Show Notes: Bubba’s Roadhouse BBQ – Sultan, WA 3/17/2014 (the “after irish day” thing)
there are some gigs that happen for a reason, some that happen because you got a sweet booking and wait like crazy to play it and have a great time doing so. there are some gigs that happen on a monday in mid-march, simply because that day happens to be the 17th and there’s, like, a holiday associated with that day. this was one of those gigs.
we had myself a great time at bubbas on this, the second time we’d played there (last time, as you’ll see the post, was for the v-day celebration, some barefoot buddha sasquatch serenading punch drunk lovers until the wee hours of the morning). i mean, frankly, we always do have a good time, even when people are throwing things. this was no different. we could tell right away, though, that something was different. some of it was a sparser crowd, this is true. part was also that we managed (whilst running our own sound – this is a staple of bubba’s) to not screw up the setup of the band, so we were in full loop pedal mode – hereinafter referred to as frankenband. this totally made a difference for us, since we could…ahem….play with ourselves.
but then it struck…..it was MONDAY….the MONDAY AFTER all the st. paddy’s day stuff happened. we were playing the after after after after green beer party, and it was, well, sort of……a bad party. there were all of maybe 13 people in the room the whole night, and we could tell that pretty much the whole staff was not into being there. it was not any surprise to us when they shut down the show after two killer sets (and yes, they were super duper killer sets – somehow we always dance like/when no one is watching).
so the beauty.
there is something about social breakdown that always brings it. something about the desperation at the end of a night, in a small dive bar, in some almost nameless mountain town. in the back of the room, we watched a REALLY drunk dude sitting at a table, nodding his head the whole time. after the first set, he made us come over and told a story about his kid who’d died in county lockup. it was a horrible story about mental illness and police who left a sick kid to die without his medication. it might have been true – coming from a small town, we know there’s always 10 sides to a story – but it was heart-wrenching. we have NO idea what made him come in, sit there, drink so much, and, most of all, spill his guts. there’s always some weird human moment that comes in this dipshittery, this carnival of one, a moment we couldn’t possibly orchestrate, couldn’t possibly expect.
we wish that beauty was why we do this. maybe it is.
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