before. As it should be, it was pretty damn loud. Thankfully they had some earplugs handy. As I enter into my thirties I’m hoping to take better care of my hearing, I don’t enjoy the ringing from being blasted, as in times past. There is nothing quite like a good rock n roll show, just this time with napkins stuffed in my ears. Fate is not without a sense of irony. It was fun hanging with all of the San Luis homies! Good catching up with some friends we hadn’t seen in a long time.

125 at the show, maybe more, but when I counted it was close to 120 early in the night. Fun crowd, younger collage age and a lot of dancing.

I dropped the solo on the song ‘All The Time’ so I covered it by just holding a note and creating massive amounts of feedback, seemed to work all things considered. It was very appropriate giving the atmosphere. I’ve tried to adjust my playing to more of a Nile Rogers/Prince esc style for this last half of tour and so far seems to be working better. At least to my ear. It fits this new direction that Dante Elephante is expanding into. Overall the show went smooth, everyone is playing very solid after these past few weeks of touring. Ready for Ventura and whatever comes next.

The end of tour is always bittersweet.