Eric made us an awesome pancake breakfast.
As house guests we did our best to clean up after ourselves, but would totally clean the kitchen before we left for 2 days/gigs in the Wausau WI area on Friday, and before the family whose house we were given free reign in would return. Our mess was minimal and would be no sweat to take on. Or so we thought, but I jump ahead of my tale...
Drive to whatever town we staying in on the border of Wisconsin/Minnesota uneventful. However we did pass this crazy pavilion building which was also a radio station, with a huge cow statue nearby, and hooked a U-turn to check it out real quick. I like doing cool/weird shit like that.
The cow was, in fact, The World's Largest Talking Cow. Put a quarter into a contraption at the base of the huge heiffer, and she went on at length about the history of the building. Should have named her The Most Long-Winded Talking Cow as well. The pavilion building was still an operating radio station. Checked it out briefly and went on our way.
Arrived at the Fairfield Marriott in ___________? WI with time to grab food and chill for a bit before crossing the river and heading towards the Twin Cities. Wandered around with Eric, trying to avoid fast food or gas station food. A Chipotle... score!!! A single burrito would provide two very affordable meals.
But alas, a line out the fucking door. Damn!
Wandered around a bit more and settled on Arby's. Better than nothing, and better than McDonalds or a gas station chicken salad sandwich.
Drive to Minneapolis uneventful. Hopefully the trend of uneventful drives continues throughout the rest of the tour...
Minneapolis is another city I've been to many times. Have family in Minnesota but couldn't really make plans see anyone as we are performing in a radio station then hauling ass back to Wisconsin right after. Maybe next time.
After circling the block several times finally found the Baylor (?) Building housing KFAI-FM. We were performing on a weekly show called Live in Studio 5. Thought it was being taped, but it was indeed a live broadcast... damn I better have my charts handy. This would be our first official live performance. Yeah, no pressure there, heh!
Orrin the engineer and MJ the DJ were all really good people. The station was upstairs and praise be to Elisha Otis for inventing the elevator. Packed into the small Studio 5 room and got to work setting up and prepping to do a soundcheck. I must say, Heather's bass combo amp performs fabulously when taken off the MUTE setting \m/,
Look Ma, I'm on the radio! Oh wait...
We played kinda soft to avoid too much mic bleed. Our headphone mixes were perfect, as isn't always the case under such conditions. Also had other staff cramming into the room to get video for two songs. Again, no pressure.
We played very well and it went as smooth as could be! Awesome first official performance of this line up, and again no pressure! Listening to Orrin's rough mixes afterwards, we were damn impressed! We sounded great and Orrin did a great job making that so. He would be sending them soon when completed. Probably already archived at www.kfai.org.
Rick Hornyak and the Sweet Clover Band (we've been coming up with alternative band names the past few days, which I will not be posting as they range in level of wrongess-on-all-levels, and my mom reads this blog as well...):
Matt Brooks, Rick Hornyak, Eric Rietman, Yours Truly.
Signed one of posters for the station which they had printed up, featuring a pic that Eric had taken in KC 2 days ago, said our goodbyes and loaded out (again thank you, Elisha Otis, and whoever invented amp casters). 20 minute drive back to the hotel for sleep before the drive back to Wisconsin Rapids the next morning.
UPDATE:
Here is a video of "Miss California" put together by the Live From Studio 5 crew. Enjoy!
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