I sit writing this blog post from 100,000 feet in the air, flying with my mother and boyfriend to my cousin’s wedding in Albuquerque New Mexico. My head is spinning after an 11-hour drive home to San Francisco following our (very fun) gig at Artichoke Music in Portland. Tours have a funny way of being over before you know it, but when you look back to the first night – for us that was a mellow cafe show in Sacramento – it seems like forever ago.

I left us last in Portland, three of us (Andrew, me, Charlie Bear) crashing on our buddy’s mattress in a dark and chilly basement room. Had the basement not been so dark (and we not so exhausted), we would have seen the two space heaters nearby, thoughtfully set up for our convenience. I slept immediately while Andrew stayed up a little later watching “Portlandia” and eating mystery stew.

Oh, no, I digress. We were after Portland, Seattle….Bellingham Washington was the real next stop. We played with our friend Biagio Biondolillo whom Andrew had hosted in San Francisco in the past. We stayed at his place, a converted church from the late 1800s…. I don’t know how we keep ending up at these places. It was beautiful, and comfortable, and Biagio and his lady Sheena were as nice as hosts could be. Sheena treated us to a fresh salad from her garden in the morning, and Biagio stayed up late with us, shooting the sh*t and reminding us about one of the best things about tour: hanging out with awesome people who live far away from you.

The next day we happened across this Twilight Zone of a store, owned by the surviving daughter of a serious hoarder of items from the 50s and 60s. There was a wall of vintage teddy bears…. 25 cents each. Shelves upon shelves of porcelain kittens, glass unicorns, magnetic birds, bobble head dogs, plastic ribbons and rusty hot plates, foam balls and fake flowers, yarn and typewriters. I bought Andrew a toy truck coin bank with a baby Budweiser can as its cargo hold. You drop a coin in the top of the truck and it rolls into the mouth of the can, one of those old pull-tab openings (so you know it’s old). Fifty cents!

Equally odd was its sister store down the road: a huge converted bank that sold only vintage coins, stamps and postcards. You tell them what kind of postcard you want (State/Country? Year? Subject?) and they go down to a vault and bring back boxes and boxes of that kind of postcard to look through. Very odd indeed.

Our return to Portland for our last two nights were so much fun, a perfect cap to our first Northwest tour. Please Do Not Fight superfans (I say that because they have PDNF tattoos) Jasmine and Metro put us up and showed us great hospitality, and we had a super fun night playing and then partying down at Fringe Vintage clothing store/music venue with the local band Silver & Glass. Their upbeat set of indie-rock originals with a Beatles cover thrown in was just what the doctor ordered.

Our very last show at Artichoke Music was another amazing experience. The sound, lights and stage were incredible, the audience captivated, and then after the show, they and the owner Richard were so generous with glowing words as well as monetary support. It left us counting our blessings as we loaded up the car and pointed south in the night. Ten, eleven hours to San Francisco fueled by the high of a great and successful tour. Until next time, Pacific Northwest, we will miss you!

Love, T.

I’m having some great times touring with Rin Tin Tiger right now. We played five shows in a row up the West Coast and now have a day off to reflect and return to digital reality. Here’s an incomplete synopsis:

Chico was an especially fun show. Local bands Sound City and The Great Good helped us put on a veritably crackin’ show at Cafe Flo. Then Fera (of Great Good, also a solo singer/songwriter) put us up at the house he was housesitting…. owned by a toy collector! Seriously, it was like pink Pee-Wee’s playhouse but with beds in every room. Charlie the dog had to sleep on the porch… I foresaw him chewing up some priceless teddy bear from the 1950′s or something. Plus he’s only three there are small pieces he could choke on. Oh yeah, and Fera shaved the sides of Kevin’s head.

Corvallis was also rad. A nice hot evening in a cool little college town, eating vegetarian Mexican food (tempeh chorizo?) and listening to the ethereal stylings of Brian Smith, aka Bloody Twins. He’s a great guy to know in Corvallis, head of the Musicians Guild for Oregon State and a real up-and-coming promoter/music businessman. We crashed at his co-op, occupied by as many as 19 people at a time, and at first slept fitfully to the sounds of ping-pong playing in the other room. Earplugs were in order. Later we heard a muffled scream as a co-op housemate sat on poor sleeping Kevin, thinking that the couch was unoccupied. “Some one has stripped this couch to the bone!” he said, mistaking Kevin’s skinny frame for an unfurnished sofa.

Portland was like coming home to San Francisco, but not because of the city life or the music scene. I got to rehearse with our SF buddy Brian Belknap, a folky lyrical country music kinda guy. But the good country music. We jammed it out in engineer/producer/songwriter Mike Coykendall‘s home studio (Bright Eyes, She & Him, Old Joe Clarks), with Mike Coykendall on painful rhythm guitar. I say painful because his wrist was hurting, not because the playing was bad. But hanging with our old friends Brian, his drummer Michael, and Rin Tin Tiger, as well as our new friend Mike, made Portland feel like a home away from home.

Mr. Andrew and I started our day in Seattle busking on E. Pike Place. As with busking you get some characters. One young woman joined us on one sing-along song, then continued singing along to the songs she had never heard before. Brutal.

There’s a lot more to say but this is good for now. Thanks for reading this far, and if you’re in the area(s) we have another five nights of shows coming up, in Bellingham Seattle, Tacoma and Portland (x2). l o v e ~ t