Highlights, Recaps

Thought I'd post some highlights of things I never wrote about. Here goes:

Bilbao: Show in building with strange set up. On stage monitor mix = house speaker mix. awesome. by awesome I mean, sort of ridiculous. Six speakers placed in front, beside and behind the crowd. Speakers in the back of the room are the loudest. ?! Slept in a hostal and possibly frightened high-school aged Canadian kid randomly sharing the room.

Madrid: Awesome city. Huge for Spain. About 5 million people. Played in a club that followed the trend of existing in a residential area. Had an awesome city centre that we only got to see from the van window. Our promoter was awesome. So so nice. Met up with Mike and Rob's friend Paul, who'd join us for a few days. Hung out with Elizabeth Griffin (!) a long way from home. Slept in the promoters' house. Loved the kindness of strangers.

Portugal: Reminded me of Mexico in a lot of ways. City isn't very built up. Small city center full of older looking buildings. Played in an awesome theatre with a real piano.(!) Did a quieter set, played new unreleased songs. Got a double encore. Sold a lot of merch. I got reprimanded in the form of stern snaps for crawling trough the railing of the building to avoid walking 70 feet around it all.

Don Benito: played in the rival venue to the place we performed at last time. Met a crazy lady who kept running up and rapidly yelling things at us in Spanish. no shame. She once approached me and said "toca ahora, or (made vicious slapping motions)." Then she hugged me before I had a chance to formulate some type of Spanish retort. In her craziness, she: sat down in the van with us; hopped on stage in my face as I was preparing to play; almost used Mike's guitar to help her stand up; and tried to poke around on Rob's piano until he scolded her. What the hell. Anyway, fun show. Ate lots of pizza. But my favorite part is that we slept in an old HUGE former bording school. SUPER creepy at night. Travis, Nicole and I went exploring all of the 5 floors in the dark, trying to freak ourselves out. so fun!

Castellon: small venue. Squeezed on stage. Unplugged our instruments and played encore standing in a circle in the middle of the small crowd. Pretty awesome. Great dinner with promoter after the show. Almost died of hunger because we had to wait till after the show.