Running Wild
Hello, friends! Rob here.
It’s break again! You know, for not actually being on real, uninterrupted tour these last two weeks, it sure feels like we’ve earned a bit of a break. Both weekends were pretty intense no-time-for-sleep-just-get-to-the-next-thing kind of weekends. When I last wrote, it was a Thursday, and The Revivalists were headed to Tuscaloosa for our last show with the sensational Tumbleweed Wanderers. We had a great time in ol’ Tuscaloo, bade farewell to our new friends over some late-night Jimmy John’s, and got right back into the cycle.
The next night was a fraternity party in Athens, GA. I’m not certain what the theme of the party was, but based on casual observation I can only assume it was "really drunk girl.” After the show in Athens, we drove to Atlanta so that George would be able to fly out early the next morning for a wedding in Connecticut.
"But wait,” you say. "Didn’t you guys do Saturday and Sunday nights in Destin? How do you play music shows without George? Aren’t bass players kind of important in contemporary music?”
The answer to all of those questions, including the one that wasn’t a yes or no question, is yes. You see, we knew well in advance that we would be down a man for a few weekends in October, but the inaugural Global Fish Aid was a joint Fiyawerx/Gulf Coast Original Music Productions venture. That's like a gravitational singularity of awesome, and we just couldn't pass it up. So we enlisted New Orleans heavyweights Eric Vogel (bass) and Khris Royal (saxophone) and turned the weekend's shows into more open, off-the-cuff, jam-type experiences. And boy howdy was it fun. It’s always good to play with new people. And it’s double-always-good when they are absolute beasts.
SIDEBAR: I think there’s a new thing going on, almost exclusively among SEC sorority members, where girls will wear a really big t-shirt with not-particularly-long shorts, and that’s their going out outfit. Is this new? Where did this come from? Can I blame Miley Cyrus? I would say I feel like my parents right now, except my parents are cool.
We returned home on Monday of last week, took Tuesday to catch our collective breath, and then started the lengthy drive to Dallas on Wednesday evening so we wouldn’t be exhausted for our show at Prophet Bar on Thursday night. Oh, wait, that’s not what happened. What actually happened was that we got a call on Wednesday because Dallas’ local morning show, Good Day Dallas, had had a cancellation and hey guys can you be at the FOX affiliate station in downtown Dallas at seven o’clock tomorrow morning okay great thanks see you there:
That’s us running on about three hours of sleep and being thoroughly out-chippered by the trained professionals at KDFW. Fortunately, we booked two nights in the same hotel in Dallas, so we were able to get the remainder of a full night’s sleep after filming the morning show and rock Dallas super hard Thursday night. It was a bit of an early morning on Friday to get to Canyon, TX in time for load in at West Texas A&M University. We had the unusual privilege of performing in the WTAMU Buffaloes’ basketball arena as part of some kind of homecoming pep rally. It was a pretty early show and a relatively quick in & out (dry counties tend to have that effect on bands), which was good because we had about nine hours of driving to get to Austin.
Austin is the best. We teamed up once again with our old friends/selves from a parallel universe, Moon Taxi, to bring a magical aura of fun rockin’ music to The Parish in Austin. Austin is a great environment and it felt really good to pack a house full of wonderful people. Plus, Moon Taxi is awesome.
So that was our weekend. It was mostly long drives and in a weird way it kind of flew by. Last Friday or so the band did that thing bands do sometimes where one guy gets a cold and then everybody gets a cold, so over the course of this entry picture us all cycling through various stages of illness.
Hey, Pensacola! (More like Friendsacola, am I right?) I would be remiss if I failed to inform you that while The Revivalists are on vacation, our very own Ed Williams and Michael "Mike” Girardot are heading your way tonight! Ed’s gospel-funk side project, RumpelSTEELskin (best name of anything ever) will be opening for the New Orleans Suspects tonight at Vinyl, and you should go to it! What’s that, New Orleans? Feeling left out? Well, guess what? Tomorrow they’ll be at Gasa Gasa! Go watch Ed & Mike do stuff! Yay!
