Brian's Account of the DBA Winter Tour:

Riverside – Rob’s Vintique

What happened! I think we literaly couldn’t hear each other because we were off from each other by a ¼ note the whole night. A real bummer because our first time in Riverside we floored them, but this time... at least we didn’t clear the room. Books on Tape and Child Pornography had everyone cheering and dancing. Thank gosh.

San Diego – Scolari’s

I love playing here. When Persian Empire used to play there we always ruled and so does R4B. The sound and general drunkeness of the venue makes it a fun time. We rocked uncontrollably. This Tree Is Older Than You Are did a combination of contests to give away 311 tapes and improv jazz between the bands. Everyone did an amazing job and we got to see Tender Buttons again. Very sexy folk they are. Recently Todd, Kerri, Grace and I had a discussion about who is sexier from Tender Buttons, K8 or Zack. Seemed like the girls went with the girl and the boys with the boy. Cool.

Arcata – Greenhouse

Yeah! Instead of going to sleep after the SD show, we drove 14 hours straight to Arcata and immediatly rocked a house party. Books on Tape had everything sewn up tight. Even without the delirium it would have been an amazing show. When you got the whole room that amped, you can’t go wrong. We discovered Ral Partha at this show which also was a party pumper. R4B started on some shakey ground, but I made an appeal to the audience to throw us some love since we were so friggin delerious and they did! Cheers and cries of love filled us with the juice that made it happen, and we happened! Thank you placebo, ryan, greenhouse, everyone! It is important that we visit you when we tour!

Cafe Messiah – Seattle

We weren’t expecting this to be a big show based upon early warning, and it wasn’t. Which we were cool with. We figured we’d give these cafe goers a surprise and rock their socks off. Unfortunatly people seemed frozen in fright, or something? Even some street punk kids in there, who stared with indifference. We still rocked and BoT showed off some rarities and did soem Click Tracey covers. Firebrush from the Winning Record ep was inspiring.

7:15 Bar – Portland

We love Portland. Hence so many shows there. Another enthusiastic crowd and BoT, R4b, Minmae, and This Tree all had special interactive moments with the audience (from Todd getting freaked by a stranger to Sean getting proposed to! This Tree was asked by the bartendress to stop playing unless they had any “real” songs. Awesome.

KPSU -  Portland

I break a string durring the 2^nd song and don’t have a replacement. But no one will ever know because This Tree and BoT join in for an amazing lengthy version of What Heavy Metal Taught Us (that ended up focusing on the line “Just how tough Florida really is” and we’ll have an mp3 of this up asap, hint city Angelo!). Then we do the song again durring BoT’s set and that rules only less than Jake Celesteville playing along on his Language Master for almost the entire BoT set. He could win a DMC with that thing!

Red and Black Cafe – Portland

Sadly, this was our last show for a while with Kerri. But, despite a very small crowd (although featuring unexpected visits from two very cool faces from the past! thank you!), we rocked like demons. We were an extremely focused power and Grace and Kerri did an amazing improv piece when I broke a bass string (common occurance!). This was also the most rockin of the This Tree sets, with Rob tearing Jake Anderson’s drums to pieces, but still playing them all the while. He also was pounding on a full tank of helium.

Disjecta – Portland

Our first show with Chris of Bronwyn and Mouse that Roared on drums. In this huge, cavernous room, we decided to set up right in the middle and to grand success. Half the audience dancing and the other half sitting, this was also the first time that I felt comfortable confronting the people that don’t move a muscle. After an incredible rocker, “You guys are still sitting!?!?!?!?!?  Well, I’ve been to a lot of shows, and you know what? This is one of them!” Chris plays drums in a tight pop fashion, but he is totaly down for the freak out. I recognized right away when we practiced earlier that day that we’d have to adopt a slightly different playing style, and it all worked out great. Thank you Chris. Oh yeah, I also got mad at this guy after our show that came up to say he really loved us. I pointed out that we had a tour cd and floppy disk just a couple bucks and he responded, “Well, you guys are the type of thing that is cool to see live, but I wouldn’t really want to listen to it at home.” I was pretty fucking pissed, and I am completely aware that I don’t nec have the right to be. But I honestly wouldn’t be doing R4B if I thought it were just some type of spectacle, even though I love spectacle! I ended up feeling really guilty later, but now I’m tossed. Actually no, no one HAS to like our music. That’d be pretty dumb to expect. This issue doesn’t really get worked out for me till our recent show at Flor Y Canto (March 14^th) where we totaly have a sloppy freakout show, driving half the audience away. I consider the performance to be perfect and realize that I’m not here to play for those that don’t like it. Or, as Ned Ragget told me, “If they don’t like it, it’s their problem, not yours.”

House Party – Astoria, OR

When Bronwyn booked this for us, I thought it was near PDX. But this was a coastal town in OR. Where Goonies takes place. This was just crazy. This is where my glasses finally shattered in too many pieces to truly salvage (although Sam did a good job making them last for the rest of the tour!) This was a show for 40 stoned highschool kids, just happy to have a place to party. We were kinda mellow actually. We played a lot of the power ballads, including something we haven’t worked out with Kerri yet called “Friends Forever”. Named after the band of course. The intro bass riff is ripped off from the superman (or is it Indiana Jones?) theme song, which they cover on their 12”. But the words are about demons, in a family sorta way. Chris played a lot of songs he had never heard before, and hung in there!

the Factory - Bellingham, WA

This was a last minute booking at a place that ended up seeming like they usually are a Glam Rock club? The booker was super nice though and super cool about 3 people audience and the fucked in the head music. It didn’t matter to him if he liked it or not and that was really cool. Later that night we discovered that tons of punk kids live in Bellingham, so maybe next time.

5lowershop - San Francisco, CA

This was supposed to be a rave sorta thing? We weren’t on the flier? This one fellow there was super cool to us and ended up sending us some money a few weeks later and thats very nice. Also got to see some kids (like Sen that I did Drug the Corpse with) I wanted to see. Other than that though, I was like Damn, I really want to play a good show in SF for once. Oh yeah, we were breakdancing to Books on Tape which ruled.

Luna’s – San Jose, CA

After getting back from tour, I told our housemate Catherine about this show and she said she thinks it was a Christian emo show. I thought Headphone Science was the best of the night. The sound system turned BoT into just noise, but Todd would find grand redemption the next night opening for Good Life. As for us, when we unleashed the carnival animals on the audience, everyone just starred at their feet. Todd showed them was to do, to throw them around, at us, at each other. But they only barely sorta did it. So I made myself a target for them, but not much helped.

the Smell – LA, CA