Maddy tries to jump forward in time to when we'll be home at the Ranch

We’re back!  After a short and lucky seven weeks on middle America’s impressive Interstate system and an unexpected five day vacation with some new friends in Ketchum, Idaho, Antioquia is home in the beautiful (and chilly!) San Francisco Bay.  It’s almost two o’clock and the sun is just now poking through the foggy clouds and I’m still wearing Trout’s Roll Tide hoodie.  Damn, where’d summer go?  Midwesterners like it hot and cold and windy and rainy and the blazing sun that can transform into a tornado in no seconds flat.

So here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to write a tour retrospective that includes every show and maybe some stuff in between.  I’ll try to keep it short and sweet, like my girl Maddy.

As Willie Nelson says, "we're on the road again."

June 11: Harmony Festival, Santa Rosa, California – What a big-time fest this one is!  We had a fun show at the famous Goddess Grove stage, Craig bonded with Drew, Toubab Krewe‘s guitar player (future tour mates? that’d be sweet), and our mind was blown wide open by Dweezil and the Zappa Plays Zappa band (although I personally was a little put off by his strange attitude, maybe because their singer stole the show:).

June 16: Front Range BBQ, Colorado Springs, Colorado – After running water through the engine (forgot to check the veggie oil, rookie mistake) blowing a coolant hose, then a fuel line, we finally made it to our favorite barbeque spot in the world and played for a beautiful and enthusiastic bunch (after eating an amazing meal, wow, banana pudding just like granny made it, i swear!).  Then, after eating another delicious meal at the Happy Times Cafe (correct me if I’m wrong on the name) I tried to get the water out of the veggie oil filter and put dag blasted air in the lines.  Damn.  Trout and I tried to get Bussie going again (we even bought new batteries, we’d been jumping it almost every time) but she wouldn’t budge so our buddies Qiana and Alexis put in the calls and found emergency rides down to Boulder.  Thanks Juliette, Eric, and Chuck for bringing the sweet rescue vans!  Meanwhile, Trout and Bussie road a tow truck to Denver to get her fixed up.  We wouldn’t run veggie oil again the whole tour.  Bummer.

June 17: Topo Ranch, Boulder, Colorado – I can’t believe we made it here!  I can’t believe we played a show at a t-shirt shop!  I can’t believe we got paid in t-shirts!  HA!

Sons of the Addicted rockin' the Hi-Dive

June 18: Hi-Dive, Denver, Colorado – Juliette and Eric are still rollin’ with us (booming Hunter S. Thompson style, gettin’ pulled over and escaping unscathed) and our amazing and beautiful friend Mitra replaced Chuck and his Vanagon, picking us up in B-town and got us to D-town to play this show with good buddies and great band Sons of the Addicted.  Bussie needed a new fuel lift pump, damn water.  But as Fela Kuti says, “water, he no get enemy.”  Whatever.

Ain't she purty?

June 19: Quixote’s, Denver, Colorado – Bussie showed up right before we went on, spewing diesel and oil on the streets of Denver.  Our boys fixed up the diesel leak (damn fuel lines!), I fixed the oil leak, then she didn’t want to shift!  What the hell?  We stashed her with me and Maddy on guard duty and figured out the transmission thing in the morning.  Jeez.  We met Pinot, a sweet funk band from the big LA, and kicked it with New Riders of the Purple Sage and our good buddy Dieter (who the night before got hit by a car and the day after set his backyard on fire, Maddy saved the day with a green hose).  I guess Denver International Airport is kind of freaky.  There’s all sorts of conspiracy theories surrounding it, check it out, you might not want to fly there any more.

June 21: Pop’s Blue Moon, St. Louis, Missouri – We picked up Annie and a new alternator, a well lubricated mechanic named Hollywood threw it in for a nice price.  We were beat from a long first week and nobody was at the bar (except our bud Matt Brown, engineer on Gringolandia) so we played like shit.  Oh well, at least we got Annie.

June 22: Norb Andy’s Tabarin, Springfield, Illinois – Damn.  Bussie’s was still dying on us, so we called for our fourth tow.  The tow-truck driver busted us for having a short school bus, AAA don’t like that.  But he fixed our problem, loose alternator belt.  Man, I coulda figured that one out!  The show was great, Antioquia loves Springfield and Jeremy, the Bill Graham of Illinois.

The ladies loving the Summerfest Green Man.

June 24: Summerfest, Milwaukee, Wisconsin – Yay!  We made it to Miller town, Craig’s folks and their friends put us up and made us feel safe again.  Summerfest is flippin’ huge man.  Like whoa.  The advertising is at a new level.  It’s bigger than the music!  Sheryl Crow played a show in front of an enormous screen with a Miller Lite bottle pouring beer into a glass.  That was the entire backdrop.  “I’mmmmm, gonna soak up the beer!”  After jammin’ to The Wailers (Aston “Family Man” Barrett is still the best reggae bassist on Earth!) we escaped to go to…

June 26: Project Earth, Harmony Park, Minnesota – What a beauty of a fest this was!  Folks were dancing in the mud.  Tornados were ripping around a few miles away, so close the whole festival, all the sound equipment and people (supposedly) were evacuated and lots of bands got canceled the day before.  We played for sunny skies, loved Useful Jenkins and later ducked into the shower stalls to avoid a tornado storm.

The beautiful stage at Project Earth

Wookiefoot, the masterminds of the festival played a great show an hour late to a loving crowd shin deep in muddy water.  Applause!

The Harmony Park Mud Lady

July 4: Summerfest, Miller Town -  After playing every day on the Tiki Stage, a pirate stage right next to Lake Michigan, we had lots of names on the mailing list and a little money (very little) and we were beat again.  That’s what we get for playing at noon every day and staying all night to check out the headliners.    Highlights: Roster McCabe, Heatbox, Shoeless Revolution, Umphrey’s McGee, The Levon Helm Band, Elsinore, War.

Craig getting schooled by Masami Tempel

July 9: Ed’s No Name Bar, Winona, Wisconsin – We love Ed.  He barbecued for us in true

Annie turned 21, we decided to throw a 100,000 people festival and get her a cake

summer-time style and we played our hearts out to him and a hundred of his friends.

July 10: Lettuce Jam and Guu’s, Stevens Point, Wisconsin – More festival, more stormy weather, more outdoor music fun, more barbeque!  The Martins were defeated in a huge upset by the Canadians in a heated match of Testicle Golf (not as painful as it sounds).  Elf Lettuce rocked and 100 Monkey Theory played their first show.  Congrats, boys!  Then we were honored to play drums for our friends Zach and Maggie who are getting married because a whale told them to.

Antioquia being blessed by the Green Wizard at Lettuce Jam

July 12: Cardinal Bar, Madison, Wisconsin – Maddy shot her voice at Guu’s (two shows in one day, the second one with no stage  monitors) so we played a whole show with no Maddy voice!  It wasn’t quite the same but we did it.  Thanks to Elf Lettuce for being awesome and helping us crack the Madison scene a little.  Check ‘em out.

July 13: Reggie’s Music Joint, Chicago, Illinois – Pinot!  We meet again.  Funk yeah, these boys went to NYC and back by the time we crossed paths in Chi-town.  Impressive, keep it funky fellas.

July 14: Cabooze, Minneapolis, Minnesota – Bussie was almost blown off the Interstate by a flippin’ tornado!  Then another one!  Whoa man!  Trout floored it and blew open a fuel injector line!  Damn.

Our new buddy Eric fabricated a tool to fix a diesel leak, as Salt 'n' Pepa say, "what a mighty good man."

But we made it and played great and saw Cymatic play a great version of Benny and the Jets.  I also sat on my first bidet.  Yay!

Thanks to John Snell and his bidet, Antioquia feels quite light in the pants

July 15: The Red Sky, Mankato, Minnesota – You have to try the burger here.  Wow.  And listen to local heroes Useful Jenkins.  Maddy fell asleep during set break and Annie got harrased, but we had fun anyway damn it!  Then we partied all night with Fatman and the crew.

July 16: Cabooze, Minneapolis, Minnesota – That’s right, we went back and rocked it once again.

Antioquia under the bright lights of the Cabooze

This time we got to hear the impressive improvisational stylings of PB and the Jam.  You’ll hear this name sooner or later.  The bassist is a Jaco head (Jaco Pastorius, legendary bassist who made his name in 70s fusion band Weather Report then with his influential debut album, Jaco) and is basically the lead instrument.  Absolut Groove was great too.  And really cool.  Everyone’s so nice in the Midwest, not that they’re not in Cali, but it’s a different kind of nice.  It’s nice, you know?  Nice.

Annie hosts two dragonflies as they make sweet love on her arm

July 17: Kathy’s Pub, Rochester, Minnesota – We didn’t get to go to Fargo due to construction by the Nestor but Craig made some quick calls and got us another gig.  Applause!  Before the show we thought it’d be nice to drum up the town so we set up on a corner with a nice statue of a swan riding a turtle with a hat on and started grooving.  A couple minutes into Sunu a woman with a perfectly cicular face stuck her head out the window of her grey Buick and yelled “No talent!” careful not to let the cigarette fall from her mouth.  Antioquia exchanged amused looks.  We packed up and head back to the club and I recognized a circle faced woman sitting on a bench, “No talent,” she assured me.  “No friends,” I replied.  Adley asked her to teach us something about music, “No talent,” she repeated.  We shook it off and got ready to impress Rochester with our talent but most folks in the club seemed to be of the same mind as the circle faced woman.  Thankfully, by the second set, we caught the ears of a few folks ready to boogie down and one guy told me this when I thanked him for dancing: “You guys rock!  All I had to do was listen.”           Yeah, take that circle face.

Getting ready for the show

July 19: Red Eye Bar, Sioux Falls, South Dakota – We got a tip from our new buddy Jordan on a campground called Albert Lee, or Meyer-Big Island and fought skeeters all night while eating delicious food cooked over the fire by our man Trout.  Red Eye was a peculiar spot, kind of a music venue connected to a trucker bar right off the Interstate.  It was pretty empty, but what’re ya gonna do on a Monday in Dakota?  At least a friendly put us up for the night in cozy digs.

Can you spot the box of PBR?

July 22: Backporch, Spearfish, South Dakota – After the Red Eye we booked it to Custer State Park to stay a couple days at Center Lake Campground.  It’s funny how such a beautiful place can be named for such an ugly man.  More fire, food and PBR, less skeeters.  More lake to splash around in, and two of the friendliest neighbors a band could hope to meet.  David and Kaitlyn were immediately attracted to Bussie, then when they saw the half case of Pabst and heard the guitars and drums and balaphone they knew they had some buddies.  David took me and Trout fishin’ in the lake and Trout caught his first trout!

Trout caught a trout!

We had fresh fish and a whole mess of stuff to eat before a storm rolled over the hill and side swiped us.  David and “Crazy Legs” Kaitlyn were even kind enough to alter their trip and joined us at the Backporch where they broke the icy dance floor with style and grace.  Sidenote: the owner of the club gave us some delicious fresh organic sausage grown by his brother, what a guy!  The next morning, our hosts (names escape me at the moment) gave us an earful of government conspiracy including an especially scary one having to do with implantables.  Oh shit, here they come folks.  Don’t let the government computer chip in you or your kid, no matter how they try to scare you into it.

Just call us the Tornado Chasers, or maybe it's the other way around.

July 23, 24: Evil Olive, Dickinson, North Dakota – We just barely beat the weather to this one watching from the parking lot as gigantic clouds rolled and flashed their way toward us and dumped about a foot of water on this oiler town.  Cool.  It’s nice getting out of the Bay Area to see some real weather patterns.  It felt like we were driving through the Weather Channel’s Greatest Hits!  The rest of the weekend is funny farm history recorded in my blog entitled We Never Made it to Kansas but we Might be in Oz (which features a sweet photo of Antioquia at Mt. Rushmore).  I’ll just say Maddy’s maracas have never been so profitable.

A classic Antioquia drum scrum

July 27: Top Hat Lounge, Missoula, Montana – They say it’s so windy in the Dakotas because Minnesota sucks and Montana blows.  I don’t know much about that but it sure was pretty driving through big sky country watching the ocean of tall grass sway and dance.  We stopped in Bozeman for some good ol’ Tuscaloosa, Alabama hospitality (go figure) and a couple days rest before blazing the rest of the way across cowboy’s paradise to the hippie enclave known as Missoula to open for Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band at the sweetest spot in town.  What a crowd!  They loved us and we loved them right back!

July 28: Forester’s Club, McCall, Idaho – Idaho?  Then, you da pimp?  We learned that it’s illegal to be shirtless indoors in Idaho.  I guess the state wants everyone to know that they are NOT a ho.

Trout jams with a fully clothed Antioquia at the Forrester's Club

July 29: Whiskey Jacques, Ketchum, Idaho – No no no, the feng shui here is all wrong.  Folks walked in behind the stage and went to the bar beside the stage and Antioquia played to a big empty room.  But we played pretty good and we ate eat free pizza and watched our buddies Free Peoples.  Antioquia wins again!

July 31: Sawtooth Festival, Stanley, Idaho – Trout and I woke up this morning and thought “Wow, wouldn’t an oil change just be lovely for Bussie?”  So we tooted on down to Ketchum Auto only to discover that ol’ Bussie was just tired of starting.  She was just grinding and clattering and being all around stubborn.  Damn.  Well, at least we made the discovery at a shop, funny how that worked out.  And check this out, Ryan, the shop owner, was gonna be damned if he let us miss the last show on our tour, especially one as gorgeous as Sawtooth.  So he pulled around a fifteen passenger church van he had just fixed up and told us to throw our gear in and be ready to go at

Paul shows Craig and Adley how to properly jump into Ernest Hemingway's favorite swimming hole

six.  Giddyup!  After some veggie burgers and dips in Ernest Hemingway’s favorite Idaho swimming hole and meeting up with our old buddies David and “Crazy Legs” Kaitlyn, we were ready to go over the hill into the wild west town of Stanley.  We loaded up the church van and arrived at Sawtooth in style, covered our gear behind the stage, set up camp and commenced to have one of the most amazing weekends of our lives.  Hospitality?  These guys got it down.  Scenery?  Huge craggy mountains that you stare at through the stage.  Good music?  You’re damn skippy.  Free Peoples headlined Friday night and we got up to do our traditional “Wild West” drum jam in front of possibly the largest crowd we’ve played for.  What a rush!  We hit the tents pretty early to be ready to rock Saturday afternoon.

The Free Peoples absolutely killin at the Sawtooth Music Festival

Saturday high noon: Maddy and Crazy Legs went out dancing to Four Stroke Bus led by Wade and Lisa who would later become our dear friends, hosts, and spine adjusters (Wade chiropracts in Ketchum).  We stood in awe of the Sawtooth Mountains and prepared our bodies and minds for a 3:30pm set.  At 3:15 we hit the stage with our gear (actually Free Peoples‘ gear, we left most of ours in Bussie back in Ketchum) and got set for sound check in front of a sizable crowd of expecting music lovers.  I turned around to see a massive rain cloud pouring over the mountain range and heading right toward us.  Damn.  Trout told me not to worry about that so we got on with our sound check.  Then I felt the mist.  I threw Gloria (my bass guit) in her case and covered Mark Anthony’s amp as festival staff began to shoo us off the stage in case of a lightning storm.  We danced in the rain in front of the stage.  The cloud passed and we hopped back on the stage to discover that Maddy’s delay pedal and the keyboard she borrowed from Mike Dyson had been directly below a puddle in the rain and shade cover and got dumped on.  Damn.  Shit.  We sat.  We pondered.  We sulked a little.  We didn’t know if we would get to play a full set.  We thought of songs with no keys.  But the keyboardist of Equaleyes had a keyboard exactly like Maddy’s that we could borrow!  It’s on!  We got up and played a great set for an amazing group of people who really poured out massive amounts of love and energy for us.

Dig that toothy backdrop

What a view

It was intense going from such a high to such a low and back high again, but we stayed high the rest of the weekend thanks to the beauty of the place and the organizers and volunteers and the camaraderie of the Free Peoples.  We played another set that night down in Stanley then the next day went rafting with the festival staff and other musicians and came back to a feast and fireside jam.  Wow.  It doesn’t get much better than that folks.

Free Peoples jamming with Antioquia

August 1-5: Vacation, Ketchum, Idaho – We got a ride back to town with Town Mountain, some bluegrassers from Asheville to find a Bussie that was still grinding up her starter.  Wade and Lisa from Four Stroke Bus had brought some of our gear down and they promised a big southern breakfast if we stayed the night with them.  We accepted the

Trout catchin' Zs in Ketchum

invitation and then some.  Their record collection, backyard hot spring and full band spine adjustment entertained us as the boys at Ketchum Auto fixed Bussie up proper.  Check out Tom Tom Club‘s debut album, oh so funky.  Trout had a nice conversation with a woman who ended up footing about half the repair bill.  Ain’t that something?

Then we booked it home to El Rancho, Oakland, California in our little yellow tornado.  And here we are!

The fellas measure up against the maters

Prologue: El Rancho blew up with life while we were away.  The tomato plants are big and

Don't Panic, It's Organic's (subsidiary of El Rancho) number 1 squash

tall, we’ve got prize winning squash and flowers pretty enough to woo the Queen of Kazahkstan.  And the kicker: Mamacita had babies!  She’s a pretty little hen that lives in our back yard farm and she’s now the proud mama of five beautiful chicks.  Ah life, it’s a trip.

Mamacita with her babies

Love, Paul