Southwest Tour – Heading Out

Woke up in Ashland, OR where I paid a visit to my good friend John Grimshaw (director of “Pit Bull Rescue Woman & “Yellow House”). I got here via a highway adopted by NORML. (Something you’ll only find in The State of Jefferson, which includes Humboldt County. Ah, the Great Northwest!)

Good to see John again, who had to leave Hollywood behind — temporarily — just as I have, until further project infrastructure is robustified. We commiserated, planned, theorized, and encouraged one another, and assured ourselves that we would soon release the second episode of Laurel Canyon Back Porch Variety Hour.

First gig of tour is tonight in Sacramento, with Doug Cash, at Fox-n-Goose Pub. I will be well rested, having taking a few hours off the long drive from Eugene.

Shipe planning Southwest Tour (Oct/Nov)

I’m planning a tour of the American Southwest — around Halloween time — between my wife’s and my mother’s Scorpio birthdays. (What a terrible husband and son am I!)

I could really use some help finding venues (and booking them). So please chime in, friends, fans, family, and Pit Bull people.

The dual foci of my desert adventure are two Pit Bull Benefits: Phoenix on October 27th, and Austin on November 5th. I’m thinking about Flagstaff, Prescott, Tucson, El Paso, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Taos, Durango, El Paso, Kerrville, Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Ft. Worth and/or anywhere else a there’s room for me at the Inn. I won’t be hitting all these places; time doesn’t allow. Wherever I am welcome…

I am grateful for any & all aid and comfort.

Shipe on Coeur D’Alene Moon Time

Woke this morning to see that “Honky Tonk Romans” is on a playlist I haven’t seen yet: Barely Darker Than Air. A good resource for East Coast community.

Last night was one of my better Moon Time gigs. The place was packed. (Iron Man Triathalon is in town.) Even though they were typically noisy on Dollar-Pint Night, they were listening. applauding after every song, tipping, making requests, and buying CD’s. I tested their attentiveness by directly soliciting tips–announcing that my local hotel of choice had raised its rates by 40 percent. They responded. I would not have done this had I not been sure that I was playing well, already making a warm connection by virtue of the performance. One does not resort to playing on the audience’s sympathies for the poor starving traveling troubadour. One only asks for voluntary compensation after providing solid entertainment. (Speaking of compensation, I thank Moon Time for paying their solo artists well. It’s always a reassuring way to start a tour. And the comped meal is spectacular.)

I mentioned that folks were making requests…

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Shipe & Ebbage at John’s Alley

The first gig down, four to go. John’s Alley is usually the first gig on these short Northern Idaho tours, starting me off with an 8 hour drive right off the but. Plus, it’s a long gig–9:30 to two a.m. With Ebbage, I thought it would be only half as exhausting. But, no, the John’s Alley gig still kicks my ass. Vertical Dave, as usual, does us right from the crow’s nest, with one of the best sound systems for any tavern gig I play. And he always burns a CD of the show.

I would have liked to play better, I was a bit uneven on lap steel, making a bloody mess of Ebbage’s sweet songs. I’ve got four gigs to fix that, and I’m better rested for tonight’s gig at Moontime in Coeur D’Alene.

Alley folks were kind to us as usual. Buying CD’s and chatting us up and down about our solid music–even though we were a little off this time. (It wasn’t quite the zone we were in when we played Ashland last time… when I ended up hospitalized for a supposed kidney stone… which I still have… even though it’s not a kidney stone…It’s a herniated disc, which I still have…. which makes it scary to drive 8 hours and then sing & play for 4 hours… songs like “Crawlspace” and “Imitation Man” especially… But I’m okay, I think.) We must have come along way since 1997, because even though we felt “off,” we still managed to sell some CD’s.

Towards the end of the night, when we were really starting to fade, a fellow came up to us, named Matt and said: “Hey guys, it’s getting late, and no one’s really listening, you want some sax?” (Hmm, it sounds rude when I write it here, but it wasn’t rude the way he said it.) Although I was just about tapped out and ready to call it a night, I wanted to hear what he would sound like with us. (He’s part of a band with Bennet the accordion player from Ala Zingara, so he had some automatic credibility there.) He warmed up on recorder as I played Green Day’s “Good Riddance.” Next, I challenged him with Bossa Nova “Just in Time.” Sounded great, so we finished off with “Don’t Pass Montgomery By.” Nice.