Austin, TX.
After a good 5 hours drive, we made it to Austin. I love it here. It's good to be back here and to play a show. James and I were here not so while ago for SXSW and it was so much fun. What I like about Austin is that you can go anywhere and there will be live music. Also, people go out and hang out at bars, so the chance of your band playing in front of nobody is pretty slim, if you know what I mean. J
Tonight, we are playing at The Beauty Bar on 6th Street. We got there early. Luckily, the promoter was there already and he told us to start loading all of our gear in so we did. After we're done, I started exploring the place. The Beauty Bar is set up just like an old hair saloon in the mid to late 70's. It's a REALLY cool bar. There's outdoor seating where people usually hang out. It's got disco lights and the sound system is superb! Our kind of place to play. :)
Luke in front of Texas state border stone
Beauty Bar neon sign
Cool seating inside the Beauty Bar
After a sound check, people started coming in to drink. I found out later that this bar is owned by one of the guys from the Trail of Dead and not only that, the original Beauty Bar is located in New York City so that makes it cool in my book because I love NYC. :)
We got on at 11:30 pm. It's pretty late but it's actually a good time slot to play. There were more people outside than inside, though, but some of them were kind of watching us play from the patio. I felt we're a bit too loud that night, but everyone that came up to us after the show said that the mix was perfect and that they enjoyed it. There's only one band playing that night so afterwards, a dance party was on. The DJ was pretty good. She played a lot's of good stuff and it made me want to shake my bootay so I did, on the dance floor ofcourse. :) I was dancing by myself but soon joined by a couple nice girls that felt bad because I was all alone on the dance floor hahaha..it wasn't that bad, though J but thank you girls you rock! ;)
The night went by pretty fast. It's last call. We loaded our gear back in the trailer and headed to Dallas.
Luke Mabie checking to make sure everything is working
Bar section, notice there's a photo booth on the left corner, too bad we didn't get to use it
Go Motion after the show
Dallas, TX.
I'm pretty looking forward to getting in Dallas because my good friend Andre that I haven't seen for months, is vacationing here for 3 days. Also, I've heard so many good things about Dallas but I never got to visit until now. Not much different than Austin but I think Dallas is abit cleaner and bigger. We stayed with Andre at our friend's house (thank you Nadia and Lulu). After shower, we went straight to the venue at 6pm. We're playing at this cool place called The Door. It's a HUGE venue and it's got 3 stages. The main stage, the left stage and the lounge stage. We're playing the main stage tonight. It reminded me of Sokol Auditorium but half size smaller. The stage was freaking big and the sound sytem was just amazingly loud! We walked in on the headliner's sound check and I could feel the bass rattling the whole place. Really cool. :)
The left stage is half size smaller but it's got the same size of stage as the main one. I feel that we should be playing there instead of the main stage. :)
I didn't get to take pictures of the left stage, tho. The lounge stage was for open mic kind of show. It's about the size of Crane Coffee on 76th and Cass Street in Omaha and there's no giant speakers for pa so it's set up for acoustic shows only I assume. No pictures of this one either…yeah I'm bad. ;)
The Door
stage
On the way to the Door, our trailer fell off the hitch. Luke was pretty shocked and I didn't know what's going on. Maybe it's because it went pretty fast so it took me a while to realize what's happening and finally I was stunned.
James was driving when it happened. No damage on the trailer as well as the gear and most importantly we're all okay, so thank god! J
The road was a bit bumpy and James didn't see that there was a pot hole right in front of him so he drove the van right in to it, I heard a loud noise and screeching noises coming from the back and then Luke yelled " The trailer fell off the hitch!!"
We were kind of talking about how we haven't got an exciting tour story to tell about our trailer or van breaking down (knock on wood…), oh well we got one now. J
Back to the show, we played really well tonight. We all had good monitors on stage so we could hear ourselves. I'd say the sound man did a very good job, Kids were in to it and some of them were dancing pretty hard. Everybody in the other bands were really nice as well. We had fun and we are looking forward to coming back to Dallas again.
the trailer fell off the hitch
New Orleans, LA
After Dallas, we drove further down south to New Orleans. It's about 7 hours of driving, we finally got to New Orleans. The weather was a bit shitty on the way to here. I drove through a rain storm a couple of times and when I was in it, I couldn't see the road so I had to drive REAL slow because I'm all about safety first, you know what I mean. ;)
Ah, New Orleans…it reminded me of Jakarta a little bit. The trees and the roads, the neon signs and stuff at some point they made me feel like I'm home. The food was great, the weather was a bit too humid for me (Jakarta is worse, tho..) and Bourbon Street, well I guess that's like the tourist spot or something so we went there. Walking along the street of Bourbon all I saw was bars and "titty" bars….and more "titty" bars, HAYOH! :)
It was fun to see what's going on in Bourbon Street. Every bar we passed, there's always people asking us to have a beer race or to take free tour inside a strip club. Being a good boy from the midwest, we all politely said no to the offer. So, no titty bar and no beer race, what else to do?? A mechanic bull ridin' of course! But James was the only one who took the ride. After a couple of tries, he said enough and we all walked back to the venue.
James and I at French Quarter in New Orleans
Go Motion strike a pose on the street of Bourbon
if you go in to this place you'll find 1000 beautiful women and ONLY 3 ugly ones :)
James riding a mechanic bull
We're playing at a small bar called The Dragon's Den. It's a really laid back and "not so well lit" bar with 2 giant mirros hanging up on the wall. The stage set up was really weird. The stage floor looked like an octagon shape now that I came to think of it and it was really hard to load our gear in as we had to take a small spiral stairs to get in the bar.
Luke didn't bother to get his giant bass cab out. Not only it's not gonna fit through the door, he'd probably break the stairs with the weight of the bass cab. There's nowhere to park close to the venue so it was a bit pain in the arse to move our stuff. It was a good work out, tho. :)
Luke played his bass through the house PA. It surprisingly sounded pretty good and loud.
The drums were not mic-ed so the mix was a bit weird at first, after our ears were used to it, it was fine. I could barely hear myself but we all had fun and played well I'd say. The crowd was more like a bar goer than a show goer but they all had a good time so that's what matters, right? :)
Made a couple of new friends, then headed out to Birmingham, AL.
a winding stair
David's drums on stage
Go Motion minus Dave with the guitar player from the 2nd band
Birmingham, AL
We're all tired from playing a show the night before and from driving through the night. Luke and David did the driving from New Orleans to Birmingham (they always do a good job at late night driving ;p), and we got there at noon. We took a long nap at the rest area and decided to get a hotel. More naps were taken, then we're all showered up and ready to play. We drove to the venue (High Note) just to find out that the show's cancelled. Bummer. Apparently, the other 2 bands were not aware that they had a show on this night so none of them showed up. We tried to call them but no answer. Oh well…
If you're looking for a good quality bj while in Birmingham, here you go :)
me outside the High Note back parking lot
Atlanta, GA
This is it! The show I've been looking forward to. Tonight, we're gonna play with one of my favorite bands of all time, The Stills!
You have no idea how excited I am to play this show. The Stills' first album "Logic Will Break Your Heart" was what I listened to the whole summer of 2004 and listening to that record always brings back good memories..and tonight I'll get to see them perform the songs off that cd live! :)
This is a free show. Load in time was at 4 pm. We're stuck in the Atlanta traffic which resulted in getting to the Lenny's (the venue we're playing) an hour late. Bean, the promoter, said it was okay because The Stills just started loading, so we're good
This show was sponsored by Camel Cigarettes. There were only 2 bands playing tonight so the show started late. We came on at 10:30 pm and we had fun as usual. The monitors were great! (thanks Ryan). The crowd enjoyed it. We sold cds..and The Stills got on stage.
They opened up with the first song off their 1st cd, Lola Stripes and Stars and it was amazing. I was so happy to see they played alots of songs from their first album.
Not really quite a fan of their new cd but I thought it was pretty good when you hear it live. Afterwards, I got to talk with the singer, the key player and the other guitar player. I told them how much I love their band and they're just smiling when I told them that Logic Will Break Your Heart was the soundtrack of my summer '04..
Thank you Bean, for having us on this show. We love Atlanta. :)
promo poster
Lenny's
our gear on stage
me with Tim of The Stills
Well, that's it for right now…
We have a couple more shows down south then we'll head up north east then back to the midwest and north/south west…
We're playing in Charleston, SC next, so if you know anybody that lives there, tell them that we're coming there and that we'll love them and give them free hugs if they come to our show… ;)
much love,
Albert – Go Motion