Monday, August 4, 2008

Preparing in Portland, more shows, more interviews

We (us and Buzz, she was pleased to get out of the car but actually seemed like she could have kept going) settled in at Ryan's gallery/living space in the Pearl District of Portland. On Saturday, Ryan's friend Sarah came over and showed Emily where the Trader Joe's in the area is, very important for cheap living. We'd love to eat out every meal at Portland's fine restaurants, but we might not make it to October with the band.

Blind Pilot had their second of three shows that weekend on Saturday at the "How Oregon Are You?" party, a fundraiser for the nonprofit p:ear, which mentors homeless youth in Portland. Emily easily passed through the "border patrol" and received a green sticker for being born in Oregon. Max's 24 hours in Portland earned him the dreaded orange sticker. Although we did not know any of the answers to the Oregon trivia questions, we did get to sample some tasty Oregon microbrews and discuss lighting for future shows. Although the band looks cool being backlit by porch lights, we are glad we brought a DIY lighting kit for future shows.

After waking up Sunday, we recuperated from the night before with some yummy breakfast sandwiches courtesy of Sarah and her roommate Ethan in their apartment overlooking the the Portland's Union Station. Blind Pilot's third and final show of the weekend was at Ron Tom's on E. Burnside. A bit before 6pm, Ryan and Israel headed out to the show and we jumped into the Subaru to follow them but discovered that our car battery was dead. Perhaps having the power inverter plugged in while we weren't using the car was not a smart move. We managed to jump start the car, park near where we thought the venue was, relized we were three blocks away and returned to move the car and found that the short drive was not enough to charge up the battery. We called AAA (the best investment one can buy before a long road trip) and a we were soon visited by AAA's version of Car Talk's Click and Clack, or as they soon proved to be: the most helpful battery truck team ever. They gave us the sad news that we needed a new battery for the car but then proceeded to tell us where we could buy one that would be cheaper than AAA. We made a stop at a nearby Fred Meyer where Max navigated the customer service lines three times in order to return our dead battery, buy a new one and then return the tools that he purchased as we had left our tool set at Ryan's. We made it back in time to Ron Tom's to see some of the opening band and made a quick detour to the B-side next door for a PBR and a microwave corndog. Yum. The crowd at Ron Tom's was at capacity, so Max had to be extra careful to not trip over any excited fans as he tested out the low light capabilities of the camera. Although dark, the footage still looked good, and the band concurred that the lighting was particularly low at that venue.

After the show, we returned to Ryan's to prep for the next day. The band members were all going to be working at their day jobs for the next few days and Luke was heading down to Astoria to finish building the bike trailer for his upright bass. We have lots on interviews ahead of us and plenty of work to do.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just saw your links to your photos. They are great!