Fargo, North Dakota has been invaded by the traveling rock and roll circus. We’re living on the bus for a couple days between Seattle and Minneapolis. We woke up in a Petro truck stop at 2:30 pm central time. We’re missing most of the other bands because they flew to Minneapolis. Those Divas! The Charms, the crew, Jimmy (the lead singer of the Shadows of Knight), and the Garage Girls a Go-Go have been enjoying the Montana scenery and the Cracker Barrel chicken and dumplings during a layover in Billings.
However, the cutest dumplings weren’t in our bowl. They were in Jim’s pink panties that we saw on the way to a pit stop yesterday as he prepared to moon the other bus. None of us younger rockers were confident enough to pull it off but Jimmy jumped at the chance…maybe after we have 6 top ten hits like Shadows!
Going back in time: The first week started in San Diego at the Belly Up club. We met the crew for the first time at sound check. Having a stage crew, a regular sound person, and a merch person is very luxurious for us. Last year this time, we were in pretty much the same part of the country in our van on a two and a half month tour of the US, promoting our last cd ‘Pussycat’. Now, instead of driving ourselves to our next gig and making pb&j sandwiches in the van, gearing up for load in, we’re writing a blog for you Billboard.com readers.
The first week of shows was a blast and a blur: San Diego, LA, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle in five nights. The Avalon in Hollywood was one of the bigger clubs we’ve played so far. Clem Burke, who was in the audience at Belly Up and Avalon, said he dug our set. We shook off our jet-lag to tear it up in San Francisco at 12 Galaxies, which was a pretty intimate crowd/stage scene. We got to play an extra long set in Seattle (we were able to bring “Losing My Addiction” from ‘Pussycat’ out as an encore). The crowds in SF and Portland were especially raucous. It’s been great to see fans that saw us on our last tour at every show so far.
Our set is usually right in the middle of the show, after 2 local bands from each city, and before the Romantics and the Shadows of Knight. Every night we get joined by the Go Go dancers during “My Friends” one of the new songs.
We’ve been playing a mixture of songs from our last three cds and ‘Strange Magic’ which is our newCD coming out on Wicked Cool Records in November. The name of the new cd is taken from a line in our song LTD. It seemed appropriate because of amazing things that have happened to us since the Pussycat 2005 tour, including recording with Jim Diamond in Detroit, signing with Wicked Cool, and getting to go on this Underground Garage Tour with all these cool bands and this crew.
I can’t believe we are hanging out with the guy who sang the garage classic “Quick Joey Small”! And he wears pink underwear (apparently, they started out burgundy but the wash faded them).
