Day 7 – I Ronna Rock!

Lots to cover today.  Seattle was a really eventful day/night/late night/morning…

The drive to Seattle was really short and that’s great because I am hungover.  Real hungover.  Jack in the Box breakfast isn’t helping.  Waking up to “Dude you were out of control last night!” isn’t helping.  Advil not helping.  Shit. It starts to wear off though by the time we reach the city.  Original drummer and old friend of Boldtype, Ron, is meeting us in Seattle.  Ron is one of the coolest guys around, a catalyst in Boldtype still and a huge help to all of us.  He made us these books that carry our itinerary and even put us up in a hotel close to the venue.  We have some time so we make plans to meet him at Pike Place Market. 

I’m super amped on Seattle.  I’ve always wanted to go here and it doesn’t disappoint.  It reminds me of Denver a little bit. Side note – Everyone in Seattle is good looking.  Everyone.   I make a note to do some push ups while I’m here (but don’t actually do them, just make a note to).  We meet Ron and head to

Pike Place

.  We get some crab cocktails and oyster shooters that blow our minds.  Except Manny.  He gets an order of “no-fucking-way I’m eating that stuff”.  Time to find a beer so we walk around until we find a cool little Irish pub.  I get a PBR but it’s staring me down with ice cold reminders of last night and it’s too early to fight this battle so I head to the bathroom to freshen up and give myself a pep talk to make wiser decisions today.  The sign outside of the bathroom door reads “There are cameras on premises so do your drug deals somewhere else!”.  Ha!  No shit?  Seattle gets down.  But no time for exploring that right now, Mike hits me with some news that changes our whole day.  He said Dave from Guttermouth just called and wants us to record a song with them while were here and we need to get down to their hotel right away.  I freak out skeptically because I’m pretty sure if anything they just need our equipment.  We wrap up and head to their place. 

When we get there we find out what they meant.  They are some of the coolest guys to hang out with.  Justin, Matt, Dave and Frances called us to come hang out with them at this place called Experience Music at The Seattle Music Project (that name might not be totally right.  I’m still not feeling up to par yet and didn’t take the time to find out what the name exactly is).  Touring bands get in for free.  It’s basically like a rock museum of sorts, but you get to actually play guitars, drums and other instruments.  The icing on the cake is that they have a recording room that you get like 10 minutes to record a song live.  We all pile in.  All of us into a tiny little room with a drum set, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass, keyboards and microphone.  Ed rolls in as well to capture the moment on video.  I’d love to say that what we came out of there with was 10 minutes of grammy winning gold.  I won’t say it, but I’d love to. Instead we came out with something better.  It was 10 minutes of chaos and switching instruments and 9 guys doing what we love to do even on a spare afternoon.  Oh and we bought the CD of the session.  Fucking awesome.

We get ready for the show and head down to the Funhouse.  I love this place cause it reminds me of home.  It’s sort of a combo between 3 kings and the Larimer Lounge.  The bar itself is pretty small which means its going to be pretty packed.  Yep.  It fills up and it’s tough to get back and forth between the merch booth and the stage.  Loving it.  For some reason, I just know we’re going to do great here despite hearing that Seattle can be tough to win over.  Even the bands remind me of home.  We take the stage and sure enough it’s on.  The crowd is into and we’re into it.  Mike brings the heat and ends up on the floor under a pile of people still singing every word.  One guy takes off his shirt and keeps jumping on stage.  Not sure if he’s gonna swing.  As luck would have it, he loved us.  Apparently in Seattle, taking off your shirt and getting in someone’s face is similar to the ol’ fist bump back in Denver.  Ha!  We’ll take it!  Huge thanks to Lonnie, the stage manager of the night. This guy was on top of his game like no other. We were also welcomed and whiplashed by Sea Towns equivalent of Denver punk-show-icons Gary Ray and Dave Brush. Front and center, these dudes got down with their pants down.  

It’s after our show that I decide I’m ready to get back on my horse and finish what I started back in Tacoma.  Apparently Ed has been on his horse all night.  It’s cool.  He deserves it.  He’s been working his ass off and we seem to all be taking turns.  I discover a whiskey called fireball and spend too much money rediscovering the rest of the night.  After the show and bar closing, we load up and decide to grab a late night meal.  This is our only night with Ron and we want to make it count.  Everything is close by so we head out on foot.  We walk to a local diner and cram 6 dudes into a 4 man booth.  It’s not ideal and Mike decides it’s too expensive so we filter out slowly to try and look less like assholes.  Let’s just grab some Mcdonalds, it’s open 24 hours anyway.  Perfect.  Sort of.  Drive through open, but we have no drive.  So walking through the parking lot, there is a girl peeing behind her car.  I’m not judging her on that part.  We’ve all been there.  But I will reserve the right to judge her choice of location.  The back of the car is the side that points directly out to oncoming traffic and walkers by such as ourselves.  Oh well, off to a nearby hotel to ask the concierge where we can eat (somewhere other than the place we just abandoned).  The hotel is where Guttermouth is staying and Frances and Dave are in the lobby hanging out.  I was excited to see them.  Apparently they were excited to see me too as they both punched me in the balls!  Damn I miss the days of fist bumps.  Anyway, we get pointed to a new destination with a map included.  To sober guys a map would be helpful.  To us it was an added layer of confusion.  So 5 guys, stumble through Seattle like drunken pirates with a treasure map at 4am looking for breakfast.  Success is found after Ed tracks it down with his GPS phone.  Racing the sun back to the hotel again.  Ah Seattle.  I’m gonna miss you…