October 5, 2013 ... I'm doing this much earlier than the last few days... Papa Roach just took the stage here in Seattle. We have wifi at the venue and there's no guarantees where we are staying tonight... so I'm just gonna make sure I'm able to post while I can. Remember... don't take internet access for granted! ... I got about 3 hours of sleep last night. I woke up around 6:30am and was wide awake... so I did some emails/web stuff until breakfast... that awesome buffet breakfast. I over ate. It was worth it though... Egg's Benny with spinach, hash browns, bacon... so much bacon... waffles for dessert. Yes... have dessert with your breakfast! Why not!? Ok... onto actual "stuff". Today was our first border crossing. I've played in the US a few times but it's always been fly dates/showcase stuff. This was the first time really coming through with a longer tour, all our gear and whatnot... I figured it'd go either way... a couple taps on the roof and away we go... or "different gloves". We left Richmond/Vancouver at 10am. It's a 2-3 hr drive to Seattle. We also factored in some wait time at the border just in case. There was the debate of leaving last night to skip the potential line up... in my opinion, it makes more sense to get a decent nights sleep (yeah I know...) and then just wait it out the next day, than skip a nights sleep and be messed up the next few days. We're still in the routine of night/day on this tour... let's keep it that way as long as we can. So we pull up to the border crossing and the officer seems really nice. We're... brb... Where Did The Angles Go is being played. ... such a good song. ... so anyway, back to the border. The officer looks over our paperwork and says we need to get another piece of documentation before we're good to go. All good. So we pull over to the lot, enter the building and it's basically a giant room of two massive line ups. One (well technically three) for paperwork stuff... and one for the bathroom. Bathroom line is just crawling. I never really thought about how long it takes people to go to the bathroom... like without a cell phone. It was unreal though... the amount of ground we covered in the paperwork line vs bathroom line... what are they doing in there. Brent braved the line first... we'd been traveling a couple hours now and there's no real good place to just hop out and pee... while you're stopped in traffic... assuming there's cameras everywhere. So we work our way through the line up... people are staring at us... like... people naturally look around at other people when you're in line but this was that kinda "kung fu fight to the death" style staring... that and smiles... I like the smiles better. We get to the next customs officer and it turns out we just need another card or something... and they scanned our finger prints. ... it's crazy how nervous you can get all of a sudden for no reason at all. He also asked about merch... we paid a couple fees and away we went. One more officer checked over our paperwork and we were officially on our way. It was awesome how smooth (including the 2-3hrs of waiting) it was to get through the border. As soon as we got back on the road, my first thought was... I wanna go to McDonald's. I always hear about how cheap fast food is in the US so I'm curious to see for myself. I've already seen a few ads up for places like Subway... $2/6inch... that'd be unheard of in Canada. We'd probably politely protest those kinda deals. Made it to Seattle... found the venue... super tight parking... not really a parking lot designed for 2 tour buses to say the least. They made it work though. The venue is really nice... the setup is a little funky for two bigger bands but the crew for Papa Roach and Pop Evil are awesome. Super accommodating and seem to favor logic over pecking order and politics. My kinda people. We had time to run out before sound check so we found this pub-ish type place down the street. I think it's across the road from the first ever Starbucks actually. Everyone went chicken/burgers and fries. I went BLAT (Bacon, Lettuce, Avocado, Tomato) sandwich. Trying to be healthy here! Minor highlight... our waitress had an amazing voice. It was like... that TV commercial mom voice... or a super calm GPS... or audiobook reader. Someone should sign her. I'll skip ahead a little... Seattle or at least what we got to see seems awesome by the way. The hills are nuts... I think we drove up a 45 degree angle several times last night. Our set went well... crowd response was amazing... we went over a couple minutes (30 minute set tonight) again so we'll either chop a tune or really chop out the jibber jabber. It's always good to let people know you think about these kinda details. Amateur is about just assuming everything is cool because hey, it's just 2 minutes, right? Wrong. There are schedules posted everywhere for a reason. Hear that Toronto? Pro shows run on time. Don't tell people 9pm and you go on at 9:45pm. Screw that unless there's a real reason to postpone... like tech related. Waiting for more people to show up is not a good reason... it's a sad excuse. It's the excuse of the hobbyist trying to fend off reality just a bit longer. ... when it matters... people show up. On time. Post set we had our stuff off stage soooo fast, down two flights of stairs, and into a sketchy back alley. How do I know it's sketchy? Because multiple people saw people doing drugs in it earlier in the day, several venue staff mentioned it's sketch... and a security guard came by and doubled checked we knew it was sketchy. That's sketchy. Packed up, loaded up, re-parked the van and we're back in the venue. Response from the show has been awesome... it's always fun signing stuff and taking photos. More fun making new fans and selling some merch/cd's... merch is the lifeblood of bands. If you're not touring, you're in trouble... or at least you're missing out. Papa Roach's set is almost over... going to catch the last couple songs then we're off to the hotel hopefully. Still trying to decide if we're going to drive across US back to Calgary or straight up through Vancouver again. Maybe try the US route... gas is much cheaper down here. ... hopefully the hotel has breakfast. ... day off tomorrow means waffles. - Mike P.S.
... ended up at a Days Inn last night... breakfast and WiFi! Good times.
1 Comment
Noel
10/16/2013 03:23:17 am
"There are schedules posted everywhere for a reason. Hear that Toronto? Pro shows run on time. Don't tell people 9pm and you go on at 9:45pm. Screw that unless there's a real reason to postpone... like tech related."
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Mike Langford - Official BlogBeing on both sides of the glass, I get the chance to wear many hats in the music industry. This is a place to share my thoughts, views, predictions, rants, stories and news! Categories
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