Nau mai Yesterday we played the San Jose Civic. I had fruit for breakfast. This might have been the first plum of the tour. It was joined in the bowl by blueberries, banana, and yoghurt, and served atop a thin bed of granola. Our day was to be spent in a very grand venue, a building that dated back to 1936. The halls were tiled in glossed terracotta as is the style that reflects its Wild West…
Nau mai Yesterday we played at San Francisco Airport. At 8:30am we woke up to the bus pulling up outside door seven of the San Francisco Airport’s departures level. It was something of a miracle that they were able to accommodate a bus we thought considering the usual multi-lane unloading chaos that we usually found at an airport drop off zone. There were a big group of stage hands waiting and we…
Nau mai Yesterday we took our union mandated rest day in Los Angeles, California. There is nothing so exciting as waking up next to one of the nation’s great megaplexes. The Burbank Empire Centre has an understated name for such a powerful retail experience with titans like Target, Walmart (you need both), Best Buy, Lowes, Staples, and REI gracing the shores of its blacktop. I was too hungry for…
Nau mai Yesterday we played a show at The Observatory in the city of Santa Ana. I began my day with a healthy feast, strawberries, nectarine, and blueberries piled high over a bed of granola and tied together with several generous spoonfuls of Greek yoghurt. As we were sound asleep in our bunks our bus had driven through the night. For about forty minutes anyway. A journey across the eastern…
Nau mai Yesterday we played in at the Fox Theatre in Pomona, California. If you were in central or downtown Los Angeles it would take you about an hour to get to Pomona by car, perhaps ninety minutes if the traffic was really bad. You would hop in your air conditioned Bugatti Veyron and drive it onto the I-10 motorway, switching your Sirius XM satellite radio onto channel 41, SiriusXM Turbo, the…
Nau Mai Yesterday we made a triumphant return to the crown jewel of middle California, San Luis Obispo’s Madonna Inn. The gleaming pink bulk of our tour bus rumbled down US Route 101 yesterday morning as the Moccamaster burbled and splattered its way to a full carafe of a single origin Ethiopian brew. As we rode each bump in the road the coffee machine’s automatic stabilisation mechanism would…
Nau mai Yesterday we rested in the Southern Californian city of San Diego. Venezuelan was my chosen breakfast cuisine. After waking up on the bus I disembarked and walked for ten minutes to get to San Diego’s old town where I hoped to visit a highly rated cafe called Encuentro. The service there was slow but thorough, and extremely friendly. While I patiently waited I enjoyed the focused approach…
Nau mai Yesterday we enjoyed a day off in the Yucca Valley, California. Our fuchsia chariot drove us through the night heading south and west away from Sin City, towards the coast and a better life. When we awoke we were stopped for the day in a place called Yucca Valley, about 100 miles inland from the Pacific, and still very much in the Mojave Desert. I made breakfast on the bus, a trio of…
Nau mai Yesterday we played a show at SOMA in San Diego. The smell of three star chain hotel breakfast haunts me still. It hit me as soon as I emerged from the elevator despite me being at the opposite end of the hotel several minutes walk away from the breakfast area. It is a sweet smell, probably the result of toasting bread and bagels combined with the boiling batter inside the eternal waffle…
Nau mai Yesterday we played at the House of Blues in Las Vegas, Nevada. I woke up at 1:30pm after one of those bus sleeps that leave you foggy and discombobulated. My internal alarm clock had failed and I had completely missed the morning’s events. Liz had already hit the casino floor and had turned her $10 into $12 at digital craps while Gabe had taken the fight to the slot machines and doubled…
Nau mai Yesterday we played in the city of Tucson, Arizona. This was to be the hottest day of the tour to date. Finally we would get to feel the temperature that TV weather presenters swoon over, the vaunted century of Fahrenheits sending the mercury surging to the top of the thermometer. I left the bus in the morning and headed to get breakfast. I made it to the cafe in less than ten minutes and…
Nau mai Yesterday we played at the Santa Fe Brewing Company. I began my day by heading down to the bus in the hotel carpark to make breakfast. Liz and Jon had procured a big bag of bagels from the bakery and I sliced and toasted one in our purple bus toaster. On the top half I smeared a thick layer of cream cheese and scallion mix and then topped it with salted and peppered cucumber. On the bottom…
Nau mai Yesterday we rested in the arid city of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Its usually a pretty good rest day if nothing much happens. We were all still heavily jet lagged from our 9hr timezone shift so much of the day was spent relaxing in the hotel. Our day began on the bus, however. We woke up in the hotel carpark and got to enjoy the comforts of the bus lounge while we waited for check in time. I…
Nau mai Yesterday we began our co-headline tour with Chicago band Beach Bunny. Denver lured us in with beautiful weather in the morning. I couldn’t see the Rockies silhouetted against the cornflower blue sky but the downtown skyscrapers silhouetted against the cornflower blue sky were an excellent stand in. I took my breakfast at a restaurant called Superfruit Republic, ordering the steel cut oats…
Nau mai Yesterday we completed the second part of our journey to the United States of America. It’s usually best to try and ignore the timezone change for this kind of journey but this late afternoon flight had the potential to really mess you up. We would take off from Narita at 4:30pm and after nine hours in the air we would land in Vancouver at a 9:30am that would feel like 1am. A lifetime in…
Nau mai Yesterday we flew from Tokyo to Vancouver. I really wanted to try the big, fluffy Japanese pancakes and I made it my mission for the morning. At 10:45am I was queued outside A Happy Pancake in Shibuya, waiting for my chance to scoff some of these delights into my mouth before rushing back to the hotel for lobby call. At 11am on the dot my name was called and I was shown to my solo dining…
Nau mai Yesterday we had another rest day in Tokyo. I opted for a convenience store breakfast on this morning, popping downstairs to the Family Mart just next to the hotel. I had a brown rice circle with tuna mayonnaise inside, a white rice triangle with pickled plum inside, and a sandwich with tomato, green leaf lettuce, lettuce, bacon, and egg. Tristan and Gabe went camera shopping and Gabe is…
Nau mai Yesterday we had a day off in Tokyo. What a treat. Two full days to explore and enjoy Tokyo. I began my day with a bowl of Ramen from Ramen Kamo to Negi, just around the corner from my hotel. I had the super deluxe duck meat ramen which came with confit duck, dumplings, leeks, scallions, bamboo shoots, boiled egg, and wheat noodles. Jon and I ventured out to another Hard Off in the…
Nau mai Yesterday we played at Fuji Rock Festival. This beautiful voucher is what you can exchange for a breakfast at the Prince Hotel, Naeba. I handed over my pink slip at the entrance to the buffet and looked out across this enormous dining room, imagining it crowded with skiers fuelling up for a day on the slopes. The slopes were green and the chairlifts were idle on this day, however, and the…
Nau mai Yesterday we drove from Tokyo to the site of Fuji Rock Festival at the Naeba Ski Resort. I chose sleep over breakfast, staying asleep until just before lobby call and instantly waking myself up and rushing downstairs. I was lucky enough to be gifted a rice triangle that Liz had bought from the convenience store. It was filled with Tuna Mayonnaise and it was exactly what I needed to…