denver = surreal

What do you do between a 14-hour overnight trucker-haul and the next set in the next club? Capitalizing the sweet generosity of aaron’s sister Adrian, some of us did a pretty good imitation of a good night’s sleep in two hours at the Denver ramada; some of us went for a stroll down cofax, and some of us looked after our ailing relatives (godspeed a fast recovery, meemaw)

We were the midpoint of a 5-band showcase down at the 3kings tavern last night, and oh my what a strange lineup. First we had THE BUTCHER (of music), doing his one-man guitarist/laptop-drums/keyboards/harmonica/flute comedic….er, techno-metal freakout which was actually pretty dang entertaining and laugh-out loud funny at times. Dr gus, you could’ve been this guy, but hey babe: don’t go a-changin’. Next up was a band devoted entirely to other people’s songs, doing mostly punked-up covers of such favorites as ‘bright bright sunshiny day’, and ‘hungry like the wolf’ by duran duran. Honestly I can’t remember their name but 2 out of three of them were called tim. Oh yes, ‘NO GOOD REASON. That’s the name. then you had us, but you already know about us, and half the fun of these reports is in describing the bizarre slice of musical life that we collide with on this trip. Suffice to say we were loud enough, fast enough, erik was smart enough to bring his back-up guitar, and we were apparently good enough to attract a few funny drunks to sway on their feet and yell right in front of us. After we played came PROGRAM, a quintet from Houston that reminded me of superchunk, all sweet and bright and chirpy. Do you see any connection between any of these bands yet? Well neither do i. and if that wasn’t enough the last band was a very serious, well-funded cocky strutting metal band called SiX, from—as best as I could gather—“the muthervuggin ROAD!!”. There was much leaping about, surgically-executed heavy power chords, and grabbing of shirttail/crotch. At this point the seething hordes at the 3 kings stage swelled to about 4 drunk guys waving their brown-bag-clad 40s around the place. These guys had some amazing chops, serious talent, and lots of charisma. But I guess I like Shakespeare better than bleeding skulls.

All-in-all it was a strange evening of music, but the venue is fantastic, with a good combination of hot bartender-woman, a pinball machine called RADICAL!, enough jackass drunkard guys to keep things entertaining from a distance, and a very cozy green room with buckets of miller high-life on ice. Too bad the roadies (yes, roadies) for SiX drank them all by halfway through the night. It would have been a lot less fun without Adrian our self-appointed wannabe ‘merch-bitch’, and all her conversation, taunts, crazy friends, and provisions.

The morning saw us rocketing the minivan out through the flats of eastern Colorado, scenery blanketed with an endless carpet of yellow flowers and the air throbbing with ted nugent calling me his baby and telling me I’ve got him in a stranglehold. Now we’re somewhere in Nebraska, just passing the exit for the ‘heartland museum of military vehicles’ and staring a low-fuel warning light in the face. More to come after Omaha….
--Garrett

Driving across Nebraska is pretty boring, and one of the only bright spots was going to Kirk’s Nebraskaland Truckstop. I thought we might buy a souvenir t-shirt, but I think we just drove right past it.. hmph.

--Aaronß