AA GOES TO CHURCH.

                Our Monday night was spent in the port city of Vigo, Spain.  It reminds me a little of San Francisco.  The narrow streets, extremely steep hills, and confusing traffic patterns are not only part of the resemblance, but they are also a huge source of frustration for Marco as he tries to navigate them with our Sprinter.  Marco finally just parks it on a curb (this seems to be a common practice in Europe) between the club and our hotel, which are conveniently only a block away from each other. 

                The bed and breakfast that we are staying at isn’t open when we get there and neither is the club.  In fact, nothing is open.  The whole block seems to be shut down.  Most spaces are occupied by bars that won’t open until later in the evening.  I’ve learned that Spaniards are even more of night owls than I had always thought.  The cities really don’t come alive until well into the evening.  I walked around a little bit, trying to get to higher ground for better views of the harbor until the club opened.

                Load in was gruesome.  Due to the narrow street situation we had to carry our gear up a steep hill for a city block and then up a flight of stairs into the club.  My speaker cabinet is the size of a refrigerator and the handle placement makes it twice as awkward than one.  It’s like wrestling with a grizzly bear every night.  We setup, sound checked, had a few beers, had some dinner, and then I walked down to the bed and breakfast to relax for a bit.

                When it was time for the show I walked back to the club and saw that we were going to be playing to what was probably the smallest group of the tour.  It was about as many people as we played to in Bilbao, but the room was much smaller so it at least felt better.  I looked around and guys had on shirts of bands that we liked on them.  I saw shirts from Drive by Truckers, Marah, and a few others.  It ended up being such a fun night!  The people that were there were so much fun.  They sang along, they danced, they requested songs, and overall just had such a great energy about them.  After the show I think almost every person bought a shirt and got us to sign it.  We took pictures and hung out.  It was so much fun.  I would rather play to small groups that really appreciate what we are doing than play to a larger group that doesn’t care.

                The next day we only had a two hour drive to A Coruña so we stopped on the way in Santiago de Compostela.  It’s a college town that also happens to have a giant cathedral that is said to house the remains of St. James (brother of Jesus/noted Muslim killer).  It was beautiful.  I took a lot of really bad pictures like a typical tourist as we walked all around the grounds and went into the cathedral.  The surrounding area had a lot of small seafood restaurants that had tank brimming with shellfish of all kinds.  Is it culturally insensitive to say that this interested me far more than the church? We killed about two hours and no one burst into flames upon entering the church.  I found some scaffolding and did some pull ups.  Not too shabby I suppose. Church was never my thing.

                After getting our culture for the day we finished our drive to A Coruña.  It’s a beautiful town that forms a semi circle around a bay.  In the center is a sandy beach and as you get closer to the open ocean the shoreline becomes more rocky and steep.  Our hotel is right on the bay by the western side of the sandy beach.  Even with our detour to see good old St. James we still had about two hours to kill before going to the club.  I should have gone running, but I just relaxed instead.

                A scary looking dude in a Johnny Cash shirt greeted us when we arrived.  His English is relatively good and he asks if we want something to drink.  When I ask for a coffee he starts laughing and giving me shit saying “This is rock and roll club, man.  No coffee… no chips…. No candy….  Hahaha” Well fuck it then; I guess I’ll have a beer.  After sound check he says if I like coffee then he has something for us.  He pulls out this big corked glass bottle with a thick black liquid in it that was obviously not bought in a store.  He tells us “This is some illegal shit man….”  What it turned out to be was a type of moonshine made from coffee.  He says it’s best to sip it and that it’s the worst hangover you can ever imagine.  I believe it.  The one tiny glass was not only sweet enough to make you want to immediately brush your teeth, but it was enough to make you instantly buzzed and warm all over.

                The promoter took us to dinner at a hamburger place.  I was excited to get some burgers over here since every night we have been in Spain chorizo has been on the menu.  I ordered the combination that read: hamberguesas, huevos, patatas, y ensalada.  I figured it would be two regular hamburgers, two eggs, French fries and a salad.  What I got was two hamburger patties (no bun), with two eggs, French fries, and lettuce, onion, and tomato on the side.  It was an odd combination, but it was good.  Afterwards, the promoter took us to a place that was definitely a gay bar for coffee.  No one in American Aquarium is homophobic at all so we had a good time, but you can only imagine how badly we stood out and some of the looks we got.  I know enough Spanish to know that we were the topic of conversation for everyone at the bar.

                The show was similar to the night before.  Small crowd, great people, and this was the second night in a row that people were singing along to new songs that you can only find on youtube.  One thing lots of people don’t realize is how good the bands view of is the crowd from onstage.  We can see a lot depending on the lighting and the size of the place.  Often times we are watching the crowd just as much as the crowd is watching us.  For whatever reason sometimes people will try to sing along when they obviously don’t know the words or will try to pick up on the chorus by the end of the song, but that was not the case this time.  Many of these people were actually singing songs that won’t be released until later this year.  It’s a good feeling.

                After the show I had some more of the coffee moonshine and beer until we went back to our hotel and went to bed.  I planned on getting up early and going for a run on the beach, but I stayed up too late and decided to sleep in instead.  So much for the beautiful scenery…  Next Blog post: Dear God I’m Getting Fat.