Hello to everyone who isn’t on the road. 
Over the course of very few days the most bizzare things have taken place. 
I will start in cronological order:
May 19th, The Stringhold, Venice CA
We drove from joshuatree to Lantz and Kim’s house in LA. We then went to grab some very overpriced Thai food, but we figured we deserved to splurge after all the crap we had been going through in the passed weeks. Then we went back to their house and practiced a bit, since Greg has been playing bass for them he needed to work some songs out. Then in a rush, unaware of the time, we traveled to Venice to play at the stronghold. Man, what an AMAZING venue. The people were cool, kind and artistic, beautiful room, AWESOME sound, an just all around great vibes. All night there were puppies running around everyone, one of which was shaved like a lion and had a mohawk. We played a short but sweet acoustic set- it was myself Greg and Steve , and Shannon who books theroom jumped up and played the big wooden box for us. We had a blast, wish we couldve stayed longer. That night we met Adam, a young film maker who asked if I would be a part of a photoshoot he was having the following day for a movie he is about go begin filming. It’s a movie about Hells Angels in San Francisco starring. Alexis Arquette, Juliet Leuis and a few more actors you may know. So the next day we went back to the stronghold and had a really fun time at the photoshoot, funny thing was the makeup and hair artists really didn’t do much to me because I already had the dirty,tired, strung out look (ha!). Before we departed to go to San Francisco, Michael who is an owner at The Stronghold have us some BEAUTIFUL hand made vintage leather boots, a pair for each of us. I couldn’t believe he gave them to us but kindly he said “you don’t have the means to get them, and Ive got them, and you need a good pair of boots,everyone does.”

May 20th, the Boom Boom Room
We left the stronghold and headed for San Fran. Like little kiddies we were glued to the car windows as we entered the city. If you’ve never been to San Francisco, go. There some breathtaking scenery.  We parked 4 blocks from the venue and walked our equipment because there was no parking. It was absolutely FREEZING. “the coldest winter I ever spent was the summer in San Francisco” – very true. 
Our new drummer Dan was supposed to fly in at 9pm but his flight got delayed so we had Eric McFadden play drums for us. He was actually really really good! He’s a famous guitarist but he also good at everything else. I am kinda jealous
After a long fun night of listening to Eric’s other band Shakewell do pat mAcdonald covers and picking up Dan from the air port and fending off drunkards, we all went back to Delfine’s home, Eric’s girlfriend. Had a nice,quiet restful sleep which is very rare for us these days and woke up, walked around downtown for a bit, got coffee and headed to Atascadero for our next gig. 

May 21st, Last Stage West, Atascadero CA
We ran a bit late due to getting lost and a bit of procrastination. This little place was charming and they had all the right ideas, but it was deep in the mountains and didn’t had a very big capacity. Dan had to jump in on an electronic drumset because all of our gear is still in the shuttle bus that is still in the repair shop. So overall, it was a peculiar place, the sound was strange, but we had fun. We then got ripped off by motel 6 because the price they were advertising wasn’t what they charged me and told mr after they had swiped my card. We didn’t care too much at that point. We just wanted a shower and a real bed. 

May 22nd, Yeah! live, Berkley CA and Biscuits and Blues, San Francisco CA
We got to the TV station on time and waited for the producer for a half hour. I will make this story very short and hopefully you guys will undertand what I mean by this: by the time the “producer” figured out how to “set up” the gear and “run the sound” and yelled at me a couple of hundred times, I played our set of songs with my eyes open, motionless staring at one single spot on the floor and speaking the lyrics. Enough said. 
However, ou show at Biscuits and Blues was awesome. The owner Steve was very nice and took good care of us and Eric McFadden came and played some songs with us. The city is absolutely breathtaking. I hope to go back there again sometime soon. 

May 23rd Near death experience in whitewater kayaking and Marcos Cafe,Caloma CA

We went to Lantz’s parents house to crash after San Francisco because Lantz has been a river guide for years and wanted to take us all rafting. His lovely mother cooked a whole spread of delicious breakfast items for all us kids and Lantz spend the good part of the day convincing us it wasn’t too cold to go rafting. Then we realized there was no raft but he had kayaks. I didn’t want to go but by confusion after much planning for where vihicles would be and stationed to shuttle back the people who went kayaking and who wanted to go and who didn’t, I got dropped off at the wrong end- the end that was going down the river. Without any instruction really Lantz put Greg and I in a bright orange hardshelled kayak. We’d never gone kayaking, yet alone in mountain stream whitewater. After the first set of rocks and waves I wanted to get out so we were trying to figure out how to paddle to shore. Lantz asked what we were doing and told us he coulndt hear us so he kept telling us to come closer and closer. Well,by the time we got close enough we were sucked in by another set of fast white water heading for a big rock. We hit the rock with the tail end of the giant orange plastic shell and fell right into 20 degree water. My whole body went numb, breathing stopped and I stared drifting away from Greg and the upsidedown kayak. Gregs foot got caught on a rope attatched for the kayak but he was able to get out of it. With one swift motion he grabbed my life jacket and put mr half way onto the raft. I couldn’t pull my self up- I couldn’t move a muscle in my body. Within 2 minutes I was able to drag myself slowly onto the kayak and just sat there shaking. It took me about a good hour or so to regain full speech and motor ability. It’s absolutely the scariest most painful thing I’ve ever been through. Then Lantz and Kim continued onto their kayak tail and greg and I walked to the venue we were playing at that night freezing,hypothermic and exhausted. An hour later we played and by the end of the night we were all mostly ok. 

We left early this morning to drive 8 hours back to Joshua tree to pick up the van from the repair shop. We have a show in Salt Lake City tomorrow night so hopefully all goes well with the van. 

We are still at this point $500 away from being able to pay for it so I will leave the donate button for those of you guys that can donate a but more to our never ending bad luck with our tour van. 

Geri X Needs Your Help!

All in all we are against all odds having fun, Steve has been awesome and a pleasure to be around and Dan is fitting right in with ou groove. We are all alive and well and that’s all that matters. 

Jetlagged 
Geri X

4 Responses to “Take me to the river, drop me in the water…”