JudiGras and Ardy

Thursday night was JudiGras at Chillkoots- basically a sort of costume party/Mardi Gras party with lots of general debauchery. There was a dancing pole set up right in front of Matt which the band enjoyed. It was all great while the hot slinky dancers were sliding up and down on it, but eventually they disappeared and the general population starting swinging around on it. At one point, a big boned local gal came flying around at about 150 mph (with about 200 ft pounds of moment) and knocked Matt's mic stand into his face and nearly took out his front teeth. He was OK, but looked especially handsome with a big fat lip for the next set. After that, they had the 'tattoo closest to your crack' contest, and all these drunk girls were stumbling around the stage showing off their lower back tattoos. Honestly, whenever I see these butt-crack tattos on girls, I always do a double take, 'cause at first it looks like a bunch of hair. Maybe I need new glasses. Well, anyway, the girls stepped all over Matt's guitar effects pedal board and ripped out cords and messed it up, leading to delays in starting the next set. Then my Bass amplifier started to crackle and die, along with weird feedback problems. The rig that I'm using here belongs to 'Koots, and dates to about 1985- not the best stuff I've ever played. Good thing was it was just a switch and all is ok now.

Next came the show your boobs contest- Ryan's favorite. Tell you what, since joining EastonAshe, I've been able to save alot of money by canceling my porn subscriptions! Yikes. Well, seems like half the girls at JudiGras suddenly became all shy- not much showing, unless I missed it, which is VERY possible. Seems like at our regular gigs at Harolds and other local places, it's all skin all the time, but when it's time to win a contest, our ladies get all modest.

Additionally, the band dressed up in these nutty costumes and looked pretty out there too. I'll add pics later on.

PART TWO: Ardy Hendrickson is my Mom's best friend nearly her whole life, and they've shared many colorful times over many years. Of course, because of this, Ardy has been a fixture throughout my life as well. She's a great and beautiful person and is so easy to have around. She also has the best sense of humor of anyone one I know. She and my mom used to come out to my gigs (at Big Jim's in Arnott) back when I was playing in the BUCKSHOT Band in the late '80s

Like anyone, Ardy has seen her share of ups and downs over the years, but can always tell the stories with a hilarious spin. She's also very active in church and takes her involvement in it seriously.

It just so happened that Ardy was going to be in Alaska visting family at this same time that I'm up here! We discussed them coming to a show at 'Koots to see the band, but they were going to be traveling alot so it was kinda up in the air. Ardy said they would try to make it out though between road trips. Of course JudiGras wouldn't probably be the best night to come, but I had forgotten about all that at the time.....

So there I am, in this ridiculous black coat/skull cap/sunglasses surrounded by slutty dancing girls, butt crack tattoos, pierced nipples, about 500 drunk twenty-somethings, and a generally foul mouthed master of ceremonies in a skin tight silver glitter outfit- and I look out into the crowd and faintly make out a familiar face. OH GOD NO! NOT TONIGHT!!

Yep, there was Ardy with her sister and brother in law. Just in time for the butt crack contest. I was mortified. But of course happy to see her just the same. Like everyone, they must have paid the $12 cover charge and wound through the drunken maze of Chilkoot Charlies to find EastonAshe in all of our JudiGras glory. I introduced them to Geoff, our drummer who was wearing his giant yellow tele-tubbie costume (with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth). I shared with Ardy my tip of stuffing a piece of cocktail napkin in one's ears as earplugs which she did.

It's not that Ardy was born yesterday, but I was a little embarrassed (or is that em-bare-assed) that this was her first and likely last impression of our quaint little band! However, in the end, I think all had a good time (especially the brother-in-law!) and I can already hear her telling the story in her famously funny renditions! Forget Denali, sweetheart, this is the REAL Alaskan experience!!

Alaska Stories and People

EastonAshe played our first two shows at Chilkoots- Tuesday and Wednesday were light crowds, and alot depends on the weather here. If it's a nice sunny day, people tend to be out doing things and not hanging out at the club as much as if its a cloudy, cool or rainy day. Tonight is "JudiGras" at 'koots; a sort of MardiGras party. We all got costumes to wear- I have some kind of Goth/fetish robe with rings and hooks (I might have to keep this!) and a black skull cap, Geoff is a giant yellow Tele-tubby. We expect to see a lot of beer, beads, and boobs tonight (ummm...great).

Here's a link I found that gives you a little more flavor of Chilkoot Charlies:
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art51493.asp

Everybody in Alaska is really nice and friendly. It also seems that nearly everyone I meet is either named Mike, Bob, Jake or Doran. I've never met anyone named Doran, but now I know several. The good Doran is the Managing Partner of 'Koots- the excellent guy who took us all fishing last week. The other Doran is this little baby faced customer/partier at the club who loves the band and is supposedly a musician. He dances/bounces a bit while he talks to you, and by the end of the night has hugely dialated eyes and expresses his adoration for the band and our music by hugging us and saying we suck.

Chilkoots has a little pizza shop inside the club and we get very cheap slices when we're hungry. They also have little garlic bread sticks too. Here's a classic Ryan story for you- The other night, I went up to the pizza stand and ordered two breadsticks. A minute later, at exactly the same moment, the bread appeared on the counter as Ryan walked up next to me. Grabbing a breadstick, he says to me, "have you tried these? Dude, they're awesome! You should get some!", and then he disappeared. Gino, the pizza guy, without saying a word, replaced the missing piece while we both laughed at what just transpired.

The other night, Geoff needed some tweezers to shape up his 'unibrow', so we had to make a closing time run to Safeway. Of course we couldn't find one (how the hell would I know where to look for a tweezer?). Finally we saw this stockboy pulling a HUGE pallet of stuff down the aisle. He clearly was ready to go home for the night and just wanted to put this stuff in the back. Just as we asked him where to find tweezers, he crashed the pallet into the health food shelf and crashed the whole thing down. Boy did we feel bad.

Matt's girlfriend Brittany and his Dad, John came up here last week for a visit. It's great to see some familiar faces for a few days. Rumor has it that a few of our fans may be coming from Phoenix as well sometime in the next few weeks.

EastonAshe has the best fans- Fun, smart, cool people of all ages and backgrounds. Our Myspace page alone has over 5000 "friends"! It's my good luck to work with these guys. From the music to the management to the people who support us, it's just such a great experience. Our chemistry is fantastic and people have really welcomed me as "the new guy". We have the most supportive families and friends everywhere we go. We're all having a good time here; everything is going so well.

Thanks for reading and I'll update soon.

EastonAshe in Alaska

The band arrived for our Alaskan tour last thursday night. We left Phoenix in the evening and flew through darkness up the coast. At around 11pm, through the aircraft window- looking north, I could start to see a faint light up ahead in the distance. As we continued the flight, the light grew brighter, like the dawn. Of course this was the Sun on the other side of the Earth starting to peek over the arctic circle, thus providing the 'midnight sun" over Alaska.

Following our arrival, we stopped in at our main venue, Chillkoot Charlies near downtown Anchorage, about an hour before closing. The band playing that night "Custom Deluxe" recognized us right away and called us up to play a few songs. Great guys and excellent players. The bass player, Monty, is this huge Tongan guy with a beautiful smooth tenor voice and a Stingray bass. I put his bass around me and it hung down to my knees. Turns out if you tell Monty you don't drink much, he'll order you many many shots of Makers' Mark whiskey, and supervise as you drink them. Our own Ryan, man of many indulgences, said he was proud of me- Yay!

Friday afternoon, the manager of Chilkoots, or "koots", as it's called locally- rented a huge RV and took our band about 5 hours south to Homer, AK -- a quaint drinking village with a small fishing problem. http://www.jmg-galleries.com/photo_a_day/images/070306_homer_ak_520c.jpg The owner of the club has a small fishing boat there which we took out into the ocean inlet for about 3 days of fishing (sleeping in the RV at night of course). Here, we could really experience the long hours of daylight (though it was mostly cloudy and gray out there). After many hours of fishing, boating, and drinking the sky was light- about what it would be like at about five o'clock at home. I looked at my watch to see it was 1130pm! It finally gets almost dark around 1230am or so.

There's an old sea faring tale that says one should never bring bananas onto a boat. That it brings bad luck, etc. The first day of fishing brought only one puny little Cod, caught by our Geoff. Additionally, the Ocean was rough in some spots and the waves brought some water onto the deck (not unusual for a boston whaler style boat). Turned out that the bilge pump wasn't working too well, then the back up was jammed a bit too. Great news...Well, of course everything worked out and the pump eventually kicked in. Then Big Mouth Geoff noticed a banana embroidered on my EastonAshe cap I was wearing (Ironically, our band's logo is a BANANA) and announced the discovery to all aboard. After I convinced them not to throw me over board, I promised to remove the patch before the next outing. When we got back to shore, I took a filet knife to the stitching, and we went out sans banana. Still the fish didn't bite the next day, and Matt gave me a good dirty look when I even mentioned the B word. Finally, the third day of fishing, the hat was gone, disappeared- nobody is talking and I somehow think I won't be seeing it again. That day we caught many fish, only keeping some. We caught a couple of these: http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/resources/tanya_dewey/Hemilepidotus_hemilepidotus.jpg/view.html
a very creepy monster that immediately puked up all over the deck of the boat as we reeled it up. Needless to say we didn't keep it. The Management of 'koots' has treated us so well, invited us into their homes and shared some great times and home cooking with us- the generosity of time and money for our accomodation is beyond compare. And it's only been a few days! We're looking forward to repaying the hospitality through our music and hopefully, our popularity with the Chilkoots crowd.

Tonight, Tuesday, 7.29, is our first night playing at the venue, and we're all looking forward to setting up and getting back to work. Chilkoot Charlies is huge, with about 10 bars within the place. The security is tight and the place is very well managed. It's been around for nearly 40 years and is known by many in the lower 48 as well.

Alaska is an incredibly beautiful place- unlike anything I've seen in my life. I've unfortunately forgot my camera cable for uploading, but I'll try to piece together some photos over the next few weeks. I've taken many, but can't post them yet.

More soon!