Last night’s show in San Jose was sparsely attended but was still one of the highest-paid shows of the tour. We feel bad when a promoter loses money like that, largely because we know we won’t be invited back but honestly, we don’t lose too much sleep over it. We want to be filling clubs and generating the buzz but it’s clear at this point in the tour that’s not happening. Frank Riley, our booking agent, must have been laughing all the way to the bank when that check arrived. Frankly, we’re just killing time in the Bay Area until we leave for our weekend shows in the Pacific Northwest.
Case in point: tonight’s show in a tiny cowtown in the North Bay called Cotati. It’s so remote that we are having trouble finding it in our trusty AAA atlas, but we are assured that it is north of Petaluma, south of Santa Rosa and that we’ll get $500 for a 50-minute set, no opener. It’s like we did a show in Boston and then played the next night in Groton, MA. But it will pay for the hotel rooms tonight and the gas to Portland so off we go.
Tim gives us a bit of a break today on the promotions but does arrange an appointment at an RV repair shop to take a look at the ongoing problems we’re having, which the mechanic just shrugs his shoulders at. We head up north, over the Golden Gate Bridge, sad to be leaving the City for the last time, and are quickly in the rural suburb of Cotati. The Cabaret, tonight’s venue, is a beautiful old building with a lot of history, including some early Neil Young shows, and it will later be turned into a Synagogue, but in 1990, it’s mostly a disco dance club with occasional bands, and tonight, a Wednesday, that’s us.
The set is very early and very short, per the management, and the crowd consists of a couple of people from the industry (who we forget to put on the list(Sorry, Seana and Gianna!), Tim, and a friend of David Lowery’s, who lives in the town. The minute we stop playing, a large crowd of people who had been waiting in the lobby for the live music to end, enter the room and start dancing to the DJ. We stand there seething at their complete lack of interest in live music. Didn’t any of these people listen to Clint from Mission of Burma when he asked up at their last Boston show (before the reunions) to “Support live music, don’t go to discos!” Apparently not, as they are having fun dancing to Ministry records while we break down our equipment on stage.
The good news is that it’s still early in the evening and Tim has offered to take us out for one last dinner on the Sony expense account. Gary and I order the lamb, a huge treat for a couple of musicians on a budget but Jeff berates our choice, saying “Lamb? Good luck finding the meat.” Tim regales us with some war stories about the other bands on the label and we thank him for all he has done. He directs us over to Highway 5 and we find a hotel room after a couple of hours of driving. Tomorrow: A day off on our way to Portlandia.
Calculating Route... 