Moonshine and Minivans: November NW Tour Recap.

That was a tiring couple of days.  This was the last show of this year’s touring cycle.  I guess you could call it the last shows of the extended “Breaking Up With Loneliness Tour” as we’ve been promoting that record primarily through live gigs since the CD release show in December 2011.  For an unsigned, completely DIY indie band, what else is there except touring?  Reviews in newspapers and magazines are basically purchased.  Did you know that?  Just pay the publicist and she/he will get you the reviews.  One quoted us a $7000 price tag for a 3 month campaign.  Hurrah, get my check book!!!  So we hit the road hard, and it’s been a big year for us.  We’ve done shows in Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois and Indiana.  Did I forget someone?  We’re you there?  Are you still wearing your Felsen T Shirt? Is it the last shirt in your laundry rotation?  Or is it your first?  Thank you fans for buying the shirts, CDs and buttons--It really made a huge difference this year.  And thank you also for listening and getting into the Felsen spirit with us at the shows.  Thank you to all the willing volunteers who got in the bunny costume--you’ve entertained many!  We’ve much to be thankful for.  

I’m so tired at present so trying to recap this tour is ahh...kinda foggy. How bout just a verbal montage?   Setting up the gear on the streets of Berkeley and all the potential weird and strange that that can only bring.  breaking in new songs, and dusting off some oldies for a free concert for the homeless and the college kids eating from the yummy food trucks.  multiple shout-outs to Kung Fu Taco got us some free food--breakfast for the following morning in Redding.  Wondering if were gonna have enough money to pull off this 4 day mission of 1600 miles. Seeing those snow capped mountains for the first time Friday morning.  Cristian making us coffee.  Playing an in store at Music Millennium--it was like being summoned to the temple of sound; a seal of approval from the real music lovers not swayed by trends and hipster hoopla nonsense.  Late night gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches on Alberta Street in Portland and post gig talk with beautiful stewardess (high altitude peanut distributor).  Needing to find a liquor store at 9.45am to purchase moonshine--jesus have we sunk this low?  Deciding not to purchase the ‘shine called Death’s Door--we’re dumb but not that dumb. Beautiful English girl who volunteered to wear the bunny suit in Portland--bless your heart. Getting our 45 minute set cut down to 30 mins to accommodate the awesome, hipster darlings headliner.  incredible drive through glacial mountains fresh snow coverage while dressed for a warm day in the bay area and feeling cold for 4 days straight while listening to Frank Zappa and the Mothers Live at the Filmore East. (brilliant, fearless, comical)  Eating breakfast at fav Portland diner--City State Diner and eating right underneath our Accidental Drowning album cover art framed on the wall (diner’s owner is the artist who designed that CD cover).  Cupcakes.  Impromptu jam session in the rec room at host’s house in Seattle.  Played her mom’s classical guitar, Art played son’s drumset, Cristian played the daughter’s bass and Dylan schlepped in his banjo.  “Secret Life of Guns” and unrehearsed, first-ever run through of the Replacements’ “Can’t Hardly Wait”.  Norman the giant Saint Bernard.  Big drum fills.  Strange, surprisingly lovely gig in Seattle. Roomful of tourists. Slightly amused Japanese girls taking photos of us like we were monkeys in a zoo. Amber the birthday girl regaled with the BEE GEE’s “To Love Somebody”.  Amber waves of grain.  Berating and verbally shaming the audience into buying our CD’s  “You got more money on your feet than I got in my bank account”.  The more abuse we gave, the more they loved us and begged for more.  Can’t explain it.  3 encores.  Drunks rolling around on the ground (seriously), acting like animals, doing some kind of yuppie mating ritual??? meanwhile the band plays a song about death, infinity, god, childhood in a mixed up world (Breaking Up With Loneliness).  Heaping more verbal abuse on them--and them loving it?  White guilt? Amps cranked.  It’s revenge of the nerds.  Epic, divine showdown at the O.K. Computer corral.  The haves (them) vs. the have-nots (us).  You’re either with us or against us.  Debuting new song “Rock and Roll's Not Dead” and really finding our stride with this song the further we get into the tour.  Realizing it’s power and deeper levels of meaning in the lyrics and the music.  

“Upload your identity, put it on infinite repeat mode.

Enter your password here, at the beep hit send, then end.  

Type in your secret code, workers working in a catacomb.  

But I’ve gone electric, you will hear your eardrums blown!”  

This is high drama.  Again the epic battle, the fool’s errand.  It’s us (art) versus them (the machine).  Art wins.  Humanity prevails. 14 hour drive home.  Tired. The eagle has landed.  Get out of your space ship it’s time to start work on a new album.

Windy and cold: Room 4, Caspar Inn

listen up and read along: 

Last night Felsen played for the first time at the Caspar Inn, a legendary, one-of-a-kind California rock and roll roadhouse located on the windy, beautiful Mendocino County coast in the tiny town of Capar.   For touring bands on a shoe-string budget (i.e. Felsen), it's a great place to play because they provide rooms to the band.  Nothing fancy, but it beats the hell out of sleeping on someone's floor or crashing at some cockroach-infested motel.  On top of all that, it's just a fun vibe at the Caspar. Seeing as the bands don’t have to get back in their vans post-gig, much liquor is usually consumed (and/or other substances specially cultivated in Mendocino county) and shenanigans ensue. The bands know they’re gonna have a fun night and generally dig into the music a little deeper and just go for it. There’s nothing like seeing a seasoned band in a state of complete reckless abandon on stage (and off): that’s rock and roll folks.

Although it was Felsen's first gig there, I've played there a bunch over the years with different bands. The last time, I was playing drums with a band from Oakland and we spent 2 nights at the Caspar--this was July 4, 2009.  We had a whole day to relax and I wrote  "Honolulu” on guitarist Michael Fiorentino’s Yamaha acoustic guitar and recorded several demo versions on my digital recorder while camped out in room 4 upstairs in the Inn.  It’s perpetually cold and windy there and I think that put me in mood.  I missed home. I missed my family.  I wrote a song about the terror of going through a major surgery and wanting to be someplace tropical instead-- go figure.

“Honolulu” has been in and out of Felsen’s set lists for a long time.  We used to open our shows with a rockin version, reminiscent of Crazy Horse: loud, twangy, drop D-tuned Telecasters and overdriven analog synth, heavy bass and drums.  Our producer, Jonathan “JP” Parker encouraged us to strip it down to just piano and vocal for our Breaking Up With Loneliness CD.  The piano was played by long-time Felsen collaborator Justus Dobrin. We performed the song live with Justus only once--at our CD release party and we haven’t performed it with that arrangement since.  Nobody plays the piano like Justus.  When we do get to work with him it’s like splurging on a real nice vacation--something you don’t get to do everyday.  Meanwhile we’ve been enjoying playing the rockin version again.  Maybe we’ll record that at some point.  

best tour yet!

Well, we’re home now from our January “Rainy Days and Sleepless Nights NW Tour”. I have great memories of listening to Radiohead, Nilsson, Death Cab, Arcade Fire... while driving through the ruggedly beautiful and snowy PNW, scurrying us along to play a total of 3 shows: Thursday in Sacramento at the Fox and Goose, Friday the 13th in Eugene at the Black Forest Tavern and Saturday night at Portland’s Alberta Street Pub. I really feel like this has been the best tour yet. I know, I know some of you are thinking that 3 days on the road hardly qualifies as a tour, but for little old Felsen it does. Plus 3 days is all we can afford (at this point). Here’s the Math: Minivan rental=$227,Gas=$216, Food=$200. Not gonna disclose how much the total revenue from merch+the money from the venues. I will say this, it’s never enough, but in the low, low music biz rung that is Indie Rock we didn’t do too bad. We saved a bunch this time around by not staying at motels. We stayed with friends and used couchsurf.com to hook us up a free spot one of the nights.

But that’s just the facts and figures. What really constitutes as a good tour is how we connect with the audiences. I can’t just accept that we’re a small band, with no big hit song on the radio and hope that we’re gonna wow ‘em with our fantastic songs (that they’ve never heard) and musicianship. Trust me, we’ve done our homework in both of those areas. We’ve spent HUNDREDS OF HOURS REHEARSING!!! But that’s not enough to engage a room full of strangers. As they say in the theater world, you’ve got to break down the 3rd wall between the stage and the audience or more appropriately the band’s lofty ambitions and the audience’s inhibitions. The band has got to get the party started. My good pal Vic Krummenacher of Camper Van Beethoven told me that they (the audience) want to love you. They’ve come though the door of that saloon on a Thursday night in Sacramento and they want entertainment. So give it go them and don’t hold back. Shed some blood. Engage them, somehow. How bout dancing on a table top? That’s an attention getter--sometimes. Or how bout recruiting a volunteer from the audience to wear a giant bunny suit. Maybe if the bunny is a full-time professional break dancer known as poppin Todd, that just might wake up the ambivalents.

I’ve got this thing where I need the audience to be right up front with me. It’s my blood sport: I need them to be close to me. I couldn’t care less if there’s only 25 people at our gig on Tuesday night in Chico, I want it to feel like a concert and for that to happen I need them to be right there, giving it to us. Felsen somehow has developed this strange ability to transform the feng shui of bar rooms full of distant, not-yet-converted-Felsen fans into epic, intimate, genuine rock concert experiences. Give us an inch and we’ll give you a marathon of exorcism. 99% of the people are willing to give you a shot and can be won over. They can be slowly lead by the arm right to the foot of your stage where they will sway with your songs, pump their fists, buy your CDs (and by default fill your mini van’s gas tank) and put a little something in the tip jar. But of course there’s always gonna be that 1% who just won’t temporarily loan you that little bit of their internal real estate to play out your rock and roll fantasies upon; they are the un-entertainable and they are dead to us. This little string of dates was great in that all three nights I got what I needed from the audiences. Thank you Sac, Eugene and Portland.