After playing a show with the band Fatigo at The Trunk Space in Phoenix AZ a few years ago and then hanging out at the bar with them afterwards, we urged them to hit the road and play with us sometime in Portland. We truly meant it- after so many nights in unfamiliar towns playing with unfamiliar local acts, Fatigo genuinely stood out as one of the best bands we had ever played with. But after twice booking them shows in Portland only to have last minute cancellations, we thought that things would never work out. When Heather from the Ash Street contacted us and said that she had a band from AZ that really wanted to play with us, we were very excited. Even though it would only be Mike the lead singer, we looked forward to seeing and hearing him again. Months went by, and a week or so before the gig, we got an email from the Ash Street saying that Fatigo was off the bill. Foiled again! We couldn’t believe it. Then another twist: Fatigo’s keyboard player, named Merrily and who hadn’t been in the band when we met them, was going to do the gig solo. At least we finally got to play with somebody somehow associated with this very elusive band!
We loaded into the Ash Street at around 7:30. It is always weird loading into the Ash Street Saloon because Josh, Dave, and Bryan’s associate at Pizzicato (Amy, the perpetually annoyed catering assistant that delivers corporate lunch orders in spiked heals) is always drinking with her friends when we get there. She obviously doesn’t want to talk to any of us and we try our hardest to avoid making eye contact with her, but since ¾ of the band are her coworkers, an awkward hello always ensues. This time we got off with a less awkward clinking of glasses in passing.
Around this time, we noticed the poster that the club had made for the show: a picture of a trumpet player running in a hamster wheel. At first, being the trumpet player to whom this presumably referred, I was offended. After thinking about our band and how we work really hard on complicated songs, only to play them a few times at dive bars to crowds that are really only trying to talk over us, I took poster designer Heather’s point to heart. It was a very appropriate image indeed.
The first band, Critical, consisted of a keyboard player/singer and another guy, who for the life of me I can’t remember what he did. It was pretty bad. Maybe the songs were good starting points for band development, but they definitely were not ready for public performance yet. The amazing coincidence about the band, as the singer told us later, was that he recognized our name because had started our old record label, Iconic Rocket, with our former contact, Mark. The story of our experience on that label is a tale better left for another day.
Next up on the bill was Merrily. She turned out to be a very nice woman that had grown up in Portland and was integrating this show into her holiday trip home to see family. This worked out well because as she set up to play, waves of her elderly family members started to converge in the club. At least twenty disoriented old people, drinking glasses of Ash Street wine (eew!), pulled all of the tables together so that they could sit in a long row directly in front of the stage. This allowed them to not only gaze proudly at their granddaughter/ niece/ daughter, but also to cleverly ignore the resident Ash Street population of shameful drunks, located directly behind them. As Dave and Bryan were watching this unfold from the rear of the bar, they were approached by a tremendously drunk male in his mid 40s, who appeared to be by himself. “Hey, you guys gotta help me drink this Whiskey- I am FUCKED UP!” the man blurted out. Since he hadn’t contaminated it yet, we each drank some of his whiskey. “Don’t drink it all though!” the man then countered. “Oh, sorry..” As he continued to tell us how drunk he was and how this hardly ever happened to him, Merrily was ready to start on the stage. This was the point in the night when the real magic happened: within two beats of Merrily’s piano introduction to her first song, just as she opened her mouth to sing, our drunken friend started singing, in perfect rhythm and pitch “I Like Cat Power, I Like PJ Harveyyyyyy! I Like Cat Power, I Like PJ Harveyyy!” He sang this line over and over, as loud as he could, for about four minutes. The whole rear portion of the bar had turned and were laughing and urging him on, while Merrily’s family table in the front were showing how smart they had been to sit right in front of the speakers. After this scene, Merrily’s set was great and the house loved it.
Next up, we played. Everything went pretty well- we had fun and had more friends than usual out to see the set, so it was a good time. After getting off the stage, Dave was approached by a couple that had recently arrived in Portland from Poland. They were very excited about the “light bulbs” in my organ (tubes). Just then, the night’s final band, Heirs Of The Eiffel Tower started to set up. The lead guitar player apparently was threatened by our set and felt the need to assert his domain by shredding blues licks at us as fast as he could during his sound check. With this, the Polish people got very excited, explaining, “Ah, this is the music of America- your band plays the Soul music of the 1960’s and here on stage, we have the Blues!”
Heirs Of The Eiffel Tower (HOTET) were really bad. Our first trouble signal was that the singer/lead guitar player was wearing flip-flops in the winter. Those people are always trouble. HOTET was a Frat band, and the best thing I could say about their songs was that they’d have fit well in a Dawson’s Creek episode. Plus, they brought a fog machine! It filled up the whole room and made everyone cough. HOTET also had a few “groupies”, each of whom were trying as hard as they could to convey the impression of really being into the band. The five or so very drunk girls, along with some very hesitant and somewhat embarrassed looking boyfriends, kept the dance party rocking well enough to, in the eyes of the band, merit two encores. At the end of the night, as we loaded the van outside the club, the drunkest of HOTET’s groupies came up to us and said “I want to meet your fake lead singer” (meaning our guitar player- Josh). “He’s right there,” replied Adam, and as Josh emerged from packing the van, the girl turned to him and said: “Hi, I want to meet you.” Josh just stood there, completely baffled by this statement. “You want to meet me,” he replied? “I want to meet you,” the girl reiterated. Then, after a long awkward pause, she apparently realized that no one, especially not Josh, seemed interested in her vague offer. “Oh, so you’re a Douche like all the others,” she pronounced as she stomped away.