Get My Canteen Filled

I won't pretend that this song had nothing to do with our visit to Moab - what's a Paul & Marianne international holiday without a bit of a Bright Eyes pilgrimage, after all? Still, Moab turned out to be close to a whole lot of cool stuff and perfectly in line with our route through Utah, so even without the Conor-ness it would've been crazy not to stop by.

Before heading into town, we made a slight detour on the outskirts - a bit of clever research on Paul's part uncovered Matrimony Spring, a free-flowing spring that runs out of the cliffs near the junction of the 128 and the 192. The legend of the spring goes that all who drink from it will one day return to Moab, and locals and visitors alike are known to fill their canteens here (as the song suggests).

Of course, we had to have a sip:

I wonder if the mystical prophesy of the spring is cancelled out if you drink the water out of a Coca Cola branded bottle? And yes, I am redder than a beetroot and wearing gym shorts - it's hot in the desert! Don't judge me, dammit!

Also, there happen to be dinosaur tracks embedded in the rocks around the spring. Typical, Utah, typical!

After getting de-deserted, we hit up the town's microbrewery for some dinner.

Don't let those Mormons fool you - the beer (and the food) we've had in Utah so far has been excellent!

 And finally a moonlit stroll and relax on the grass outside our hotel, with the La Sal mountains watching over us.

We spent the morning browsing around Moab's tiny town centre. The town is a hub for all sorts of adventure tourism in the surrounding national parks, so much of downtown is dedicated to jeep/quad bike/bmx/whitewater raft/kayak/whatever-else-you-can-ride-in-the-wilderness hire. There are a few nice cafes though, and a rock shop and a bookstore.

Breakfast at The Love Muffin.

Of course, the obligatory rock/geode/crystal/fossil shop.

As well as exploring the main street, we took a little back road to see what we could find in the hills behind the town. The valley is pretty incredible - the town itself is like a little green oasis in the middle of the desert, and you can order a soy latte on Main St one minute and be standing on a deserted river bank, surrounded by red cliffs, the next:

A pretty nice place to enjoy a soy latte, if you're so inclined.

After a final look out over the valley and the town, it was time to hit the road. Moab, I trust we'll see you and your rugged cliffs and delicious microbrews again!

More Bright Eyes and some crazy weather

Before I say anything further, I should tell you that I'm writing this blog post from the sky! I'm currently on a plane to New York, and they have internet up here! Isn't technology (and the things airlines will cook up to charge you for) amazing? Before I found myself cruising at altitude on facebook though, we did some epic driving, saw some bands and some baseball, experienced some extremely diverse weather conditions, crossed a couple of state lines, and ate some pie. Pretty much a standard weekend here!

First up, a trip to Bend, OR, to see Bright Eyes, Death Cab for Cutie, and Jenny & Johhny. Bend is east of Corvallis, on the other side of the Cascades, but really, who thinks twice about crossing a mountain range in May? It's practically high summer!

Fortunately for our musical plans, it wasn't the daytime eastward crossing that was the problem and we made it to Bend with time enough for these for pre-show dinner:

 

Definitely up there with the best burgers of the trip, from the Pilot Butte drive in restaurant. 

Raccoon investigates

After sustenance, on to the show! First up, the very lovely Jenny & Johnny:

So great to hear the very lovely Jenny Lewis in the flesh again, and after seeing it played live I'm excited to spend some quality time listening to their album.

Next up, Bright Eyes. I was going to try to keep my baser instincts at bay here, but what the hell - here are a bunch of photos of Conor, making some weird hand gestures and being a hot genius:

Finally, Death Cab for Cutie as the sun went down:

Chris Walla has gone and got himself a very adult haircut

The world's best bass player, too rockin' to be in focus

Now, cast your mind back a few paragraphs and recall how I said it wasn't the daytime crossing of the Cascades that was the problem. What was the problem? The problem was that we got into our car at 10 pm, expecting that we'd be able to make the three hour drive home, back through the pass and the forest, with little more than a bit of added caution for wandering elk that might stray onto the highway. Mother nature, forgive us our presumptions! About half an hour into the trip, as the road started to climb, it started snowing, which sounds all very romantic except that it turns out that a light smattering of picturesque snow quite quickly turns into zero visibility and icy, icy roads. Who'd've thought, right? Thoughts of imminent mortal injury preoccupied me so I didn't take any pictures, but I wish I had. If we hadn't been sliding along in a little metal death box, it would have been easy to say that it was insanely, sublimely beautiful.

Because we really did want to live to see the Mariners play the Yankees the following day (I'm flashing forward here, but WORTH IT!), we made a slippery u-turn and fled back to lower ground. Let me tell you, all the motels within 30 miles of the bottom of the pass were making a killing on Friday night, and we were lucky to score the very last room at a Super 8 in Redmond, wherever that is. A few hours of restless sleep later, we were apprehensive but eager to get back on the road - originally, we had planned to be up early in Corvallis so we could drive to Seattle for lunch time, and here we were, stranded 3 hours away from home, with 8 hours of driving and possibly unpassable roads between us and our final destination. Still, better than falling off the side of a mountain, so we decided to suck it up and get some breakfast while waiting for news of the highway. No need to go hungry, after all!

 Coffee - no one's going anywhere without it

 Will we have to live in this diner in the town of Sisters forever?

If we do, it is not altogether a bad thing.

Things tend to look more positive after hash browns, and the online traffic cameras seemed to suggest that the road had been plowed already, so we decided to brave the drive. This time, I remembered to take pictures.

Look at this wintery madness!

Raccoon cam

I must tip my cap to the Oregon Department of Transportation, or whoever takes care of such things, as by 8:30 am, the highway had already been cleared and gritted and was looking quite different to the night before! Speaking of the night before - we were very relieved to discover that we turned around when we did,  because we were just about to hit quite a big slope that I really don't think we could've safely navigated during the storm. Look at it though - a bit hair-raising, but so beautiful:



Happy to report that we made it back safe and sound!

 Back on dryer, greener ground

The first town on the west side of the mountains is called Sweet Home - I think I now understand why!

Epic Road Trip of Awesome: Arcata

What's the one saving grace to leaving Portland at 7 am after a late night?

At 7 am, there's no line at Voodoo Doughnut - on that note, why does Sydney not have a 24 vegan doughnut shop? Oh that's right, because it sucks. Ha!

That would be two Old Dirty Bastards, a Dirt Doughnut and a Lemon Crueller. Don't judge, it was a long drive! Incidentally, there was a tour bus that looked rather like the Bright Eyes bus parked outside. If they can have breakfast doughnuts on tour, so can we!

 

After a bunch of hours in the car, look where we found ourselves!

In order to shorten the following day's drive so Paul could make it back in time for class in the afternoon, we stayed in Crescent City, which is about 90 minutes north of Arcata. After a quick nap at our hotel, it was back into the car for the drive to the show, along the coast and through some staggeringly beautiful redwood forest.

We met some fellow lookout point picture-takers, who kindly captured this touching snap of us freezing our butts off on a cliff next to the ocean

There is some weird stuff by the side of the highway

And now to more Conor-swooning! The show was at the Arcata Community Centre, which is basically a tiny gym in the middle of a town of 15,000 people. The show wasn't sold out, and when we arrived at the venue about 40 minutes before doors opened, there were six other over-keen losers hanging out the front and that was it. Pretty different to the epic, multi-block queue the night before! One thing I will tell you for free - if you want to have an amazing, intimate experience seeing your favourite band, try to arrange for it to be in a glorified high school gym in the middle of nowhere!

Like all good fans who take themselves too seriously, we discussed our second night strategy after the Portland show - on the one hand, it had been great to be at the front, but it is always a bit tiring and stressful to line up for hours and then hold onto your spot on the barrier for even more hours before the show actually starts. We decided to take it a bit easier it Arcata, no queuing, and just see where we ended up, and we were rewarded for our laziness by grabbing a spot even closer to the band than we'd been the previous night. Bless small towns and their lack of interest in popular music!

Waiting waiting waiting

Of course, they did not disappoint. Considering their enormous back catalogue, I was prepared to hear the same set list again - it seems like a bit of a tall order to rehearse that many songs with a touring band! On that count though, they completely exceeded my expectations. The set was, I would guess, at least half songs they didn't play the previous night, and the ones that they did play again I was just glad to hear a second time (Poison Oak!).

On the way to the show, we dared to dream about old, obscure songs we really wanted to hear and we both agreed that Going for the Gold was number one on that list, but we agreed it was SO not going to happen. You can imagine then, that we both nearly keeled over and died when Conor started playing it. I can't believe we got to see that live!! I DIE OF HAPPY! Even better, Paul recorded it, so we can relive it over and over:



Unfortunately the songs with the full band were just too much for my poor camera's tiny microphone, so they didn't come out too well. Paul did get an even better video of First Day of My Life though, which was another sweet treat from Sunday night's set:



What a great show! Allow me to get a little soppy for a second when I say that Bright Eyes have really shaped and followed the course of my adult life in the way no other band has. There are so few bands from my late adolescence that haven't fallen by the wayside or been relegated to the late-night nostalgia rotation (and this is speaking as a latecomer to Bright Eyes - I think they might've already been four albums in by the time I got into them). This must be because their music continues to grow and change, and unbelievably, after nine albums (NINE! I've never counted before), they continue to engage my ears and my brain more and more.

As a performer, Conor has really changed too - there was no sign of the awkward, angry-looking weirdo I saw when they toured Australia back in 2005 (although that was awesome in its own way, don't get me wrong!). The band seem to have a great time on stage, and Conor is positively chatty these days compared to his old on-stage self. With all the dancing, bantering and getting down into the crowd (we may have brushed hands - I'm blushing just thinking of it!), their whole show is a bit of an epic lovefest! I'm so grateful to have heard them play twice this weekend - my ears are still ringing and still I can't believe that really happened. Whichever cosmic forces lined that up for me, I salute you!

Epic Road Trip of Awesome: Portland

It isn't really fair to call this a Portland post - we had a lazy Saturday morning of browsing around downtown Seattle, so by the time we made it back to Portland it was late afternoon, leaving us only a short window for pre-show snacking before it was time to hit the queue like over-excited 15 year olds for Bright Eyes at the Crystal Ballroom. If you're only going to fit in one meal in Portland though, it may as well be a Deluxe Grilled Cheese at Dot's Cafe, one of Portland's many dark and dingey late-night bar/diner/cafe establishments (it is apparently too cool to have a website, so you're just have to imagine us eating our lunch in a booth in the dark):

 

It's the herbed cream cheese that does it

Filled with delicious cheese, it was time to head to the show. Lucky we got there a couple of hours early, as the line was almost around the block when we joined it. 

 

I won't crap on too much about Bright Eyes - you all know that they are my favouritest favouritest band, and I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that I've never been happier to queue up for two hours in the cold to get a good spot as I was on Saturday night. Portland was kind to us and even held off on the rain while we waited.

 

 The Crystal Ballroom was originally opened as a Cotillion Hall in 1914, and still has many glorious fixtures of the era (including floors that shake terrifyingly when the room is full of excited kids - according to Wikipedia this is because of its sprung flooring, which is designed to give more bounce for ballroom dancing. Who'd've thunk?). The chandelier, decorative cornices and murals on the walls were a great distraction while we waited through the total yawnfest of a support band.

And then to the main event - 

 

Needless to say, they were completely amazing. The new album really lends itself to a huge, full-band sound, and with the usual suspects as well as a second drummer and second keyboardist in tow, the sound was massive. My ears may not ever recover! 

 

 

Best of all though, the two and a half hour long set included about half, maybe more, of the new album and a ton of old stuff, including a few songs off Fevers and Mirrors that I never thought would see the light of day, and a couple of great b-sides. I nearly weed my pants when they played The Trees Get Wheeled Away, and Poison Oak, which is one of my all-time favourites, almost reduced the whole theatre to grateful tears.

We had a great spot so we took a lot of photos. I may put them all up in a set on flickr, but for now here are a couple more for your delectation (Maddy, I suspect you'll be the only one interested in more pics!):

One way to stave off post-amazing band depression is to make sure you have tickets to the show the following night, and that's exactly what we did. We headed straight to bed because the next morning we had to be up early for the long, long drive to Arcata, CA for the next leg of the trip and... more Bright Eyes!