This is the banjo, as most of you are familiar with.
The name I believe we’re going with for her is Katrina, because she destroyed my bank account. My brother seems to think a more appropriate name is Ban-tar. The inanimate object currently answers to both.
Like I said, it destroyed my financial funds, and I still needed a case for it. Throwing it around the trailer in a cheap cardboard box just wasn’t going to cut it anymore.
So I got my Dad to build me a box.
He really likes using Pine wood on pretty much anything. Then I visited some friends with an upholstery shop.
I would drop their name here, to give them recognition or maybe some publicity, but they claimed they don’t want it. They surprisingly don’t want another headache like the one I gave them.
So they let me glue in some foam pieces, and use this sick velvet to line it the box.
So now, I have my very own, legit, one-of-a-kind banjo case. I don’t know if I want to play off how much it looks like a coffin and maybe put a cross on the front, or deck it out with stickers.
This blog has us starting in Angels Camp, California, still under the protection of Shawn at Refuge. Notice the new sign? It’s better in person. Go see for yourself.
While in the area, we met a nice old lady at Jack in the box in Sonora,
and played around in some local stores.
fun stuff.
That weekend took the band to Stockton.
We got to check out a spot by the college on Saturday. It had a nice bench…
in front of the frickin tower of Isenguard!
one more reason to never aim for higher education…
This really cool guy named David let us stay at his house. I never got a picture of him, but I got a picture of the PRIME RIB DINNER he made us.
It tastes ten times better than it looks.
Before leaving town, we visited a guy from the church named Rob.
No pictures of him, either, but this is just some of the sweet gear he gave us for nothing.
Nice guy, that Rob.
So then, we went back to Salida and Modesto for a few days to see some friends.
You remember that video of the car we tagged with markers? This is what it looks like now.
Uber letdown.
Then we saw Diane, who took us to Pizza buffet, the movies, and then to her house where I tried to help make cookies.
They are quite possibly the nicest people I’ve ever met in California. They need some love, and some new appliances. We made those cookies in a broiler because the oven is broke.
Tuesday, we left Salida and checked out the Mesa/Boogie HQ.
They make Joey’s speaker head. Very enlightening tour.
From there, we went to Ukiah.
They were not expecting a very full room, so I made some flyers and we spent Wednesday trying to hype.
We played an acoustic show, and had a blast showing off the banjo. The folks that came didn’t seem to hate it…
We were told about an open mic at the local pub. It started while we were playing at the church, so we came late.
Joey had some fun with his iced tea.
The drunk people seemed to love us. They demanded the booking guy have us back soon. It’s fun going to the bar after church and getting a similar response.
Then we went to Arcata, the last stop on our tour.
We also took some pictures at the zoo!
That donkey and I go way back.
and Saturday, we came home.
Thus concludes the Win-pring tour. Looking forward to the next one!
Recently Joey and Lu learned that I have a twitter page. They joked at the pointlessness of the site, although I disagree. If you’re into such things, follow me.
http://twitter.com/nickola
Anyway, out of spite for them, and because my day was just so interesting, I thought I would try to document my day as if I had been on twitter all day. Instead of stops, I figure it’ll flow better with the phrase, ‘and then’. Here, on Nickspace, I am NEVER limited.
Here goes:
I got up at nine in our hotel room and then Joey said he’d ‘frick a brick’ if they didn’t have bagels and cream cheese but they did and then we ate breakfast and then Lu grossed me out and then we went in the pool and then I worked on button designs and then we played music while kids stood in line to eat pizza and then Dan felt sorry for us cause we had nothing to do all day and then we went to some pawn shops in Eureka and then we went to a cd store and then we went to a cool antique store that sold my dream chair since last time I was there and then we took pictures at the zoo and then I saw my friend Donk Donk and then Joey stopped at this philly cheeseteak place for lunch and then we checked out a cd store in Arcata that smelled like pot then we checked out a weird eastern Buddha type place that also smelled like pot and then we filled the church with smoke for our show and then we took pictures on our stage and then Chris Correy and Alan came to our concert along with a bunch of kids from the church and then we played some songs and then Chris hardcore danced to a cowbell contest and then everyone left and then we put everything away and then we were taken to dinner at Carls jr and it was awesome and then I started writing this.
I don’t twitter like that. Hope you could follow that.
