We have just arrived at the Halcyon lounge for the Readymade magazine/Jansport show. The place is real nice and smells like delicious food and coffee. This is in stark contrast to the smell in our van. It was only a five minute drive but it was torturous on our olfactory systems. While none of us were born early enough to explore the interiors of freshly opened Egyptian tombs I imagine that the odors released upon releasing the tomb seals were remarkably similar to those in our fine red van.
We were excited to see an overflowing stack of Dashing Suns T-Shirts and some neat posters of us.
More after the show,
The Dashers.
After some much needed rest we woke up and headed directly to the Under The Radar SXSW showcase. We dropped a bunch of our CD’s off at the Jamsport table and were happy to see that they were all gone on our way out. Hopefully we won’t find the shelves of Austins goodwill stores stocked with them next time we are here.
We headed back to the hotel for another game of Marco Polo in the pool, some free drinks and a quick run through of tomorrow’s acoustic set. Phew.
In the evening we headed to an unofficial Bay Area music showcase to watch our friends the Splinters play. They were awesome.
Then it was back to the hotel for some more rest.
After 13 hours of driving and a close brush with starvation we have finally arrived in Austin.
We just stopped in Kent, Tx to conduct restroom business. According to our scientific calculations we are still pretty far away from Austin. 303 miles give or take a few. It’s been a long day. It shall be a long night too…
We have reached Texas after an extremely uneventful drive through the desert. We are in El Paso and can see Mexico across a little ol’ river. We have approximately ten more hours of solid road dawg driving ahead of us before we reach our ultimate destination of Austin. We are super excited to meet up with all of our bay area band buddies and trade tales over delicious, cold beverages.
The van still works but is consuming oil faster than gas.
More soon,
The Dashers.
After racing across the desert we arrived in Albuquerque, NM. It’s a wonderful little town, and we had no trouble finding The Agency in Down town thanks to our collective navigation skills. Unpacked, introduced, and excited to play a show in a new city, we proceeded to nourish ourselves at a local watering hole and enjoy the show.
Drew Danburry, a fellow SXSW traveller, played first. A two piece (Travis on the drums), they rocked pretty hard. We made friends!
We played a fun set next. We got past or usual (and unusual) tech difficulties and had a great time!
But denny’s was calling our name! We headed south to the town of Truth or Consiquences where we enjoyed our second Gran Slam in a 24 hour period and generous amounts of decaf.
Finally, in bed by 4am like good boys.
After a relatively small amount of sleep we departed LA to begin the
drive to Phoenix. We learnt a valuable lesson about automobiles on the
way, they need oil! About halfway to sunny Phoenix we noticed that the
van was making a number of odd sounds, we later found out that the van
had far too little lubrication, zero to be precise. Oops.
We checked into our hotel and headed right to the Ruby Room, the venue
in which we were scheduled to play loud rock music. The room was cool
and the Bartender was a very nice man with excellent taste in music.
The other bands we were playing with were real nice folks too. There
wasn’t much of a turn out tonight so we decided to mix up our setlist
with a couple of our old songs and two brand new ones.
We forgot to eat dinner and so, after some questionable detours, we
found ourselves at a local D–ny’s filling ourselves with food shaped
garbage…
Kevin says “Hi” to his Mom and Nana, and Matt is grateful that after
an epic, 45 minute debacle he was finally able to remove his left shoe.
Albuquerque next….
The Dashing Suns
The Dashing Suns are a four piece band hailing from Oakland, California. While many bands in today’s scene seem to follow a paint by numbers musical format, The Dashing Suns have managed to find a way of redefining the idea of popular music. Their style is a combination of 60’s psychedelia, 70’s pop radio, 80’s post punk and 90’s shoegaze. Their songs are short, dynamic, infectious and undeniable.
Although the band has only been in existence for less than a year, The Dashing Suns have managed to perform a staggering amount of shows that range from headlining in cushy Bay Area venues to sweating it out at Brooklyn warehouse parties. Their live shows are a testament to the power of a simply crafted melody and their recordings (that happen to be crafted in their practice space) simply put most of today’s overwrought studio recordings to shame.
The Dashing Suns are not just a band that one watches cross armed in the dark. They have somehow figured out a way to become a manifestation of the powerful combination of brotherhood and sheer talent.
[audio:http://jansport.com/blog/unzipped/files/2009/03/ds-future-thunder-mastered.mp3]
