Rademacher with Airborne Tour Diary : Valentine's Day

It is 11:33 am and we’re driving on the 101 towards Arcata, California. We are doing a radio show this afternoon and later this evening we are doing a house show with our friends Geographer. It is Valentine’s Day. They are from San Francisco.
Last night we played Bottom of the Hill and there was a mad rush to get Airborne Toxic Event on stage, because we were all running late.

Even though we had a shitload of errands the previous day, we managed to be the only ones on time that night. Unfortunately, the venue would not let us soundcheck or set up our gear until TATE got there. So we just sat around and ate pasta with rubber bands in it.

Pasta with rubber bands in it? Yes, pasta with rubber bands. They made a bunch of pasta and Greer found a rubber band in her pasta. Like a real rubber band. She thought it was linguini. But it was a rubber band. That sucked. She started chewing it, she thought it was just a piece of past cooked “al dente”, then she chewed it more and sure enough, it was a rubber band.

Some dude in a hat with too many pins in it, came up to us and said he was from Spin Magazine and started asking questions about Rademacher. How many folks in the band? What are the musician’s name? Stuff like that. Really hard hitting questions.

He seemed a little weird.

By the third question it was pretty obvious that he had nothing to do with SPIN magazine. The door guy asked him to leave, and later explained that the weird-hat-reporter-guy had written his name in the guestlist and that this was not the first time that he had tried to pull that trick. He also informed us that Spin magazine has received a number of complaints about this particular SPIN reporter impersonator and are considering pressing charges.

Our friend Reid May helped us out with merch last night and it really made a difference. We try and watch the merch stuff as good as we can on our own, but it helps having someone there to keep an eye on the stuff as well as encourage folks to buy. It was our best merch night so far. Thank you Reid.

It was also nice to be out of LA. While I obviously love Los Angeles, and I love the hell out of the bands and friends I’ve made in that neck of the woods, it was nice to see TATE and THCP out of their own backyard and in the field, so to speak.
Bottom of the Hill is a venue that both Greer and I are comfortable in and I am sure that helped us collect our thoughts and deliver a really good show. We all had fun on stage and the crowd was responsive and we played well. So things are starting to click for us. Which makes me happy.

The Henry Clay People played well. It was weird to see the audience react to J. Siara’s antics early on with skepticism and then watch them grudgingly transform into admirers. One particular thirty-something couple I was standing next to started off by indignantly asking, “Did he just call us kids?” And then 15 minutes later I spotted that same couple chanting the words “Save Rock and Roll” along with the Joey.

Airborne played a great show despite their rushed soundcheck. Sound wasn’t ideal, but the band’s onstage energy was high as they blew through their set with aplomb. I am becoming a bigger and bigger fan of their “Goodbye Horses” cover. By the time midnight swung around, the band was in encore mode and invited the whole club to come up and dance onstage with them. The venue turned into a massive, writhing, hormone-fueled dance machine. It was pretty awesome.

Greer and I have voted Henry Clay People’s Jonathan Price the “Coolest Guy on Tour” for the last three dates running. In case you are wondering. He is a badass. And his bass is very heavy. Pretty much everyone else on the tour is tied for first runner up.