A Blake Wescott Look-a-like. (Photo by Andy Fitts)
October 27, 2009 : High Noon Saloon : Madison, WI
After a 14-hour day at Electrical Audio, we hailed a couple of cabs and retired to our rented rooms at the Days Inn on Deversey – a surprisingly awesome hotel, with a lot of it’s 1930’s charm still in tact. Some really cool stuff went to tape at Electrical Audio, and I had a lot of freak out’s centered around realizing the history of the room we were in. Several of my most treasured records were made here – Songs : Ohia’s “Didn’t it Rain,” Smog’s “Rain On Lens,” Shellac’s “At Action Park,” and tons of others – so I did what anyone would do and stole a blank track sheet to frame and hang up somewhere.
The High Noon Saloon in Madison is a pretty great room – big, with a nice backstage area, an upstairs for people who want to talk, and some good food in walking distance (the California Chicken Sandwich at Brass Ring will effect your day). The show was, unfortunately, the most poorly attended and also really early (7 and 8 pm set times with a hard 9:15 curfew). Despite this, the crowd was fine, and everyone had a fine time.
Dave’s friend Ben lives in town and came to hang out at the hotel afterwards where we had some good pizza and watched South Park.
October 28, 2009 : MPR, Turf Club : Minneapolis / St. Paul, MN
We left Madison early in order to make it to the MPR studios in time for an in-station for their excellent program, The Current. MPR has a pretty immaculate setup in downtown Minneapolis, and their live room is nicer than lots of professional recording studio’s – a rare thing for radio performances. The set will air sometime next week, and it sounded pretty great. The band played “Heavy Breath,” “Please Baby, Please,” and “When We Fell.”
I write to you now from the Turf Club – a really cool venue with really friendly staff, and an amazing Ethiopian restaurant across the street, at which I recently finished overeating. Wye Oak played first of three tonight, one of only four opening bands on this tour (not counting Say Hi, of course) and they were fantastic. I can’t say enough great things about them, you should check out their record called “The Knot” which came out on Merge a few months ago.
Tonight’s show was another sellout, a nice change from last night’s show, and both Say Hi and BAZAN totally brought the ruckus to the twin cities. In terms of audience quality tonight was one of, if not the best, and the Turf Club is an amazing place to play. Act like you know.