Nicholas David West coast Tour ’13: Boom Shakalaka

Debra and I
(c) Jackson Tyler Eddy

The forested hills of the pacific north west are creepy and calming at the same time.  I feel simultaneously, peacefully at one with nature and worried that a weird mutated mountain man is going to drag me to his torture cabin in the woods.  Maybe I've seen to many scary movies set here.  Either way, we are safe in numbers and aren't stopping long enough for the weirdos to take me away, so the scenery is beautiful.

Key Arena

I've been to Seattle before, and have a great fondness for this town.  We had a few days before our show, so I was excited to have some time to explore the city.  Unfortunately for me, we were staying at a hotel in a suburb of Seattle, which equates to either a 2 hour bus ride or a $70 cab ride into Seattle proper.  As such I was essentially stuck in the boonies for a few days.  A friend who used to live in Minneapolis happened to live near our hotel.  She and her boyfriend picked me up on our first night in town and took me to a local restaurant/bar.  It was really fun to catch up with her, as I haven't had a live conversation with her in years.  After that, I met up with our sound man Jim at another local bar.  We ended up at spot that had karaoke and decided to hang out.  Jim is a mild mannered and low key guy most of the time.  But apparently if you give him a little Patron, he becomes a karaoke machine and runs around the bar singing "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" by the Proclaimers in everyone's face.  It was awesome.  Later, Debra showed up and sang for real, making everyone flock to her or feel bad about their own performances. It was a fun night.

Walking into our first arena show.

Today Nicholas met up with us at the hotel.  He had been staying at a friend's house with his family who came out to visit.  We piled into the van, cranked the Kendalls and headed to our show at the Key Arena.  This is the first time I, or anyone in the band had played in an arena before, so we were all very excited.  I was also excited that this arena used to be home to the Seattle Supersonics, and namely Shawn Kemp, who was my go-to player choice in one of my all time favorite video games NBA Jams.  On the way to the arena I found out that Debra, who went out on the town with a friend the night before, got to meet Mr. Kemp at a bar.

Key Arena is an interesting building.  From the outside, you only see the top of the arena.  The main bulk of the building is sunk into the ground, so it doesn't seem that big from the outside.  Upon entering the arena, the fact that this was our first arena show was apparent.  We all started taking pictures and looking around with our mouths open.  I think this was on the entire band's bucket list so we were giddy.  During sound check the glimmer of the arena show faded. We quickly realized what we all subconsciously knew from attending shows in arenas.  Arenas are not great for sound quality.  The giant steel and concrete room made everything echo to epic, unwanted proportions.  I commend our monitor tech and Jim for getting it to sound as good as they did.  For those of you who aren't musicians, it is hard to understate how much the sound can throw off your performance.  It affects timing and sound qualities, which, in turn, affect your comfort on stage and your overall performance.

Before the show started I decided to walk around Seattle a little bit, as I had been stuck on it's periphery before today.  Luckily it was a rare sunny day, and I was reminded why I love this city.  It's the little differences in architecture and the scenery that makes visiting new places so fun and exciting.  Seeing the giant cargo ships in the distance was so cool.  An everyday occurrence for residents, but an amazing site for me.

The huge crowd in the arena helped with some of the echo issues, but they were still annoyingly noticeable.  However, all of us have dealt with bad sound in way worse venues in our careers, so we weren't phased, and put on a good show.  Not our best, but still good.  We got a great response from the audience, and that's all that matters.  The Avett Borthers did what they always do and killed it.  This was definitely not their first arena show.

(c) Jackson Tyler Eddy

Nick's kids were in our dressing room running around a playing after the show, and it was fun to see them and get a little reminder of home.  After the show we said our goodbyes and drove towards Spokane where we shall rock again tomorrow.