Desperado

for the first time in my career of raising hell in the city of portland, i took a cab home...to my house...this evening. granted, i was without car for the duration of the friday night, but still, i was at the mercy of a hired gun for my safe passage home.

i played my last show with the band otherwise known as jaroh this evening in corvallis. great venue, but corvallis is a ghost town during the summer...po-dunk nothingville because it houses and subsists on oregon state university and all the happy kids are out of town! we played with a band called the dimes who are, in my humble opinion, one of the most polished bands on the west coast! they are one of those bands that you hear in a small club and you say to yourself, "these guys sound like a band off the radio--but good! there is heart there!" they stopped the set to do a group shot of ta-kill-ya (that i bought) even though most of them don't really drink, just to be strong...and then played a killer set! dedication

so i rode with my drummer back into town and had him drop me at my bar...no car, no plan, just my bass on my back and my cap on my head! that, ladies and gentlemen, is an opportunity for adventure.

i drank a couple of souped-up drinks at my bar and directly thereafter, found myself in the back of a jeep, holding my bass between my legs, enroute to the 7-11 for a beer run before they stopped selling. this ride was interesting due to the fact that the guy driving (never got his name) was more twisted than i was by a damned sight...not to mention, he didn't know where he was going.

we got there.

i bought a case of beer and a pepperoni stick and when i got back to the parking lot, realized that half the bar that i just left was on the same plan...drunken family reunion! we got all of the guys that were dancing in the lot to the stereo that was cranked in the jeep back to their seats (herding cats), and then we were back to this house-party that was already in full swing. there was some extremely creative driving, but we were going short distances and never got going fast enough to really hurt any body...in the car.

we got home.

the house we returned to is a roost to a number of 503 (portland area code) rappers. upstairs there is a full recording studio, downstairs there is the pool table and the fridge, i.e. lots of beer. in any room at any time, there will be two to seven guys standing around and rapping...freestyle/beat box/snapping to your mama rhyming. i even got pulled in for a while on acoustic guitar...a session of two guys making beats and six guys trading rhymes while i funked the blues. it is absolutely amazing for anyone who has never heard poets freestyle...storytime in rhythm!

the strange thing was (i guess not so strange for an afterhours musician party), there were no girls. zero. nada. boys night out. the thing i noticed was, there were no problems...zero, nada, ziltch. all of these hard charismatic guys (i mean a ton of personality and ego in the room at once) had no problems with anything! it was a great time of talking shit, talking bullshit and making music. there was zero drama. now i like girls as well as the next guy, but this is solid evidence that you all may be evil! these guys/no problems/no girls? it's merely a hypothesis, but is there a side to party culture we are simply overlooking? it's a thought.

bottom line, i had a fantastic night of meeting folks, playing music and being out in two cities. nothing went bad, i didn't have to drive anywhere and life remains good!

-keep on truckin, space cowboy