|  The
Dixie Witch Tour Chronicles – Part IX
Monday
/ June 30th – Day 8
Well we didn’t wake up feeling like shit because we
had stayed up all night. Supposedly Einstein only slept four
hours a day…or so I think I remember hearing somewhere.
Flea and I caught a cab back to the-place-where-she’s-couch-surfing-this-month
so we could shower and pack our shit for the beach (I had
convinced Will and Flea to go to Santa Cruz with us…our
newest hostages, having lost Graves at Sea Roger in L.A.),
with visions of vampires-comic-books-cotton-candy-multi-colored-rollercoaster-merry-go-round-bedecked-boardwalks-with-lots-of-ordinary-motherfucking-people-to-make-fun-of-and-lots-of-necks-to-bite.
Before splitting the city, however, I had to make a visit
to the best fucking Chinese food restaurant in all-of-San-Francisco
(and probably the best in all of motherfucking China)…a-not-to-be-missed-ever-site-when-in-the-Bay-Area,
the House of Nan King. The place has all of six tables and,
if you try to go there for dinner, you better be prepared
to get at the end of a line that goes around the block. When
you finally make it into the joint, you need to eat fast,
and then get the fuck out. You might even have to share a
table with total strangers. But they have the best sesame
shrimp on the entire planet. Flea and I, being the only ones
wise enough to take advantage of this rare opportunity, totally
pigged out while everyone else missed out. Except for Claytallica,
that is, who was smart enough to make me get him some to go.
After all of our plans to split early to make it in time to
go to the boardwalk where they filmed The Lost Boys (plans
made when we were totally fucked up, of course), we couldn’t
locate Trinidad…and he wasn’t trying to get in
touch with us. After killing a bunch of time and brain cells,
we found him around 4 in the afternoon. As we made our way
towards the beach, leaving the beautiful/volatile island,
we passed through Colma, a city that has the bizarre distinction
of having more dead people than live people. Colma is the
place where the dead people in the Bay Area go, because there’s
just no space in San Francisco to bury them. Instead, there’s
a population of around 3 million people packed into a 7 by
11 mile area. A city full of dead people…kind of a cool
concept except for the fact that zombie movies generally turn
out to be the least scary of all horror movies because the
brain eaters can’t move fast at all, have no special
powers, and are only capable of saying “Brains”
or “More Brains”. But we had Will Chewbacca Harold
and Felicia Fleatardo Montalban Cox to entertain us with comments
like “Dixie Witch…they’re just a bunch of
shitrockers!”, “I ate a cock in the morning”,
“we’re Santa Cruzin’ for a bruisen’”,
and “Think hard retard!”
An hour later we descended upon the coastal scenic hippie
town and went straight to the liquor store (being informed
that we were already too late for the boardwalk). Cliff (the
guy who booked the show and bore a striking resemblance to
Sammy Hagar), told us to come by his pad and chill out until
show time. He lived two blocks from the beach, and was headed
that way with his board when we arrived. Supposedly, Santa
Cruz is one of the premier beaches to learn the sport of surfing,
and there were tons of wannabes every where. But in spite
of the fact that this was early July, it was not sun tanning
weather…or even warm. We had to wear fucking jackets
to hang out on this killer Northern California coast, and
quickly came to the conclusion that Cliff had to be totally
fucking insane, as he was the only surfer not wearing a wet
suit…in what had to be 50 degree water. Too cold for
my Texan blood and innards to handle.
The venue that night was a tiny little bar called the Mediterranean,
that was packed to the gills with surfer-skater-dreadlocks-down-to-their-ass-having-healthy-lack-of-rock-looking-guys
who were banging their heads (even though they had never seen
the likes of Flea, me, or the Witch in their peaceful-potsmoking-I’m-so-content-I’m-bored-to-tears-surf’s-up
lives). There was no stage so the Witch was eye level with
the audience (actually lower than the audience since they’re
a bunch of short motherfuckers with the exception of Trinidad,
who was seated behind the drum kit), and I had to sell merch
seated on top of the pool table. Cliff’s band, Gargantula,
turned out to be pretty fucking metal. I was surprised that
such a peace-loving surfer dude could morph into such a pissed
off rocker. Well we stuck to routine and got loaded like a
bunch of tackle boxes. Then Flea and Claytallica entertained
me with the robot and all other kinds of kooky dances. Trinidad
(who has the hots for Flea, and has yet to understand that
it’ll never happen…at least in this lifetime)
dedicated Drifting Lady to her.
After the show, we went back to Cliff’s place to crash
and hang out with a bunch of way-too-happy-and-satisfied-with-life-locals.
One crazy chick was running around with a bloody hand, and
refusing to go to the hospital…opting instead to rub
her bloody paw-paws on whoever was closest, while hitting
on every guy in the room. Sexy (in Fat Bastard voice). I can’t
remember what the fuck her deal was. Besides the killer weed,
this scene was too fucking weird…even for me, so I took
off down to beach, sat on the rocks, and listened to the surf
crash, while stargazing and pretending that I was spiritual...for
all of about 2 minutes. I ended up crashing in the van that
night.
Tuesday
/ July 1st – Day 9
“Don’t kill us, kill the deer!” Felicia
yelled, as we narrowly escaped hitting Bambi, while the three
of us in the back almost flew straight into the fucking front
of the van. After walking around on the beach and eating some
pizza, we took off back to Frisco, dropped Will off, and waited
on Flea to pack her shit. I had convinced her to jump aboard
the hell van with us, go all the way to Seattle and find a
ride home. It didn’t take too much arm twisting before
I had a crazy chick to hang with for the next few days. Now
we found ourselves riding through Northern California, having
recently passed the vineyards of Mendocino and Willits, the
gateway to the redwood forest. Trees trees and more trees.
As we passed yet another “Carving for Christ”
souvenir stand, Curt observed, “I’m sure Jesus
appreciates that”. We rode down windy ass roads through
the mountains all day, with me holding on for dear life so
I didn’t go flying through the fucking window or on
top of Flea and Trini.
After a lengthy ride which led us past by the Legend of Bigfoot
shop, we finally made it to the city of Arcata and Humboldt
County (the land of legendary medicinal marijuana). We were
starting to get worried about the venue because our ride through
the redwoods didn’t seem very promising. With the lack
of electricity-civilization-people coupled with the large
# of trailer parks, we were beginning to think it was some
sort of Deliverance deathtrap, where we were on our way to
end up in a double wide and meet our inevitable ends. We finally
arrived at the venue, a club meets bar meets bowling alley
where a bunch of long-haired mountain people were hanging
out.
We had heard all about the Humboldt county weed, and didn’t
have time to begin to think it was a myth because this guy
just came up and gave me and CC a nice beautiful organically
grown bud each. Mega buds for free from almost the second
we walked in the door. The kick ass thing was that we could
smoke this soy smoke while standing right at the entrance
to the club. While I was observing how fucking cool this was
a local told me, ““Girl, you’re in Humboldt.”
Well no shit. The opener, Que’ la Chinga’, was
pretty cool, with a kind of Weary Boys thing going on. Meanwhile,
Trinidad was being served Gentleman Jack by the bartender,
and was downing them hand over fist. I could tell tonight
was going to be a real fun one. The Witch played the middle
slot, to all of eight or so weirdoes, and were followed by
a crazy metal band called Manic, that was reminiscent of Sacred
Reich. Towards the end of their set, Trinidad started getting
rowdy, and talking a bunch of shit to their singer…getting
right in his face and talking shit.
After the set Trinidad threw a big huge temper tantrum (bordering
on a psychotic episode), managing to piss off not only the
last band, but everyone in the club as well. He threw his
drums around with such force you could hear him outside. We
almost lost our place to stay, with Kyle warning, “You
guys are welcome to stay at my place, but if Trinidad thrashes
anything, I’m going to drop him.” I was kind of
hoping he would.
When the tantrum ended, I jumped in the back of Kyle’s
van (refusing to ride with Trinidad), and was handed a bottle
of Evan Williams and a Pabst Blue Ribbon. We headed back to
Kyle’s place in Eureka, which ended up being this crazy
garage with some kind of barn door, where we drank more and
smoked more and acted totally retarded…cracking each
other up, although what was so funny I have no idea…until
the cops came knocking. Kyle accidentally broke his pipe that
he’d had for 4 years, as all of us scattered. Actually
we maintained our positions and let Kyle deal with the barn
door and the cops. In spite of the overall reeking of marijuana
and our obvious drunkenness, the pigs were cool and just told
us to simmer down. At that point we all went to our separate
crash spots, me being the one lucky enough to land in the
house instead of the barn.
Wednesday
/ July 2nd – Day 10
As we were driving up the coast and down the Redwood Highway
towards Oregon, Claytallica inquired, “Did Wendy tell
you my thing with toes, Felicia? I like to cut em’ off
and keep em’.” I added, “Yeah he’s
got a toe necklace.” To which Clay added, “So
Flea, which toe do you not want?” Her reply, “I
don’t want any of them.” We passed a city called
Trinidad and it’s so appropriate, considering this is
the land of the Sasquatch. I could easily live up here in
the woods with the fucking potheads, hippies (you know there
are some fucking communes up in here), bikers (home of the
Hell’s Angels), and fucking mountain weirdoes. I can
see why serial killers might gravitate towards these parts,
as there are plenty of places to bury the dead. There are
lots of holes in the desert, and definitely in the fucking
forest. It’s a serial killer haven. We get to Crescent
City and have to cut up Grant’s pass over a mountain
range whose elevation goes up to 9,000 feet. The miraculous
part is that the van keeps chugging along (at least uphill…when
going downhill it always seems as if Curt is deliberately
trying to drive us off of a cliff). We pass a king-sized Paul
Bunyan and an assload of hatcheries. There’s so much
salmon, they sell the shit in every form…they even have
salmon jerky.
We encounter huge cliffs and jagged rock islands jutting out
of what appears to be an angry limitless and freezing cold
Pacific ocean, overshadowed by the hugest and oldest motherfucking
pine trees I’ve ever seen. As we make our way through
the forest I am overwhelmed by its awesomeness…not to
sound like a fucking hippie but I almost felt healthy for
half a second, while listening to lots of Led Zeppelin (which
seemed like the perfect soundtrack for the drive. But then
again, when is Zeppelin inappropriate? I know there are some
Zeppelin haters out there but you know what? There is definitely
something wrong with you. The destination was the Samurai
Duck, a sushi serving venue in Eugene, and a perfect example
of a lame-motherfucking-birkenstock-wearing-hippified-tree-hugging-west-cost-of-Oregon-town.
Once again we met up with the Unida and the legendary John
Garcia from Kyuss (If you don’t know about Kyuss…do
your fucking rock-n-roll homework. For those of you too lazy
to do your homework- which includes most of our readership
no doubt…Kyuss includes Josh from Queens of the Stoneage,
as well as Nick Oliveri of the Queens and Mondo Generator.
Nick also did some time with the motherfucking asskicking
short set havingest pissed off band from San Francisco known
as the Dwarves. However, at that point in Nick’s career
he was known as Rex Everything. Any fucking ways, the club
was small and hot but the stoned ass crowd was into it. Unida
sounded pretty fucking tight by this point and Paul (Slipknot
bass player and newest member of Unida) bought me lots and
lots of drinks. I think he was on his tenth Guinness.
Then the sound guy got us super high with some killer weed,
and I ended up mad at Trinidad and rode to our Portland place
to stay in a truck belonging to Mark from Stonerrock.com,
rather than riding with the Witch. En route he was playing
Mermaid, this heavy and almost cool band from Spain. Mermaid
has two singers; one that sounds like crap, and another that
sounds like OZZY. We also listened to Acid Bath, whose singer
sounded strangely like Peter Murphy from Bauhaus (maybe it
has something to do with the fact that they’re from
the ghoulishly-vampire-addled-urine-soaked-booze-filled-voodoo-practicing-
swamp that is New Orleans). I had heard that Portland was
super cool, although the only bands that I could remember
coming from there were punk rockers All Out and the junkified
destructive rockers that are probably broke up by now, the
Riffs.
Thursday / July 3rd – Day 11
Woke up at stonerrock.com headquarters, remembering one of
the last things Trini said to me, being “Get the hell
out of the truck. There’s a bed in the house for you
to sleep in. If you wake up with a guy next to you, that’s
because it’s his bed, and he lives here, and he’s
our brother”. So I woke up in an $1800 comfortable as
fuck bed feeling like a distillery and reeking of cigs. Flea
and I hit Taco Smell early, and then made a feeble attempt
to walk to the only close body of water…the nearest
public pool. Instead my feet started hurting like motherfuckers
(I think they were in shock due to wearing platforms every
day for two months). So I turned the fuck around, Pissing
Flea off in the process, and headed back to the Black Magic
Circle (Mark’s band), Dixie Witch, Unida bar-b-que and
Jim Beam at 4:00 pm. We offed one bottle of Beam and started
on another, along with an assload of Pabst Blue Ribbon while
watching an awesome stoner rock DVD comp featuring High on
Fire, Drunk Horse, Lost Goat, and lots of other bands I need
to learn about really fucking fast. Mike (drummer for Unida)
manned the grill the entire time. I was really embarrassed
that the Texans let the Californians take over. What the fuck?
Insert 2509 “The Witch & John Garcia” , insert
2530 “The Californians Man the Grill”
I was already wasted way before the show even started, and
could tell it was going to be one of those nights. The gig
was at the Ash Street Saloon in downtown Portland. The crowd
was rocking the fuck out until the vocals went out on the
very last song. If you haven’t been to Portland, it’s
a mini-Austin in the making. I couldn’t help but notice
that the Witch was gaining the unanimous respect of the crowd,
and the other rockers as well. And now it looks like it’s
not really John Garcia’s b-day, he’s just pulling
a road trick for free shots. The Witch and Unida have gotten
their collective grooves on. They were totally in sync and
rocking out together. We’ve been partying our collective
asses off with the band that seems like family now. I partied
with Arthur (guitar / Unida) and Paul in this really weird
room upstairs that you got into by climbing under this brick
Alice in Wonderland style mini-archway. Once you managed that,
you found yourself in a small room with one low couch, hip
hop blasting, and illuminated only by blacklight. It was definitely
the room where you went to get your freak on.
Paul – You know what Ace would do? When they told him
to quit drinking…he would drink some more and get in
his car and wreck it.
W – No that’s what you would do. |
