October 1, 2009 : The Independent : San Francisco, CA
Greetings,
My name is Caleb, and I will be doing some tour blogging for you. I’ll also be the one selling you things at the merch booth when you come to your city’s show.
After a lot of driving, flying, rushing, unloading, setting up, line checking, sound checking, waiting, eating hummus, and playing music, day one of the first Bazan Band Tour is in the books. I met Matt Barnhart, a seasoned pro at both tour managing and burrito holding, at the San Francisco airport around 2:00 pm. I’d been up since 4:45 to catch my flight out of Nashville, so I ended up sleeping on and off in a booth in the airport pizza hut booth for the hour or so while I was waiting for Matt to arrive. After collecting our bags we visited Aquarius Records, an awesome record store in the mission, and ate what was arguably the best burrito I’ve eaten in my life. Also the biggest. Also it cost $4.50. About 1/3 of mine fell out of the burrito and into the basket. Matt scolded me for this.
We headed to The Independent (a great club, with a really awesome staff) to Meet Bazan and the band around 5. They were originally hoping to arrive at 4, but that got pushed back. They didn’t make it into town, however, until 6. This made for a hectic soundcheck, considering Matt (pulling double duties as sound bro and Tour Manager) had never heard the band play together, and it gave me very little time to open, catalog and set up about 20 boxes of merch. It was the first day of tour.
Didn’t seem to effect the band(s) very much. Say Hi was stellar and sounded nice as a 3-piece (comprised of Eric, Andy and Alex, who will be filling in on drums for Casey until Denton.) The people really got moving to Eric’s jams, and I was psyched to hear “These Fangs” in the rotation.
BAZAN took the stage to the raucous applause of 358 San Franciscans. The opening ambience of Hard to Be was met with even louder cheers. The band tore through a set comprised of 3 Pedro the Lion jams, 2 songs from Fewer Moving Parts, and almost all of Curse Your Branches. The songs from the new record sound incredible with a 5-piece band, and Dave got asked out on a date by a same-sex admirer during Q&A and I think I saw him blush a little. Adorable. Also, someone found a setting on the GPS that makes Ozzy Osborne the directions-giver.
It’s going to be a good tour.