Just Originals And Return Shows

How do you write songs for people who have never heard you before? I enjoyed performing live original music for people who I never met. Being the touring independent band in a strange town in front of a crowd of strangers is very challenging. We were determined to never play cover songs. We often played four hour shows without a single cover! These experiences shaped my song writing. That is how I came up with songs like “Who Stole my Lighter”, “We brake for Hotties”, “the Orgy Song” and “Little Baby don’t spark the Doobie Until your Daddy Come Home” These songs got people who never heard us before singing along. Crazy between song antics had them laughing and engaged. The pace of the shows was high energy and in your face. We worked extremely hard to make sure there was never a dull moment. People felt that if they left early, they might miss something big. Writing songs that stick in your head was my specialty. Mike Mehsikomer is a master at between song banter. Together we loved the challenge of drawing strangers into our camp. Once they experienced the show they were hooked.

    Booking return shows was much easier. The return shows were better attended. We learned that we could play the same venue four to six times a year and we planned our tours around that timeline. The pay increased for return shows, and we were usually invited to an after-bar party that included a place to stay. We had more income and decreased expenses. However, we are still talking about $500 and a free pizza. Ultimately, we developed a regular route from Minneapolis to Los Angeles that we would travel two to three times a year. We would start with a tour kick off party in Minneapolis at a club like The Fine Line, The Cabooze or The Red Sea, usually on a Tuesday or Wednesday. Thursday night we would play Des Moines or Omaha. Friday night would be Lincoln. Saturday night we would play Kearney. Then on Sunday we would travel to the Boulder area to stay with our friends the Crazed Individuals, Jimmy, Jake and Jed. The Crazed Individuals were a well-established Boulder band that had a whole band lifestyle including a band house. They did everything together in that house. We could practice there, prepare meals for each other, throw raging parties and sometimes we would even sleep there. It was a great place to be a band guy.  We would spend about a week based out of the Crazed house playing venues in Denver, Fort Collins, Boulder, Colorado Springs etc. At the end of that week the tour would continue. We would play Friday night in Trinidad, Co and Saturday night in Albuquerque. We would play a Sunday and Monday evenings Acoustic show at a Coffee shop in Flagstaff. Tuesday we would drive to Phoenix and stay with friends and promote the Thursday night show. Friday morning, we would haul ass to LA. There we would spend about ten days Couch surfing and playing shows all over the Metro. There are endless opportunities to play on the Westcoast. We always had one big show on Sunset Boulevard that we would promote hard. Then we would turn around and play at all the same venues on our way back to Minneapolis. The return show was twice as glorious. They venues would say “Straight off a tour to Hollywood, CA”. We would bust into those familiar originals and people would be singing along with the very words I wrote. It was out of this world. You could spend a million dollars and never have a vacation so amazing. We were livin’ the dream with that rockstar glow.