Call me Ishmael

Posted by Dave (thesis paragraph by Jamie)

Holy crap, where do I start?
Friday night in Hayden, Idaho with the Enigma (YAY!) did, in fact, rock balls. There was an incredible turn out for the show, including a lot of old friends (my friends in particular, I grew up there). Watching the Enigma was pretty ridiculous. I mean, the guy hammers a spike into his nasal cavity! Absurd…

The next night, after fond farewells to the Muldoon family, followed by a very hot drive across Eastern Washington, we found ourselves in the ridiculously muggy Richland, one third of the Tri-Cities, where we played at Ray’s Golden (cow) Lion, which is apparently the place to go if you’re (almost) in high school and REALLY drunk. We played there with the band Mister Orange, and they were great, and we’ll be playing with them again, hopefully in the Tri-Cities as well as right here in the Rose City (run on sentence, run on yeah). After the Richland show, with morale at a lovely high point, we packed into the Aremis and headed towards Seattle before we found a rest stop and called it a night.

The next morning, we found ourselves in Seattle’s U-District among Seattle’s finest collection of transvestites and junkies, waiting to play an acoustic set at Sureshot, a local coffee shop. We arrive, and meet the lead singer for Pirex (pronounced like the cookware), a local Seattle band. She proceeds to tell us that our booking agent led her to believe that we’re an acoustic band (cue decline in morale), and that we play quiet shows in coffee shops all the time. Turns out, we’re sort of loud and electric. Okay, we’re EXACTLY loud and electric.

SO, during our afternoon show (with three people in attendance) Rayn’s voice decides to give out, and I don’t mean she cracked a few notes, I mean her voice gave out, as in no speaking voice or anything. So that was pretty much horrible (cue significant drop in morale). We had to stop three songs into the set. After watching Pirex play and paying for our coffee (yes, we had to pay for it), we began our drive to Olympia.

After an afternoon doing whatever we can to raise spirits, as well as a lengthy debate over where to sleep for the night (the options being we either go to an RV park and play Guitar Hero until late, or go to a rest area and spend the money we would have otherwise spent on an RV park and get some dinner (we chose the latter)) we found ourselves in Olympia trying to find some Aloe Vera gel for Rayn to chug (we heard that’s really good for the throat) so we can figure out if we’re playing a show or not. We do, and it’s awesome, but, with the next two days off, we decide to head back to Portland for some r & r, especially for Rayn. So with our heads hung pretty low, we came home for two days.

Thursday, we headed back out on the road. Everybody felt much better after a couple days of rest, and our collective morale was back up to normal. Games of Guitar Hero Surfing (for those of you who can’t infer, it’s playing Guitar Hero while standing in the bus that is driving down the freeway at 55mph. For those of you who don’t know what infer means, stop reading this and go read a book), two hours, one hundred and nine miles, and a FULL TANK of gas later, we discovered that perhaps the Aremis is not doing so well. 2.5 miles to the gallon isn’t exactly an improvement.

So we eventually get to Lakewood, WA.

To make a long and painful story short, Lakewood was a veritable ghost town. The bartender pours the weakest drinks this side of the Mississippi, and there were literally two people that didn’t work there in attendance. So, with no money left and no gas in the tank, we cancel our show in Yakima the next night, and head back to Portland. Along the way to Portland, after our gas pedal breaks only five f-ing miles from Vancouver,(sit down if you’re not already) Joaquin announces that he is done with the tour.
That’s right, done.

So that sucks. A lot.
We called our old bass player, Casey, who lives in Eugene, and asked him if he would play our Eugene show with us on Sunday, which is today. He’s going to do it, and we’ve decided that after tonight’s show, we move on to the next chapter in the life of LTS.

We’re going to finish the tour as a four piece band.

Jamie is currently learning the bass parts, and he sounds amazing, to nobody’s surprise.

The Aremis will be taking the rest of the year off, and undergoing major surgery (a new propane or diesel engine) before next summer’s tour. We’re going to rent a trailer and hitch it up to my SUV for the rest of the dates in the Bay Area and Southern/Central Oregon.

It’s easy to be a band when everything is easy, when everything is handed to you. This isn’t the hardest thing we’ve had to deal with, and this isn’t the lowest point we’ve had to live through, but it’s close. L
Losing Casey in the first place made the remaining four of us all the closer, and the hardships we’ve endured thus far have helped us to realize what is important. We’ll trek on and we’ll be all the stronger for it. It’s not an end, just an end to a chapter we thought would be thicker. We’ll try and keep this sucker updated more often, as best as we can. Send us some love if you’ve got any to spare, we can use it about now.