Santa Barbara, 4/18 Paying the Price for a Late Night Drive
If you’ve been following these posts, you’ll know we had a pretty solid day on 4/17 up in SLO with two marathon gigs and a few late night antics. As a result, we got ourselves into a sort of sticky situation in terms of getting down to Santa Barbara. Fortunately, percussionist Jesse Weber was good to go with ample caffeine, ready to take the helm of the Tacoma, and amped up to tackle the painful stretch of 101 South from SLO to Santa Barbara at 2:30am.
Late night, nobody on the road, and smooth sailing on 101 South in the wee hours of the morning.
After blasting an assortment of classic rock from Chicago to Santana, to Hendrix, to Zepp’ to Cream just to keep our eyes open, we rolled into Santa Barbara and found a spot on a friend’s living room floor to crash at 5:30am. Owie…
A few short hours later, we woke up to the unfortunate realization that perhaps we weren’t going to be feeling all that well for the day. Yeah, basically… I had no voice at this point, which would have been funny except for the fact that we had a 2+ hour gig to play. In any case, I fell into the Throat Coat tea, Slipery Elm lozenge, and Advil mantra and, whaddaya know?? By the time I stepped up to the mic for the first song, I was back… (Phew!)
All smiles while setting up for the gig outside on State Street in Santa Barbara, CA at Borders. Thank goodness for the extra dark glasses, however...
After settling in and fine tuning the sound with the help of a sound guy and road manager we met there in the audience, we were on fire. And, really, ya can’t get a much better venue than a sunny patio on the main drag (State Street) in Santa Barbara on a warm day!
Rocking a sunny afternoon in Santa Barbara... ah...
After we tore down our setup on the patio, we were approached by some folks that run another local music venue called Live Culture. Apparently, they dug my tunes and wanted us to come play at their stage later in the evening. Since we were feeling MUCH better than anticipated after arriving in Santa Barbara at 5:30am that morning, we decided to give ‘er a go. So, without further ado, we packed up, loaded the truck, jammed down some burgers, and then headed over to Live Culture to rock out a short, hour-long set.
This place had an 11′ high stage! Seriously… it was up there. And, it sounded awesome. The on-stage sound was a great mix and out front, it seemed perfect. Definitely want to head back there the next time I’m in Santa Barbara. Thanks to Nick, Darin, Sierra and Mark for their hospitality! We had so much fun…
Afterwards, we headed back to where we were staying to crash out. And believe me, we crashed out… ah, sleeeeeeeeeep!