West Indian Girl

Park City, UT

our last show at sundance 1.26

Fran’s Flashback
we were back at the star bar for a quadruple header. this show was interesting an many levels, the biggest of which was playing through rob’s mystery illness which rendered him voiceless for a few songs. it was indeed a testament to the good team we have because we held it together and stepped up when the chips were down. quite the fitting end to a great week of shows. again, zrike was there – in the snow, camera in hand. click here to view his slide show. zrike took most of the pics you see here.

dressing room and rider wrap up:
the facilities 12 points. as mentioned a few show reports ago the star bar’s lay out is great. the bar never feels too big or too small as there were plenty of different places to go to within the venue. great vip areas, big green room, nice bar. the only negs are the parking, bitch of a load-in, lack of a private bathroom, and did i mention the bitch of a load in?

rider/amenities 18 points. excellent backstage area with a full spread. 4 bottles of champagne and plenty of booze for the 4 bands that were there. all the bands we shared the area with were real nice too. that’s always a huge plus. playing shows with bands that act like douche bags can easily sour a good time.

stage, sound, lights 14 points. again, as described earlier i thought the stage was great. it wasnt big but it worked. the system was adequate. the lighting was better this time around. i thought the stage sound was fantastic…my bass likes that room. rob and greg the soundmen were just as awesome as before. even though we didnt get a sound check they were still able to dial us in. they also worked well with k-rud who was there tweaking our knobs. these guys are all great to work with.

promoter 20 points. morrill media was on the prowl again. maxwell (pic) knows how to throw a party. the posters he made for the show were fucking awesome. he enlisted design aid from our man in san diego the one and only mark sgarbossa. flycell and mark reynolds also deserve big thanks for helping promote and sponsor the evening. it was indeed fly.

staff 20 points. i said it before and i will say it again, the star bar staff is top notch.

intangibles 6 points. the first bottle of heidsieck and co has to get points. plus its always nice to have a dude from getty images there taking pics.

TOTAL OVERALL SCORE = 90. yet another A…par for the course at sundance. i hope other promoters dont think im getting soft in my grading, maybe it’s a mormon thing, but utah knows how to treat their bands. (click here for a detailed explanation of my scoring system’s categories). the A was brought to you by bill keaggy at keaggy.com

Nathan’s Nonsense
dear band blog, i can’t believe winter vacation is almost over. woke up earlier than usual this morning after miraculously surviving the previous night and went for a little run. then i took in a ride on the gondolas and basked in the surrounding beauty of the landscape. then i came back to the condo and pooped again. metabolism has really been in overdrive the past week! still no sign of my beloved sustain pedal which went missing in action after vegas, but i’m sure it will turn up somehow. meanwhile, i can only cry about it for so long. time to move on. tonight was our last show back at the ol’ star bar. rob got sick and was reportedly puking on stage thereby providing that extra theatrical kick we so needed. calico, calhoun, and the good listeners shared the bill with us, none of which i had ever heard of before. amazingly, i loved all three of them. their mellow sounds were the perfect backdrop for our closing night after such a frantic, frenzied week. wrote a happy little diddy in my head while hanging out backstage. might try to unleash it on the band if i get the chance. good crowd tonight, but what was up with that entourage guy slagging our merch? and the drummer from the cult? was that really him or was i hallucinating? and did i really swap out the ipod at the after-party with my own, pissing off the host dude in the process? well slap my nuts and call me jimmy. what a fucking blast.

Tony’s Take
seriously, how fucking long does it take an normal band to drive home from park city….well, usually about 10 1/2 hours. 18 hours later when i was home safe n sound in my bed i could only look back at laugh at those schmucks. outside of provo utah those bitches got suckered into getting both front tires changed along with buying new shocks. yeah sure the belts were gone on one tire but they got hoodwinked into buying shocks with the pro mechanic upsell. for what it’s worth, nathan claimed it drove nicer after they had it done. the real kicker came about 130 miles outside vegas when a spark plug literally blew out of the engine. im not kidding – seriously the thing shot out of the engine. we ended up limping into to vegas one cylinder down. the van sounded like an old vw bus ready to die. in vegas we were able to find possibly the funniest mobile auto mechanic in the world. his name was raff (pic below) but fran called him aziz. this guy was the man. service with a smile. dont ask me how but he did it but he did fix the van. it was a bizarre ride home. salvation can in the form of finally sharing a bench (with fran of course) thus putting an end to my banishment on the floor.

footnote to story about raff the mobile mechanic. raff ended up double billing our amex card after he claimed it wouldnt go through and that we pay him cash as well. funny, how that works…in the end raff rafed us. hmmm, at least he didnt rafe us in the end.

star at star bar (besides us)= adriene grenier