last Wednesday ( I think) - October 14

There is so much to write about. But instead of trying to do a massive recap, I'll tell my favorite story from the week. It's a bit long, but worth it. Trust me. This is great story. I think it was a Thursday. And, rather than creating some interesting intro about Valencia, Spain, what it looked like and what it felt like. I'll just cut right to the chase--we played at a mall. And no, not some cool bar calling itself "the mall" in an attempt to be ironic. Just a plain, regular mall. This is a Balmorhea first.

Nothing was more funny to me though than the sound of Robs voice and the disgust it carried when we rounded the corner and he said "We're playing at a mall." However, we were also playing at a mall that we could not park at. Had it not been for careful suspicion, we could've found ourself in Mike's worst nightmare (professed to us once, so know this re-telling is void of hyperbole): driving our huge 9-seater van down a tiny driveway only to reach the mouth of a parking garage too short and getting wedged in. Stuck. Trapped. That's his nightmare. Though, I can't blame him. Upon realizing that we were about a foot and half too tall, he then had to direct the cars to move out of the way before backing out of the long tiny driveway.

This is not the first time this has happened to him.

Rewind to Bilbao, Spain, where we made the careless mistake of leaving him along to park the van, while we set up. After 15-20 minutes had passed and still no Mike, we were vaguely prepared for the story he told after finally walking through the door: He drove all the way down a small driveway to the garage and didn't fit, but this time there was a line of cars trailing behind him. After a pleading motion for them to backup failed, he exited the vehicle, and tried to yell in some sort of English-Spanish combo that the van was "Too tall, muy largo! Muy largo!" He says traffic was backed up as far as he could see, up the hill to the horizon. oh gosh.

Back to Valencia. We drive up onto the walk way and wind up parking in a giant pit of mud. gross. We practically run over this poor flowering bush as it's on the only part of sturdy land available beside the squishy slimy mud. It's probably safe to say it was the most careful load out, making trips carrying things inside.

So there we are, with all our gear crammed into this glass elevator in the center of a Spanish mall. And no one's at the venue. great. I wander around and look at things I can't afford before wandering into a Kebap restaurant and ordering a salad. I almost didn't , knowing that once I sat down, people would show up and we'd have to load in. And of course, with cinematic timing, I sat down, he brought my food and then venue owner exited the elevator. excrement.

So I scarf down this salad with un-unprecedented speed, pause to load some gear, and then return to the scarfing. Then all of a sudden we're leaving the venue and wandering around. I never fully understood what occurred. Something about the police coming, the venue owner needing to show something, and pretending we were just storing gear. well, alright. So we left.

We take off walking and stop at a gelato cafe. Suddenly the whole band has a sweet tooth. Everyone orders some kind of ridiculous desert, the next more extravagant than the last. Rob's was the fanciest, some kind of chocolate gelato treat in a milkshake-like glass, topped with a syrup and two protruding cylindrical cookie things ( I don't know what they were I didn't taste it). But for some reason, Mike's was the most amusing to me: a huge waffle topped with mint chocolate chip ice cram. Perhaps the amusement was hightened after remembering his repremand at Andrew for clearly spoiling his dinner by snacking on french fries at the kebap place.

This is getting so long and I haven't even gotten to the show. I'll try and pick up the pace. So we get back and the cops are gone so we set up and sound check and discover that there are no mics or mic cables and somehow our mixing board is tied into the dj console. cool. We position ourselves half on, half off of the stage because we are big and it is small and start crossing our fingers as we have to bypass our DI Boxes and plug directly into this board. And somehow, it worked! Andrew in all his magic made it work. After a hearty dinner of traditional spanish piaya (I butchered that, someone correct me), Andrew played the first ever instrumental Meryll set. And you can attribute it 100% to the lack of a microphone. I'm still unsure as to why there was a stage, and a sound system and a show without a microphone.

I also never mentioned that this is a swanky bar. There are two giant disco balls, each with a 2 foot radius. It is dimly lit, save for the neon colored lights spread about the walls, and the four flat screen TV's showing some flashy MTV style video on repeat with one too many dutch angles, promoting their OWN club. This is also a Balmorhea first.

But anyway, we play the set and everything turns out fine. Our promoter and the owner were extremely nice. The bought us a great multi-course dinner, complete with 2 bottles of wine and paid us extra, even though they lost money. We even got an encore that went really well. We sold some merch and did a quick quick load out. Then we went back to the fancy hotel they bought for us and slept our little hearts out. Slept late. Really late. As in 10 till noon late (it's amazing what kind of sleep happens when you draw down these metal window shades that everyone in spain seems to have). All rested up for another 7 hour drive in the van...