Our USA tour (Sad Lovers and Giants) - a review

[Twigman]

I thought I’d write up my experiences on our first ever tour in USA.
Sad Lovers and Giants have been going on and off for 35 years now and only now got the opportunity to play in America!

The tour started in Austin TX at SXSW, the band having been invited by Michael Stock, LA DJ and proprietor of Part Time Punks, to appear at his showcase in the backyard at The Barracuda on the opening night of music week.
On arriving at Austin we were met by our ‘superfan’ Mr Fred Jaggi, a Dallas resident who created our original website and maintained it for many years. He drove us about in his 7 seater Cadillac.

After getting our wristbands we were good to go.

SXSW is a strange setup. Each stage hosts about 5 bands a night. No sound check and a strict 40minute set length is stipulated. Our songs being around 6 minutes each meant that we were limited to a 7 song set – by far the shortest gig we’ve played for a very long time (perhaps ever!).
The back yard looked fairly full from the stage but after our performance, within 5 minutes the place had emptied. That suggests most of the audience had come to see us rather than just be passing trade.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GriIQnAMB9c[/media]

We were lucky to get a review in the Austin Chronicle. When one considers there are 110 stages at SXSW each hosting around 5 bands, to actually get a review is amazing, And it’s not too bad!

[url="http://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/sxsw/2016-03-16/sxsw-music-sad-lovers-and-giants/"]http://www.austinchr...ers-and-giants/[/url]

Austin during SXSW is a mental place.
6[sup]th[/sup] Street is just full of drunken students on spring break, lying in pools of their own vomit!

We were quite glad to get out of the 90 degree heat and high humidity and fly up to Oregon (albeit the long way round via Phoenix AZ).

We were met in Portland OR by our driver for the remainder of the tour and found ourselves in a fairly small Ford E350 van with 2 bench seats for the duration.
We collected a box of tee- shirts we’d arranged to pick up from the manufacturer in Portland and the tour proper started.
After a night in a cheap hotel in Portland we drove up to Seattle WA for the first proper show of the tour at Chop Suey.
The scenery was fantastic with several volcanoes visible en route:

The atmosphere of Chop Suey was fantastic.

We had around 200 punters show up for this one. We played around 1hr 20 minutes and the audience loved it. We were signing vinyl and CDs after the show. I couldn’t believe that so far away from home there were folk who’d actually bought our records back in the day.

From there it was off to Canada to play at The Hindenberg in Vancouver BC.

This place was challenging.
There was a water leak above the stage apparently from the plumbing upstairs. There was huge barrel on the stage, right where I would normally be, that was half full of water. It had apparently been there over a year!
During the show I felt drips on my head and arms. We had a puddle develop on the keyboard too.
Luckily nobody was electrocuted and no electronics were broken. There are no photos of this gig and bizarrely no video on youtube…the same is true of the following gig in Portland OR…..
Despite the difficulties the Canadians gave us a warm welcome and seemed to enjoy the show.

The next day we had a long, wet drive back to Portland, Oregon.
The gig here had been moved a few times. Initially we were supposed to play at Dante’s then that was moved to Star Theatre…in the end we played a place called Blackwater Bar.
Soundcheck:

The daughter of Al Jourgensen from Ministry came along…she seems like a ‘superfan’ !


Next day was the longest drive of the trip, to Sacramento CA.

This was weird!

Having played ‘proper’ venues to this stage we were a little underwhelmed to find ourselves expected to play a disused shop with no stage and just the feeblest of vocal PAs. The cab I had been using all tour was a home made 2x12 which farted out in the lower registers and was frankly awful. It hadn’t been a problem until now as I had had decent PA support all along. It was like having 80 people in your rehearsal room with you! See this video:
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQlVljsBkXQ[/media]

The next day we set off for San Francisco.

And had a little time to do some sight seeing


This venue was proper.
The Elbo Room.
The audience was a decent size:


[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwx89eLAghM[/media]

We then had a couple of days off so headed to LA
And took some promo shots in the Bradbury building ( - Bladerunner)



and found we had our own section at Amoeba music:


So then we had a long drive into the desert to Phoenix AZ



The Phoenix show, despite being small, paid well. The audience all seemed high as kites!

After Phoenix we returned to LA to record a radio session for Part Time Punks.



And then the following day play the biggest gig of the tour.
Between 600-700 turned up at The Echoplex. We had been originally booked to play at The Echo upstairs but that had sold out over a week before so we had been moved to the bigger venue downstairs.



[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaZkt8x04qo[/media]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grqEBdPAIYg[/media]


And so the tour drew to a close.


And we got a brief review in the LA record:
[url="http://larecord.com/photos/2016/03/28/sad-lovers-giants-vaadat-charigim-nite-fields-the-echoplex"]http://larecord.com/...ds-the-echoplex[/url]


Oh and then look who we bumped into in the security line at LAX on the way home:


We really enjoyed it.
We didn’t make any money, in fact it cost us but what an experience!
Best fortnight’s holiday I ever had!

Edited April 2, 2016 by Twigman

[chriswareham]

Brilliant! SXSW sounds like the festivals in Germany, Wave Gothik Treffen in particular. Takes over the whle city with many venues and a huge line up. Always makes me laugh when people bang on about Glastonbury, which is an exercise in hubris and masochism by comparison.

[Mickeyboro]

Nice post! Out in SF at the moment, wish we had coincided...

[Lozz196]

Nice one Ian, looks like you had great fun.

[grayn]

Great post and vids.

Sounds like the perfect holiday, to me.

Congrats.

[lurksalot]

That sounds fantastic and a great write up too.

[skidder652003]

Great review, really enjoyed that, thanks!

[RhysP]

Brilliant, great experience!

[Len_derby]

Great post. Thanks for putting it up.
Nice to acknowledge your 'superfans'. We all need those, especially when far from home.

[Kirky]

Thanks for posting, sounds like great trip. I see loads of touring bands at smallish venues over here in the UK and sometimes wonder if any of them ever make any money!