Blake Jones & the Trike Shop..Vernal Falls..Abel Mouton & the Tastemakers..Last Saturday...Tokyo Gardens...(ooohhh scary) Downtown after Dark...
if you missed the show you really missed a show....don't do that again.

I submit, for your reading pleasure, Mr. Mouton's humorous and astute blog as an out-of-town perspective on our Beautiful Lovely Downtown...after Dark.

(find them on MySpace and be friendly: http://www.myspace.com/wwwmyspacecomabelmoutonandthetastemakers)

Sunday, January 28, 2007

There's a first time for everything, and this was my first time in Fresno.

Fully intact (after a brief flap where it appeared that one of our members may have to spend the weekend on the injured list), the current lineup of The Tastemakers rolled into town at about 6 PM on January 27. That lineup includes Chris Campbell on drums, me on guitar and vocals, Michael Mullen on keys and vocals, and Matt Sieling on bass and vocals. North Coast Poet Blake More rounded out the crew, tagging along for laughs.

As we rolled through a street lined with beautiful old buildings mostly boarded up, I was reminded of 'Salem's Lot. The movie theaters converted to churches, the old gothic churches on a solid quarter of the corners, the fact that no one was out walking around on a Saturday night further contributed to the sense of a town overrun by vampires.

Looking for food, we hung a left into a massive traffic jam. After about 15 minutes, we were able to ascertain that everyone except us was heading into the stadium.

"Must be a tractor pull," I speculated.

We finally settled on the only open restaurant we could find, a hofbrau called "Old Fresno". Every band member got dinner plates with a different flavor of meat on it. But we all had the corn. Good thing there was nothing wrong with the corn.

Blake brought her own plate from home. Roasted root vegetables with avocado. "It looks weird but it tastes good," she explained.

As I looked at the room full of white people eating white food, I began to speculate: what if this is a town of vampire KKKers? I have led my band into a disaster.

As I looked around the room at the display of ornate beer steins, Satan continued to speak in my ear: It's a rainy Saturday night and everyone in town is at the tractor pull. No one knows who I am and if they did, they wouldn't care. No one is coming tonight and my band is going to desert me in a town solely populated by vampire KKKers.

I ate a piece of pecan pie that was sweeter than the soda I was drinking.

After dinner, we drove around for 20 minutes looking for a cup of coffee. We're all snobs so it was hard; gas station coffee won't do for Tastemakers. We drove through curvy streets that appeared to have been constructed of paved cattle trails. We considered going to the hospital cafeteria for coffee.

"Look it's a gazebo," said Michael Mullen as we passed off the hospital grounds. "They ought to serve coffee at that gazebo." No one argued with him.

Just as we were about to give up, we found a Starbucks with four employees and no customers. We got coffees and stood around seeing we could come up with lyrics for a song called "In Fresno". Nothing stuck.

We headed back to the venue and loaded in. The venue is a swell place called Tokyo Gardens. It is a Japanese restaurant that they say has been in operation for 50 years. It has a fabulous neon sign outside. They throw shows there after the restaurant closes.

As we sat around hashing out the set list , our gracious host, Blake Jones, came and introduced himself. The man was even more lovable and gregarious in person than he was over the internet.

Our Blake asked him what was going on at the stadium. Blake Jones shrugged and suggested: "Tractor pull?" voice turning up in laughter at the end. Satan fucked off. We were having fun.

Vernal Falls opened the show with a set of original songs strongly reminiscent of John Fahey. Swell songwriting, swell fingerpicking.

The Tastemakers were up second. We played a 13 song set that mostly covered tunes from Singled Out, plus a couple of Deadpan Ramblers and one new song. We performed two great Matt Sieling compositions plus a Michael Mullen original for the first time ever in public. The tunes went over well. I remember New Bathrobe as having a particular verve; others enjoyed Big.

The crowd was at its thickest during our set, and responded very enthusiastically. We sold CDs afterwards.

Blake Jones and The Trike Shop knocked us dead. We loved them. Great original tunes performed passionately. Their vocal arrangements are incredibly infectious, and they are great advocates of freedom of the airwaves. Blake came up front and delivered a great version of Harlem Nocturne and Miserlou on the theremin. The Trike Shop closed their set with a rousing rendition of "Strawberry Fields Forever".

It was a great time and we made enough money to cover expenses.

Really big thanks are owed to Blake who booked the show without hearing us, hooked us up with not one but two telephone interviews on KCFC, gave us the sweet spot on the bill, and gave us accurate directions home.

We look forward to returning to the Central Valley!!! Vampire KKKers be damned!!!!