Surf and Saddle

The first leg of our California tour brought me down to San Diego where I holed up with Greg Peters for two weeks. The day after I arrived we threw a party in Peters' backyard where four bands played from sunset until around midnight. Peters is the head brewer at the Solana Beach Port Brewing Company so we had the tastiest beers this side of the Rockies on tap that night. Plenty of people came out to the party. We like to think it was because of the music but the reality is that there are a lot of tasty beers this side of the Rockies and when the best among them are on tap for no charge people are bound to show up.

We spent the next week rehearsing in a garage in Carlsbad, getting ready for our Thursday night show at the Surf and Saddle, a sweet dive bar in Solana Beach. For John, Greg and Kyle (three of the four members of the band Guns of Avalon) the rehearsals were double since all three were playing in my band as well. The bill at the Surf and Saddle had The Minor Keys kicking off the show (a group of youngsters from Ocean Beach who wore neck ties and colorful rimmed sunglasses) followed by the Guns of Avalon with my band, the Doghouse Brewer, finishing out the night.

By the time the Guns of Avalon took the stage the room was packed. Our good friend Gabe took the mic to introduce the band and they eased into their rocking opening number, Quite One Universe. Peters laid into the introductory riff and John built it up with heavy distortion on his Epiphone. It was a dramatic and haunting opener to a killer set. Listen to the song below.

The next day Peters and I drove up to Hollywood to play a set at Room 5, a slick little club with a great sound system and some of the best Italian food I've had in a while.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE GUNS OF AVALON PLAYING "QUITE ONE UNIVERSE"

KOA

It was the last stop before driving back up to Berkeley and we hadn't had any coffee yet. Ramona, my brother Marshall, his girlfriend Janie, Greg Peters and I were in two cars: one filled with guitars, amps, tents and backpacks, the other with mountain bikes. We pulled up in front of Zachary's restaurant in Santa Cruz where a few of us had eaten in the past, hopped out of the cars and stretched our legs before going inside.

While we were loitering out front a man walked by carrying a guitar in his left hand and a milk crate in his right. It was nine o'clock on Sunday morning, not a time you would expect to find a busker playing for change on the street. But this guy had the look and equipment of a seasoned busker. I called out to him as he walked determinedly past the restaurant, asked him if he was going to play. He said he would if there was a dollar in it. I got a dollar for you, I told him, but he kept walking and disappeared around the corner.

We'd been camping at a KOA (Kampground of America) for two nights near La Selva Beach between Santa Cruz and Monterey. It was the tail end of our tour, me and the Doghouse Brewer, and the KOA had left us under-rested and wondering what the hell "kamping" was. The experience staying there was such a far cry from any camping any of us had done that I imagine they had legal problems calling their grounds "camps" and had to exchange the "c" for a "k" so as not to fool people into thinking they were actually camping. They jam as many people as they can into as small a space as possible. Driving through the place it looks like dirt stalls packed with humans and their oversized cars; tenements for people who are mildly interested in being outdoors. Babies crying all night, grumpy neighbors and horrible music piped through the speakers in the bathrooms.

Kamping aside, the trip down the coast was the perfect end to our first California tour. This was the northern stretch of shows: first at the Starry Plough in my hometown Berkeley, then down to the Firefly in Santa Cruz and finally the East Village Lounge in Monterey. We spent our days doing a live studio performance at KUSP in Santa Cruz, napping on the beach and busking on the wharf. The shows got better and better as we traveled down the coast.

The climax was in Monterey at the East Village Lounge where we played a tight set in their intimate backroom and then got asked to stick around and play another set at the after party of a fundraiser benefiting the town of Big Sur. The town had recently fallen victim to the terrible fires that burned much of the central region of the state and many of the area's most well-endowed patrons had come out to support the firefighters and victims. I was told they raised $250,000 that night. The wine they served was phenomenal and the folks that came to the after party were ready to get down with me and the Doghouse Brewer.

We didn't get back to kamp until around three in the morning. Ramona, Marshall and Janie were already asleep when Peters and I rolled up to our stall so we tiptoed as quietly as we could to bed. Me to the my tent and Peters to his bag in the fog.

The next morning, Sunday, we woke up to huge drops of condensed fog falling on our tent shell. Next thing we knew Peters was banging on the tent soaking wet and insisting that we strike kamp. Any hope we had of sleeping in was shattered by Peters' exposure to the elements. So we set our sights on Zachary's and drove the half hour up to Santa Cruz where we could finally have a cup of coffee and a few pancakes.

I ordered the pancake breakfast with chicken apple sausage then went outside of the restaurant with Peters to get something from the car. There, sitting on his milk crate, was the man I'd seen walking past with his guitar. He was playing slide guitar with an actual sanded down bottle neck on his ring finger. We dropped three bills in his guitar case and hit record on my ipod microphone...

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO SATCHEL PLAYING SLIDE ON HIS MILK CRATE OUTSIDE ZACHARY'S IN SANTA CRUZ