San Diego, CA
The marquis at Lestat's West in San Diego, CA before Friday's show.
I always love visiting San Diego – especially when I get an opportunity to play Lestat’s West over in Normal Heights. These guys have it down: pro audio, pro live recording, comfy chairs, great acoustics, and friendly staff. For this show on Friday night, I shared the bill with Jamie Drake and Lelia Broussard – two girls with some truly beautiful voices and some pretty neat songs, too. I got a great live recording of my set which I am making available to folks for free for a limited time (e-mail me with your mailing address if you’d like a copy and I’ll get one out the door to you when I am able to burn a few copies: all I ask is that you join my e-list in return).
Sunset at one of the many world class breaks along the San Diego coast.
Before I headed down to San Diego, however, I met up with my buddy Dave and scored some really fun waves in the town of Manhattan Beach, CA. This is a really cool little community and it’s pretty surf-driven. Houses and condos back right up to the sand and there are breaks all over the place – pretty much paradise. After a night in the Motel 6 at LAX, I needed some water time to clear out the cobwebs from a sleepless night listening to the airport traffic. Well, we pretty much scored. With the exception of a few monster close-out sets that sent me back to the sand almost every time I got caught inside, we all managed to catch tons of great lefts and rights with plenty of face time. Nice!
Street view of the break at 39th after a pretty awesome session on Friday morning.
In any case, the following morning after playing Lestat’s West, I hung with my friends Rick and Kim and paddled out at Sunset Cliffs in San Diego, CA for a little bit. After a more or less harrowing descent (assisted by a slightly suspect rope to get down a sheer cliff to the water), we scratched out to the horizon to see if we could pick off a few outside sets. Warm water, overhead surf, no crowds… is this place for real?! Anyway, we both managed to land a great session and surfed our last waves right to the the cliffs, whereupon we scrambled back up to the car (much easier going up!) and headed directly to Five Guys for some burgers. I’d never eaten here, but man… this place is solid! Plus, they give you all-you-can-eat peanuts to shell and eat and while you wait! Cool…
Little Italy in downtown San Diego, CA. Not Little Italy from New York, NY, but pretty nice!
After saying good-bye to my friends, I met up with local, San Diego songwriter Gayle Skidmore who I saw the week before at a showcase series in Santa Margarita, CA at some little coffee shop in the Little Italy neighborhood of San Diego. We chatted it up about the San Diego music scene, touring, etc. Turns out Gayle has got it pretty wired, has circumvented the label scene by starting her own label, and has come up with and implemented some pretty creative marketing tools to get her career on the fast track. She is a road warrior and a cool role model for today’s indie artists… After we wrapped up, I packed up my gear and took off towards Long Beach, CA to play my next show that night at Viento y Agua. Keep on readin’ right here for the next update!