16th Apr 2008
tour day 21
After another delicious breakfast made by Aaron’s aunt, we had to ship off to The Atomic Cantina in Albuquerque, NM. Grandma also sent us along with some of her famous banana bread, yum! It was actually pretty decent for a Monday night and especially with having no other bands. There was a little bit of a built in crowd that spilled over when Monday night trivia ended at the place next door. There were also some Ministry (yes, the industrial metal band) fans that came in during our set which made for an interesting mix. I challenged a 250 pound man to a fight when he tried to say that we weren’t from Baltimore because we didn’t have Natty Boh with us. Fortunately, said fight never came about. Katie’s old roommates who have since moved to Albuquerque came to the show with fantastic green chile burritos for our dinner. I love green chile. <3
We requested a place to crash on the mic and ended up staying at our new friend Hadley's house. We've actually only had to find a place to stay twice on this tour because we've known so many people in each city whether it be family or friends. It's really nice not to have to worry about where we're going to sleep, but we have been very lucky to meet generous people along the way when we're in unknown territory. We've been touring since fall '03 and we've only had to get a hotel two or three times in all of that time. Hotels would be nice, but if we want to make any money it's not an option.
The drive to Altus, OK was on the longer side (7 hours) but totally worth it in the end. Not very exciting scenery. A lot of it looked like this:
If we were lucky, we saw this:
We got hooked up with this random town on our last tour. The Rentals were playing music that they liked on a radio show and Ben Pringle played some tracks from our full length because he is so awesome. The promoter Stephen heard us on the show and saw that we were looking for dates in the area. He offered to book us a show and anytime people offer to take some of the load off we’re more that happy to accept. We had no idea how it would be the first time we came, but we have since vowed to plan our tour stops around Altus whenever possible.
Even on a Tuesday night our show was amazing! I knew we were in good shape when I saw a kid walk by wearing our t-shirt. Stephen brought us dinner from Pick Up Taco (they have the best green cilantro/avocado/delicious sauce ever), we sold almost $200 in merch, and got paid all of the door money. They rent the hall for free and the other bands didn’t take any money so we got paid $226! At $3 a head that’s about 75 kids. Incredible. So all said in done this one show in a tiny little town not only paid for itself, but also made up for the three shows we didn’t get paid. We stayed with Stephen and left early-ish so we could hang out more at the Yeargin estate before our show in Dallas.
Note to self: I need to remember to take some more pictures of band related things instead of just cacti. =P
Mandy is winning the tour blog derby!!
Cacti are pretty awesome… if it was me, I’d be digging them up and collecting specimen along the way, so pictures are much better.