Friday the 13th--or, Turlock & Load

We hasten up the pike To Elk Grove and arrive at Kevin & Danielle's lovely airy abode around one am--oops, we are kinda inconsiderate. Kevin doesn't bat an eye at our late arrival, and in fact stays up chatting with us, offering us beers (Andrew continues his evening's impressive beer-count) and San Pellegrinos (that's what Gary & I opt for--yum--so refreshing after rocking out!)

Kevin then introduces us to Linus & Lucy the basset hounds. Linus is particularly taken with Andrew--the affection certainly goes both ways. They have a wee growling dialogue--Andrew goes, "Grrrrr" and Linus replies, "Grrrrrr". Awwww.




Our host, Kevin!

I drift off into a dream about a puffer fish in a takeout carton that Andrew growls at. The puffer fish responds: "GRRRRRRRRR". Whoa.

We meet our supercool hostess, Danielle, in the morning and enjoy a rousing political discussion about the slowness of paradigm shift in Elk Grove, CA. Sigh.

It is getting up on noon somehow & we are RAVENOUS--it's been over twelve hours since our pub grub. We set out to hunt and gather.

Sadly, we end up at Mimi's which has a surreal Vegas-like atmosphere & decor, and the food: ick. After we eat the oily salty stuff, I reflect that I would have gladly bactracked to Sacto for a real meal...ah, live and learn.

yuck

Anyhoo. We drive on to TURLOCK and head to KCSS the college radio station in Turlock that has songs from THE JUGGLER's PROGRESS in regular rotation!

We meet some nice peeps there and give out various promo True Margrit items for some random & lucky CSU students...ooooh.

We then hit the evening's venue-- The Grizzly Rock Cafe--even though it's only 3pm. Frank the booker/ proprieter/ Roadhouse-chef extraordinaire sets us up with the password to go online, and we all bust out our laptops in a row at the bar and do some computing/ blogging/what have you. Geeky? Yeah. But Frank's bartender tells us he always prefers the bands who sit at the bar with their laptops. So there.

In due course we set up & play, and some of the peeps are quite taken with us, and some are tapping their toes, but looking around a bit perplexed. After all, we are bit different from the usual fare at the Grizzly Rock. But Frank really wanted to share our sound with the good folk of Turlock. So we do in fact rock out. And after the set we sell & sign a few CDs & chat with various Turlockians (and our kind hosts who came down from Elk Grove to hear the show). Then Broken Trojans starts in on their set of rockin tunes.

Meanwhile, we order some of Frank's delicious sandwiches (I have the tri-tip sandwich *YUM* with Frank's amazing home-made BBQ sauce), Gary has a scrumptious peppery burger, and Andrew is sent into ecstasies over the buffalo chicken sandwich, pronouncing it PERFECT. Thus loaded with protein, we pile into the truck (Gary driving, as Andrew is ,,, well, hammered). We come back over the Bay Bridge around 1:15 rocking out to Jethro Tull's, "Thick as a Brick" to which Andrew lustily sings every lyric. We are fatigued, yes, we are bruised, we are scratched from carrying drum hardware, yes, one of us is recovering from knee surgery (GARY! You champ!)--but we have our sights eagerly locked on the next show: OUR BIG ALBUM LAUNCH MATINEE at BOTTOM of the HILL--in less than TWO DAYS!

The suspense is killing me....oooooh.