Day 4
“Who the hell is that guy Billy Nye?” -Pimm, referring to Andy.
Today we awoke fairly late, in Duluth at Mike’s House, but that was okay since we only had an hour drive to Ashland. We met Mike’s roommate Courtney who had one of the coolest dog’s I’d ever seen. His name was Stud and he was some sort of crazy squaty basset hound mix. He was a really big dog but he had a body like a wiener dog, and he was so happy to see all of us. After we finally got all our crap together and loaded up in the van, we drove down town. We had breakfast at Jitters a local coffee shop, with one of the best morning glory muffin’s and banana mango blueberry smoothies I had ever had. Apparently Andy and Jake thought the coffee was also really good.
We walked over to the Electric Fetus, a record store, and did some shopping. Then we walked around Duluth a little bit more and found this crazy store where I found a Sega Game Gear. I hadn’t seen or played with one since I was probably seven years old, it was only 20 bucks so I got it and a few games and we climbed back into the van to find an instrument shop. We found a Music-Go-Round where Andy found a new pedal for his bass and I fell in-love with a 1962 red Fender Mustang, only $1600. ONLY! The guys at the shop were pretty cool dudes and really helpful, one of the guys was even going to make a deal with me on the Mustang by going down to $1200. (Still on tour, still have a long way to go, still need to keep as much as money as possible). So no Fender Mustangs for me.
We took off for Ashland in the pouring rain, that only lasted a few minutes. Then the sun came out but it was still pretty cold. We reached Ashland, which was an extremely beautiful town, right on Lake Superior. We found the Black Cat Coffee Shop where our show was and met Honor, a nice older lady who owned the Black Cat and told us anything we wanted for the night was on the house. We explored the downtown, which was cool since there is no mall all of their shops are downtown. I wish there were more places like this in the world. We walked down to what we thought was a pier but turned out to be a gigantic dilapitated ore dock, used by trains to dump their haul into boats. It was right off the dock and I decided now was the time to go swimming. I got down into my undies and made my way into the water, which surprisingly was not as cold as I had expected it to be. Andy put his feet in while I swam around while Jake, Max and Jimmy took some pictures.
We made our way back to the Black Cat, to have some dinner. It was well worth it. I had one of the best sandwiches in the entire world. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water. After everyone was nice and full, we unpacked a little bit of gear since we were playing acoustic, since there was no P.A. This would turn out to be pretty neat since the Ooblecks had never done this before. The show wasn’t really a show but more like two bands playing for 6 or 7 of the nicest people in the world. Diabolic Octopus, played a pretty long set, that consisted of most of their new material. They sounded great. Everyone really enjoyed them. The Ooblecks then played and we actually also sounded pretty good I thought. The only problem was that my voice was pretty pooped out from the night before. Playing acoustic gave us a chance to work on some things we hadn’t played in a while. We also played a cover of Sincerely Jack.
After the show we helped clean up and one of the Barista’s, Sarah and her lady-friend Pimm, said they had a place for us to stay. We then headed over the community center, where there was a skate-park, baseball field and two super huge awesome playgrounds. Our new friends met us over there a lil while later and we followed them to our new area of residence for the night. First, Pimm, who is a silver smith and works out of the basement of the house, i.e. our bed room for the night showed us her insanely bad ass Rickenbacker 360 guitar. We played it for a little while which felt like heaven. If they weren’t a bajillion dollars I’d have a higher hope to one day own one. At the house we also met our house mates, Jude, Tumbleweed, and Satan. Satan was not the real name of the cat but for some reason that cat scared the hell out of me, more on this later. Jude and Tumbleweed were two dogs. Jude was a great big husky who was a very kind older dog. Tumbleweed was an incredibly cute puppy, who was chiwauwa size but looked like some sort of terrier. We played with the two dogs for a while, until Sarah and Pimm invited us to a bar. Apparently in Wisconsin, it is not illegal to sit in a bar when you are under the age of 21. Jake, Andy and I went with the girls while Max and Jimmy decided to call it a night. While at the bar we learned how to play a dice game called 10,000. Jake and I shared a huge pitcher of the most delicious Root Beer! Hours passed and many of conversations were had. However, Andy’s topic of the night was what if luck is science? We discussed so much that Pimm, asked the quote of the day.
We were there until last call and then they took us home. Once we were back in the basement Jake, Andy and I encountered Satan cat! The cat wasn’t really doing anything but walking around in the dark, however when I sat down next to me starring at me purring loudly, I had the strangest suspicion,on that it was sizing me up to eat me. When it licked its lips I knew and pushed it away and hid under my sleeping bag. Eventually, the cat left, and Andy fell asleep. Jake, who had earlier at the bar had the strangest feeling of De Ja Vu, discussed with me different theories of why the sensation could occur. We then got into an extremely bizarre conversation of quantum physics and a number of other theories on the human brain being able to hold the mind back. After a few minutes we had since freaked each other out enough on the subject of the unknown that it was time for bed. I put on my headphones and crashed.
Day 5
Eau Claire
“Hey Nate, how come when the really awesome bands play no one is here?” -Chris
The next morning I woke up much later than everyone else, and we did our usual business in the morning of piling into the van. We drove down to the Black Cat where we had breakfast. I had an extremely good vegan blackberry shake. We were told that there was an R.V. campground down by the water, with showers that we could probably use. Honor also offered to let us use the shower in her rental property above the coffee house if that did not work out. Andy, who felt dire need to take a shower became extremely excited by this and we drove down to the campground. When we got there however, there was a very small sign. Showers open from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Andy was pissed! He drove like a bat outta hell back to the Black Cat to use the showers there. However, for some reason I was exhausted and I slept in the van. I had no idea but I guess I was asleep for about an hour and a half, because Andy and Jake took showers and then met Jimmy and Max at a sit-down restaurant for lunch. When they climbed back into the van I woke up and we took off for Eau Claire. The car ride was pretty chill today and I know I fell asleep on the way a few times. The ride wasn’t long and we soon pulled into an extremely nice neighborhood, to look for Nate’s Dungeon.
I walked up to the door and knocked and was greeted by a shirtless Nate who is a very quiet individual who was pretty shocked that we had reached Eau Claire so early. He told me there wouldn’t be many people since I had set the show up with him sort of last minute, which I said would be fine. I told we would be back, and that we were going to get some chow, to give him some time to get more prepared for the show. When I got back to the van we were surrounded by a gang of little kids.
“Who are you?!”
“We are a band.”
“Are you famous?!”
“No.”
“You playing at Nate’s… He’s got CATS!”
More questions ensued from the kids. When they asked our names and I told them my name was Charlie, the head of the gang put his hands over his mouth in amazement. “MY NAME IS CHARLIE!” he seemed pretty excited to meet another Charlie. One of the kids brought out his new puppy who I sat down and it sat in my lap, while I pet it. A mom of one the kids came out and talked with Andy about how to get to a coffee shop. Then the kids started wrestling over a quarter that one of them had found on the dashboard of our van. We decided it was definitely time to go and we took off down the hill.
We stopped at the first coffee shop we saw which was right around the corner, it was called “Cafe 420.” On the windows in giant letters it said internet and Coffee. We were sold and all expected to walk in and hear reggae music and see marijuana style decor. We were in for a big surprise. It was a strange set up of couches, computers, biblical posters and quotes. The people in the cafe instantly spun around and stared us down. We sat down long enough to check our emails and then took off. We continued down the road to the downtown were we found three different churches. One was a mega-church, one was a converted theater, and the other was a simple storefront made into a church. We walked into a really neat art store with blown glass and handmade bags, but after not finding anything in a reasonable price we took off to find food. We reached the Acoustic Cafe, which was a hip little place, that apparently had really good sandwiches and soup according to Andy, Max and Jimmy, who devoured their meals.
We discussed that something about Eau Claire, didn’t quite feel right. The town felt evacuated. Everyone walking on the street looked like they were on the edge of ending their own lives. No one had a smile, and there faces where like slate. Inside the restaurant people were a little friendlier but still things felt strange. There was a girl who seemed to just be taking random pictures of people eating in the restaurant. Some older bozo, was getting ready to play for his fan club of smug yuppies wearing socks with sandals. When he began his set by butchering two Beatles songs, we had had enough. It was time to leave.
We went back to Nate’s to find four dudes, and within minutes three more dudes showed up, but that was it. Those seven dudes turned out to be the nicest people we’d meet along with the gang of kids. Who Nate, told us was known as “Charlie’s gang.” Two of the people turned out however, to be from the Duluth show. Their names were Chris and Andre and they were brothers. It was pretty crazy to meet up with people we had just seen two days ago. One of the best conversations we had with them while hanging out on the back porch, was about starting a band called Genghis Bong. A sludge metal stoner doom band, that sang about the epic adventures of the Mongol ruler who would have conquered the world if he would have just gotten off the couch. They then all discussed how the fact that since none of them smoked weed that this might be a problem, but we all then decided that might be the most ironic and best part of the band. Many scenarios of the true identity of who Genghis Bong really was and the background story were discussed, each of them being pretty damn funny.
It was nice to hang out with people who were straight laced and just as big of nerds on music, comics, cartoons, and geeky ideas as we were.
We set up in the basement, which was one of the most bad ass basements I’d ever seen. There were a ton of sweet posters from past shows with Ninja Turtles on them. It had fake plastic skeletons and crazy christmas lights for lighting and one of the loudest P.A.’s we had played on. The Diabolic Octopus played a short fast set of a lot of the older songs. Jimmy was having a hard time hanging on to his sticks tonight but didn’t miss a beat, and recovered each time. The Ooblecks got up next and we also played a really short fast set, including one song that we hadn’t played since we recorded it over a year ago and I’m pretty sure we nailed it. After we finished Chris said “Hey Nate, how come when the really awesome bands play no one is here?” I was really glad to hear this because I knew that for at least three of the 7 people really enjoyed what we were doing. After we loaded out, we had talked with the folks at the show and sold a few cds. Then we found out that Chris and his brother Andre, would be at our show in Minneapolis in a few weeks. We decided they were our version of the Grateful Dead’s Dead Heads. We decided they are now the Doob Heads. Since this is the Doob Tour and they are going more than likely make it to 3 of our shows. Then Andy, a show attendee and not our Andy, invited us to meet him a Little Cesar’s for free pizza with Chris and Andre. He took off on his bike and told us to give him a 15 minute head start. After saying goodbye and thanking Nate for the show. We hopped in the van, and followed Chris and Andre to the Little Cesar’s dumpster. Where the fished out perfectly fine, almost fresh pizza still in the box pizza. We shared some slices, and got their phone numbers to hopefully see them again in Minneapolis.
We hopped back in the van to drive about 2 hours to Wasau, to stay with Jimmy’s Aunt Pam. While on our way Jake and I continued our conversation from the night before on Quantum Physics and Lucid Dreams, with Andy and Jimmy while Max slept. Once we reached Jimmy’s Aunts we had a great adventure of backing up our van and trailer so we weren’t blocking anyone. We then met Jimmy’s Aunt, washed up and called it a night.
