Day 8 – Spokane Word

It’s Sunday in Spokane.  It’s gray as shit outside.  We’ve been racing to get here because we’re told it’s an early all ages show that starts at 6pm and load in is at 5pm.  We have about an hour so we decide to get gas and restock our groceries.  Ever see six grown men try to shop on a tight budget in a small town?  It’s a mess.  Ed grabs the grocery cart - even inside he does the driving.  He opens up a beef stick to snack on while he shops.  Drew is trying to find a vegetarian option and asks the deli if they have any meat substitutes.  They point at other meats and I overhear an elderly man mutter “hippies”. He should have gone with “the Ed” and said,  “what kind of meat is good” line.  Oh well,  next time.  Off to the show.

Load in takes a turn for the worst right off the bat.  The A-Club is on the second floor of a shared venue/apartment complex, right above a restaurant called Chikn-N-Mo.  We have to load in through an elevator that is shared with the apartment complex.  I’m reminded of Capital Hill back in Denver.  Kind of like if Nob Hill Inn had a venue on the second floor.  Anyway, I am watching the door.  Ed is grabbing gear.  A pizza guy comes up and I offer to let him in.  He says he wants to stay and just call the lady.  Alright.  How sketch is this place that the pizza guy doesn’t want to go in?  Ed comes in with some gear and an old lady comes wobbling down.  I want to like this old lady, and all is well for about the first second until she opens her mouth and starts yelling at us.  She tells Ed “why didn’t y’all just let him in?!!  How dumb is ya?!!”.  Oh hell no.  Not today.  She asks me for help carrying her drinks up the stairs and I want to tell her I is too dumb to walk and carry things but I can’t resist seeing what the rest of the place looks like.  As we walk, she says that they just cleaned the carpet and that’s why it smells so badly of vomit.  I think she is trying to take advantage of my dumbness because unless they cleaned it with more vomit, it wasn’t cleaned anytime this side of 2000.  But anyway, I need to get back to load in.  About this time, worse gets worser.  Manny and Jeff are carrying Jeff’s amp up a few stairs and Manny is holding the amp with one hand and the rail with the other.  Rail breaks and Manny takes the weight of the speaker on his back.  His back takes a one way train to outsville and we’re not sure he’s gonna make it.  Jeff takes Manny across the street to get him a shot…a turbo mod to his Tylenol…to relax a little.  Strange scene for them.  Everyone is really nice and there are a whole lot of fellas inside.  It suddenly hits them that they wandered into a gay bar and they immediately regret asking “who’s d*** do I have to s*** to get a drink in this town?!”  We get him boozed up and laid down to rest till we go on.  Meanwhile, I’m wondering why there are no kids here yet?  Worser goes straight to disaster when we see the flyer.  In giant letters at the top of the flyer it says celebrate Valentines Day with us February 14^th.  That’s cool and all, but this the 13^th.  For the record, it also says the right date in very fine print; but no one would know it to look at the flyer.  So luckily, there is still a good gathering of people that make it in, but the room is giant so it feels weird. Oh well.  The show must go on.  We’re supposed to go on at 8:30 and be off by 9.  Everything is behind and we get on stage at 8:45.  Drew’s bass pickup is on the fritz. Jesus. Thankfully the show gets on and the crowd in Spokane is great to us. Zac from Lithium I.D., one of the local bands, busted his butt to make this show happen. High fives. Top Gun style, Zac. And Corey, we never got that bag of cheeseburgers but thanks for the bag of beers.

  

So this should be the part where we go back to the hotel, have a few beers and get a good night’s sleep for a long drive tomorrow.  It should have been… but it wasn’t.  Instead it’s the part where the adventure in Spokane begins.  Across from the club is Manny and Jeff’s gay bar called Irv’s and it’s karaoke night.  Jack pot.  A couple of new friends go with us and a couple of the Guttermouth guys meet us over there too.  The booze is cheap and plentiful.  Too plentiful.  I’m feeling it.  We’re all feeling it.  Drew puts on a dance clinic and ends it with a spin down a stripper pole to wild applause. Even the professionals are impressed.  We take turns on the mic crushing songs from Billy Idol, The Violent Femmes, Tom Petty and more. Mike does an interpretive dance to someone else’s karaoke and it’s beautiful.  So beautiful in fact that a gentleman in a red hat asks him if he likes guys afterwards.  Mike responds with “not as much as I like girls”.  Apparently that wasn’t good enough as he spent the next half hour trying to convince Mike he was in fact gay.  I pull out the camera for a pic of them and Mike gets goosed by Red Hat.  Priceless.  Now this should be where we stumble back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep, right?  Well sort of.  That was the plan till Spokane got all nuts on us.  We go outside and find some guy that was in the bar all bloodied up.  Someone beat him pretty good.  Not sure why or who, we were all inside.  So his brother (I think) comes in and wants answers.  He’s ready to fuck up the guy who touched his brother.  Understandable.  We’d be pissed too and Mike is on his side.  The only problem is that someone thinks we did it!  Oh shit.  The guy starts getting in Jeff’s face.  Mike gets in his face.  Then Jeff tries to pull Mike away and then they get in each others face.  Jeff removes his face and Manny comes out to get his face in.  Now the guy is in mine and Drew’s face and we’re all shit faced.  You see to sum it all up, this guy had his brother’s back and Mike had his back until he got in Jeff’s face in which Mike had Jeff’s back.  Jeff had Mike’s back and Manny had a bad back, but it was still in play.  Lesson learned is that sometimes getting a guy’s back leads you right into someone’s face. Time to call it a night.  We finally get back to the hotel and talk it out over a night cap…er morning cap?  Damn you sun.  Good times Spokane…