This is an open apology to the throngs of moshing Oranger fans that demanded their money back on grounds of shoddy drumming last night at the Velvet Room in Salt Lake City.  Just kidding.  The drumming was fantastic, despite the facts that:

a) it was not regular basher John Hofer on the kit, who had to jockey a horse race at Bay Meadows, and

b) it was in fact Darius "Superfood" Odwalla filling in for the entire set, after never having played the songs before live. 

Darius rocked so hard.  Our stuff isn't Cygnus X1, but it's still tough enough that we thought we'd have to resort to psychedelic freakout for the whole SLC set when we found out Hofer couldn't swing it.  Luckily, Darius learned 7 tunes, pretty much on stage, and no one took a swing at us afterwards. Also, our new motto of "At Least It's Not Madison" effectively lowered the bar enough.

The Velvet Room was huge (900 capacity?) and there were at least 34 people there.  Strangely, they were great and made all the bands (Hopewell, Oranger, Posies) feel that special Mormon-kind of love. I'm not sure what that means, but basically it was a good feeling that was only slightly dirty.

Afterwards we hung out with our pal Ivan at an Irish bar called The Republican for pints of Tetley's and foosball, and then we had some tacos next door at (not kidding) La Tormenta.  Sorry ladies, we're taken.

Actually, we lost Patrick for about 30 minutes.  He went into the *other* bar next door to La Tormenta, which was a Mexican dance club.  He paid his cover, allowed himself to be frisked for weapons, and then danced to Norteño Beats until we tracked him down. 

We're in the van now heading to SF to drop off Patrick and then head up to the NW for the last leg of this tour.  Bob's driving, his favorite band who wants to marry, the Tyde, is on the stereo.  We're just leaving (winners) Reno, NV.
-md