Sky Pilots

Wake up, ready to bomb it to Portland. Long drive ahead of us. Big thanks to Geoff for handling almost all the driving, not just today, but on the whole trip.

Wrong turn in Washington takes us to lonely road through wildlife preserve, then Indian reservation. Speeding ticket. Big time.

Fast-forward to Chris’s house in Portland, where we were to play later that night in the basement. Local two-piece The Ax started out the show with guitar-and-drums fury. Heavy, stoney riffs. Painful drum blasts. Repeat. I feel bad because throughout the rest of the night we would just run up them (Adam and Chris) and yell “The Ax!” right in their faces. Even the next day in the van, I would find myself blurting it out for no reason. That is how good they are.

Next up Sky Pilots. By now you know how that goes. But the Portland crew had never seen, and they kept cheering us on.

The Maps then took over rock duties. Everybody loved it. They are total warriors. We stayed up well into the night drinking keg beer and clowning around. But eventually our bodies got the best of us and we crawled in bed.

The next day Geoff drove us back to San Francisco. Nothing too eventful. The whole trip was way too short, and we’re already itching for another Northwest tour, which will probably go down this summer.

Slept in late and hit the road for Missoula. Pretty drive, with lots of farms, gorges, mountains, and old mining towns along the way.

The club in Missoula, The Raven, was a big cafe that turned into a BYOB rock venue at night. We took the stage at 10:00 or so and played our best show of the tour. Plus the kids were all charged up and happy to hear us.

Next up was Belt of Vapor from Spokane. Holy god these guys are one of the best bands we’ve ever seen. Completely mad, tortured psych freakout. Hard and spooky and riffs for miles. I don’t know what goes on in Spokane that makes people play music like this, but the thought of it is frightening.

Book of Maps, two of whom hail from Missoula, played last. I can’t say enough good things about these guys and their music. Once again they sunk eveyone into their world of extremely technical and punishing rock. It’s a weird but thrilling place, trust us.

After the show things didn’t slow down. There are pictures of things that we would rather nobody see. Ever. Not sure how these things happened.

An early morning departure got us into Portland by midday for lunch, and we headed straight to Chris’s (guitar hero, Book of Maps) pizza joint. He gave us free food and free pitchers of beer, which is better than sex for a band on the road.

Made it to Seattle by the evening. Leslie, the wonderful lady who set up the show for us, was crazy and wonderful the whole night. She must have bought the Maps and us three shots over thirty minutes.

Her husband played bass in the first band, Brother Wane. They were not like us or the Book of Maps, but their twang-rock got the show off to a good start. Congratulations to you, sirs, on the release of your new CD.

The Maps were second, and basically they gunned the entire bar down with their insanely tight and crushing prog assault. How they hell do these guys do it? Night after night of perfect rock crimes?

We played last and it went well, including our new song, Shoot the Pass. It’s long, weird, and fast at times, much like our post-show drive to Ellensburg, Washington. There we ate footlongs from Subway and the seven of us (Maps, Pilots, plus our friend Geoff) piled into a little motel room for the night.