Normally when you have a tour that begins three time zones away you leave the day before the first gig in order to have a night off, to rest from the journey and get better acclimated to the time change. This time we decided to be clever and leave the morning of the show considering how the three hour difference between Toronto and California works in our favour. Think of the savings…think of the fatigue.

Everything went fairly smoothly with our plan except that our bus, which was suppose to pick us up at LAX and carry us south to San Juan Capistrano, had a few electrical problems so it was a couple of hours late. This cut in to our soundcheck severely and more importantly it cut in to our nap time. By the time we hit the stage we were closing in on hour 20 of our day. We were all a wee bit tired and it showed in our performance. We gave it our best, but the exhaustion coupled with the unfamiliarity of some of the new material led to a less than stellar performance. Fortunately the Coach House audience was as great as it always is and they pulled us through.

*****

We have never played the El Ray Theater in LA but we have worked at the El Ray Theater. Long time ago in a distant world, we shot a video outside of the theater and used its old-time-movie-theater box office. It was probably our worst video in a long and storied career of bad videos and, of course, the most expensive. It was for Geffen, for the song Angel Mine and it featured Jeanene Garrafalo (who was in the film Cats and Dogs that featured the song). Lining Wilshire Blvd we had cast and crew trailers, a wardrobe trailer, a catering trailer, a makeup trailer, we even had a crane that never got used. A horrendous waste of time and money. So today when we pulled up in front and recognized the place, it was kind of like returning to the scene of a very ugly crime. Nevertheless, it is a very cool theater and the gig had promise.

Unfortunately it didn’t come through on the promise. It was a very weird show tonight. We are still ironing out a few timing and structural issues with the new songs, but we played fairly well…but we couldn’t connect with the audience. They were very distant and didn’t seem to want to come along for the ride. The woman who yelled out “we love you Margo” between every freaking song probably didn’t help anybodies night.

We must redeem ourselves in San Fran.