~UN~

Ah, Poutine!
Sure–you of know it, am I right?

God’s gift to man, a recipe received via shafts of lights and burning shubbery ages ago, a mystical sacrament sent from on high:
Translated as only those nutty Canadiens could do, brother!—this manna consists of glorious frites suffocated under an earthy brown gravy.
And I ask you, do our chilly neighbors up yonder stop there?

Fuck no….hey, I know–let’s cover the whole thing in Cheese Curds now!!!!

And that’s just the base model, friend.
If you know us at all here at the CH3 gourmand field team, you know we’re gonna go for all the swanky options:
‘la saucisse, as shown, but let’s not forget the other toppings, yeh?

Foie Gras? Bacon Bits?
Shaved Copper?

The tears of a heartbroken street clown?
Bring it on!

Oh yes……the tale begins and ends with Poutine, but when invited many months ago, we wondered just as you do now:
What the hell is a Pouzzafest anyways!?

For that matter, just what is Pouzza, and why does it deserve its own fest, hmmm?

Oh, why try to explain when this nifty educational video is available!!

MmmmmmOkay then.

I think you can see why we readily accepted their gracious invitaion and reported for duty!

A leisurely schedule, we report late morning to the Gardener garage & lounge to begin this sordid journey…….

God bless our hosts, they actually send First Class tickets to Montreal!
And while the in-flight chow consists of neither curd nor gravy, it is passable when paired with endless table wines!!

With the time change and a brief, weepy breakdown at the airport when told of Macho Man’s demise, it is well late when we hit the curbside.

Arriving to the Residences Universitaires UQAM upon our thrones of Pabst, we are giddy as Freshmen arriving for Fall semester!

Onto the town and the usual hilarity ensues.
Last Call at Foufounes Electriques, where we gaze upon their fine collection of Catholic Molestation art!

But now it’s finally time to dig into that first Poutine of the trip, where they blanche cut potatoes in shady looking trashcans:

Back to the dorm rooms and we collapse into schoolboy beds.

Our nocturnal wanderings done, our starch and gravy appetites sated, we fall into deep sleep and dream of Canadian mountians:
Their very Earth’s crust fried to a golden crisp, their dizzying peaks capped with brown, delicious snow!

~DEUX~

Up on a glorious Saturday, a brisk walk down St Urbain toward Vieux-Port de Montréal .
A quick, plain snack fends off our hunger of the inevitable meal to come!

While chewing thoughtfully on buttery croissant, I spy the NotreDame Basillica over Ant’s shoulders……shall we?

Unfortunately, they are serving only cheap well whiskies in the Vaulted Cathedral, and we are quickly shown the door…….

But no time to ponder, it is time for the next Poutine of the trip, this time on the charming patio of wittily named Montreal Poutine!

The day is fine, and we tread the cobblestones lightly, like all the rest of the fat and 6%-beer-buzzed tourists.

But wait a minnit, don’t we have a job to do?
Oh yeah……we gotta gig goddamnit, and soundcheck in 10!

And while running through a few peppy numbers in the very cool and Skull-a-licious empty club, who should we spy but Carlos Soria of the famed Nils?!

We feel like we’ve known him forever, the nut…and perhaps we have!
We spend the rest of the evening talking of shared friends and memories before returning to the dorms for beauty naps and nips off the Jameson that promoter JP has graciously left at the desk!!

Freshened by the rest and the incredible 3 hours! since our last potatoe-and-gravy snack, we bounce through the night, the set, and after hour hijinks with aplomb!

What? Photos of us actually playing?

Well, no.

But we did play, honest!
Wait, hold on…..

What? And was there another poutine involved?

Well, hmmm. I guess so?

To tell the truth, at this point, things get vague.
Our time has stretched along with the very curvature of this Northern Hemishphere, and the night is a dizzying mix of fried potatoes, Irish Whiskey, cheese curds and skulls, all topped with a delicious brown ooze.

Am I in heaven?

~TROIS~

We sadly pack our meager things into laundry hampers and hug our floor advisors farewell.
We’re gonna miss going to this school, goddamnitl!!

Heh….perhaps one last stop at FouFones for the festival sponsored BBQ, yes?

Sitting there, amongst the floating skulls and sacrilegious artwork, enjoying the sunshine and smoky dogs, we find ourselves grining, to a man.

We’ve been to a few fests, sure.
Maybe we’re more suited to these things, hell, I don’t know.

But this has been a rare blast, maybe because it’s new, maybe because it’s all new to us.
To be here among pals and savor an absolutely gorgeous city on a Spring weekend, it all makes sense.

It’s then that we finally corner Hugo and JP, and they finally tell us what a Pouzza is:

Ya take the Poutine gravy.
You pour it on ……
PIzza!

Foreheads are slapped.
Cartoon lightbulbs, they literally flicker on above our spinning heads.

And just like that, they whisk us into airport vans as we clutch onto wrought iron railings, reluctant to leave.

But…but…we never got to try that….
Why?
Dear God, why have you waited to tell us!?

Ah.
Perhaps next time, oui?

One more time, we dye out the gray and trim the nose hairs, and steel ourselves for another goddamn year in the trenches.

A good 18 pounds overweight from the Holiday parties and Turducken leftovers, we slowly get back into fighting shape for 2011 with a quick jaunt North to start things off.

It’s a new destination this time, Central CA, with a Friday stop in Santa Maria, a quick jaunt up to Atascadero Sat and home in time for the Superbowl Sunday.

Or should we say, home for half time, just in time to see the fuckin’ Black Eyed Peas do their aerobics routine and poor ol Slash destroy every last molecue of rocker credliblity he had left!

The weekend starts off in the usual way: late start on Friday, squeezing through the horrendous traffic of Friday-Lite L.A., then finally breaching the burnt hills of Calabasas to get that glorious view of the Pacific heading North.

A quick stop off in Ventura for a piss and gas, late lunch at Dargan’s Pub, and a quick Pabst at San Souci.

We press on to the greater Santa Maria area, home of that dry rub BBQ and meth lab explosions.
We check in at O’Sullivan’s Pub and then adjourn to BBQ Land, to sample the local delicacies.

I mean, c’mon! It’s called BBQ Land, people!

A quick and fun bar set with the good folks at O’Sullivans, and then we bunker in owner Josh’s back office for shots of whiskey and reminiscences of Clash concerts past.
Josh, gracious bastard that he is, allows us to leave with the bottle in hand.
Class Act!

Late night, and luckily there is a Jack in the Box open just across from the Santa Maria Inn, and a leisurely taco and cocktail session in Alf’s room brings the night to a close.

The BBQ, the fast food shit tacos, the Irish Whiskey and cheap beer: I have a strange dream that night.
Oh, you know the one, the one where a giant Pirate Hat chases you around a cheap soundstage as Charles Nelson Reily cackles his maniacal and somehow pedophilic laugh.

I wake up to find Kimm has left the TV on all night on the local PBS, which starts its Saturdays with a Sid and Marty Krofft Productions marathon.

I chew a cold leftover taco while reflecting on the wild improbability of a world ruled by hats or a giant lizard that talks with the white trash drawl of Andy Griffith.
Clearly, these people were on drugs. Good Ones.

We load in and continue grazing up the coast, as if we were cannibalistic bovines.
First stop at Jocko’s Steaks in Nipomo on the advice of the locals.

Anthony’s Steak sandwich is the star of this table, and at 12 bucks we proceed to order 8 more to go. Something to gnaw on in the car, keep the kids quiet, don’t ya know!

We make the mandatory stop at the Madonna Inn, solely for the privilege of pissing on a wall length waterfall.

We emerge from the bathroom to find Ant has ordered champagne cocktails for us, and we drink the fruity drinks in the gaudy frills of the main dining room.

Though we don’t quite start prancing about or sucking each other’s cocks, this place has definitely put us in touch with our feminine side.
It is time to get out of here.

Morro Bay, that charming rascal of the central coast, calls to us with its beautiful vistas and dive bars. We discover a giant land mass right off the beach, which Alf promptly names Morro Rock–clever boy!
We while away the afternoon at the Buoy Tavern, watching as the locals wager themselves into a frenzy for tomorrow’s game.

The gig is at The Armory in Atascadero, an actual block of concrete on the National Guard Base.
We pull up with that old anticipation of a road gig, wondering what kind of crowd will be here, how long we’ll be signing autographs afterwards, those darn kids!

We first suspect something is off when we pull into the driveway and there’s, oh, 9 cars parked there.

Heh–right, this is an all ages gig, after all.
Lots of kids get dropped off by Mom, right?

But then we pull open the heavy gymnasium doors and take a look inside:

I am not exaggerating when I say there are 20 people in a room that would comfortably hold 1200.
We wordlessly go back out to the car and crack a beer, pass around the bottle of Jame-0 that we have thankfully threw in a guitar case.

How can this be? I mean, we’re goddamn Icons, are we not?

We ponder the possible reasons for the small turnout:
The economy, man, that’s gotta be it!
Lucero is playing across the way in SLO, and that’s where the cool kids went to play.
It is Superbowl weekend after all, alright? Am I right?

And then, inevitably, we raise the question that’s been on all our minds from the start.

Can these kids up here have possibly heard how much we actually suck????

Nah, gotta shake off those thoughts, the show will go on!
So I’ll tell you about playing to empty rooms kids, and ya better listen up to Uncle Mike, because I am considered somewhat the expert in this field!

Oh, we’ve been all over the place and played to the dreaded empty room ya see—a rainy Monday in Gary Indiana, where the crowd was so small we passed round a half pint of Jack–and it made 4 complete rounds of the room before it was empty!
Or that cinderblock beer bar in Lincoln Nebraska, where only the bartender and a lone blind bouncer suffered through our full concert set.

All bands have a story about playing to the empty room, though it’s usually kept quiet, don’t ya know.

But here’s the thing about playing to a sparse crowd–it’s often a great gig, and that’s not bullshit.
For one thing, though both you and the crowd seem to be embarrassed about being there, you have to soldier on.

They can’t very well leave til you played, and we can’t sneak out the back and head for Denny’s—- we’re all trapped!!

And so they come up to you several times in the evening to apologize for their lame scene. You shrug to the promoter at the door, who has started drinking heavily and calling his Dad for a quick loan to cover the guarantee.
On this night, you make friends.

And so we strap on the guitars and go out there, and when they cut off the intro music the room is suddenly, shockingly quiet.
Somewhere out there in the darkness, someone lets out a timid Whoo!, and the ice is broken: we laugh together.

There is no more separation of band and crowd in empty room, it’s just a bunch of people standing together to hear music, even the ones that are supposed to be playing it.
Between songs, I convince the handful of people to gather together for a picture, plead with them to make it look like they are packed together and having a good time!

We somehow play better, as everyone is focused, and the tiny crowd, well, god bless em, they start an honest to God circle pit:
3 guys and one brave girl, dancing in a tight circle in front of us, in the middle of an empty gym in the middle of this State.

By the end of the set we are laughing and joking back and forth, we’ve already memorized everyone’s names.
We end the set and there is no stage or backstage, we simply put down the guitars and start shaking hands.
We sell every last one of the shirts we brought along, cheap! and head back to the motel with smiles on our faces.

Another one for the books.

Is there anything more melancholy than driving through the desert in the rain?

Oh sure, when we packed up the gear and jumped in the luxurious CH3 landyacht, it’s all shits and giggles; Giddy to be on our way to the first road work of the year, we chatter away like tweakers on a first date.
It’s been a while since we’ve reconvened, and it’s a time to catch up as the gray warehouses of Diamond Bar, then Pomona float by….we display the latest scars, show off photos of the new grandchildren.

But soon the scenery changes from bleak suburbia to bleak desert, the windshield wipers ticking off a dreadful dirge as we speed through the wasteland.
Conversation slows, then stops altogether, and we each stare out the windows as the world passes by, thinking of home and wasted opportunities.

When we close our eyes to ward off the tears, it’s Eddie Vedder’s soundtrack to Into the Wild we hear……..

Heh—first piss stop just outside of Indio, and the sun is shining!! A new day, people—and a quick check to the ol Facebook confirms that it is raining in sheets back home….suckers!

Lunch is a quick stop at the Beer Hunter in La Quinta, yer ususual 19th hole tavern favored by the ladies who lunch and the unemployed who drink….

Made Phoenix by nightfall and need to stock up….

Overnight accomodations at a sterile business suite joint, but ya know it doesn’t take much to make it a home for us…..

Showtime at Hollywood Alley in Mesa with our pals in the Freeze —-a great damn show! Had more photos, but they were eventually confiscated by INS. We told them Anthony and Alf were legal, but we’ll let the courts decide!!

Sadly, not knowing our way around this burg after a couple decades absent, we had to settle for *sigh* Del Taco for our late night feed/debriefing session.

But Saturday saw us bright eyed and ready to take on the world–or at least some fine Bloody Marys at Suckerpunch Sally’s diner in Tempe.

Met up with Johnny and Tyler, and small world that it is, discovered we had many friends in common. Six degrees of T-Bone, as they say…!

Suckerpunch’s is a new roadhouse in the Tempe area, but these guys already have a good thing going. They showed us the Moonshine that is soon to be on the market…

…and proceeded to pour generous samples!

We reluctantly said goodbye to our Az pals and hit the ol Interstate 10 back toward Pomona.
Before hittin the Cali border, had to make a quick stop at Quartzsite….spied a bookstore right off the freeway on the way in, and you know we’re always on the lookout for first edition Jim Harrison, wot?

There I am- on bended knee- head tilted to scan the spines of a dozen Black Sparrow paperbacks, when I glance up and come nose to thong with the rascally bookstore owner…and nudist!

After the initial shock of dealing with a naked senior citizen (not to mention some pesky childhood memories that suddenly came rushing back!), we purchased a few mags as well as a nice Bukowski cd…..keep the change bub, and remember the sunblock eh?

Next stop: the Grubstake Social Club just a spell up the road yonder, turn left at the brown dog.

Regretted not having much of an appetite after scanning the tempting menu!

Back in the car, gotta make up for lost time! Pomona’s calling– seems as though people have been following Alf’s increasingly bizarre tweets, and there is serious doubt if we will actually make the gig…..
The skies darken, and we reluctantly head into the rain again. Lightning flashes in the distance, illuminating the barren landscape we’d skated a mere 20 hours earlier.

And once again, the chatter ceases, the car begins to go silent. A man’s thoughts turn inward, for there is no lonelier place on a Saturday night than the darkened cocoon of an American SUV, hurtling through the blackness…..

Luckily, I remembered the Bukowski cd in my pocket, slipped it in the dash and turned it up to 20:

BEER
from: Love is A Mad Dog From Hell
I don’t know how many bottles of beer
I have consumed while waiting for things
to get better
I dont know how much wine and whisky
and beer
mostly beer
I have consumed after
splits with women-
waiting for the phone to ring
waiting for the sound of footsteps,
and the phone to ring
waiting for the sounds of footsteps,
and the phone never rings
until much later
and the footsteps never arrive
until much later
when my stomach is coming up
out of my mouth
they arrive as fresh as spring flowers:
“what the hell have you done to yourself?
it will be 3 days before you can fuck me!”

the female is durable
she lives seven and one half years longer
than the male, and she drinks very little beer
because she knows its bad for the figure.

while we are going mad
they are out
dancing and laughing
with horney cowboys.

well, there’s beer
sacks and sacks of empty beer bottles
and when you pick one up
the bottle fall through the wet bottom
of the paper sack
rolling
clanking
spilling gray wet ash
and stale beer,
or the sacks fall over at 4 a.m.
in the morning
making the only sound in your life.

beer
rivers and seas of beer
the radio singing love songs
as the phone remains silent
and the walls stand
straight up and down
and beer is all there is

And wouldn’t ya know it, soon we were right there with Buk, he cursing the audience and drinking with joy, describing the filthy things he had planned for his unsuspecting girlfriend.
The lights of the Inland came into view, and the night sky brightened– with both the glow of electrified civilization, and the promise of yet another gig to go!

Saturday Feb 6, Joey’s BBQ Pomona:

Rolled into Vegas around sundown, or I should say rolled past Vegas! Texas Station is located way North of town, right between the What the Hell? and Where the Fuck Are We? highways….

Loaded into the South Padre lounge and then immediately headed to the all you can eat buffet:

Tell me: What makes us eat like ravenous kennel dogs when we are unleashed upon an open buffet?
I mean, at home you probably wouldn’t consider a weekday dinner consisiting of menudo, baklava, pasta puttanesca, sushi and crawfish etoufee—would you?

Oh sure, you try to start off sensibly. You have a simple entree, maybe a few crunchy appetizers…

…but, what’s that? TBone found some Cajun food over in the corner next to the frosty machines!

And, huh? Seafood?!–oh, right, it’s Friday! The chilled seafood bar is in full swing, and though I would usually question the wisdom of eating raw oysters that have been sitting in the bacteria biodome that is a las vegas casino, it seems naturally fine tonight! Did I mention we’ve been drinking?

Things begin to blur at this point. Not even hungry, we eye the plates of the people who have just returned from the buffet, only to bolt out of our chairs and head back to the food! Wait’ll the fellas get a load of this plate!!

Things have gotten silly now. Nationalities and flavors, entrees and desserts—they have all begun to melt together in our contest of culinary one-upmanship!….

Thankfully, we slow down, and eventually stop eating altogether. We come together in silence as we behold the mesmerizing sight of Tbone tackling an endless supply of crab legs!

Then we played the show.
*
*
*
*
Saturday: Up and at em, down to the casino floor for load out and a lil video poker!

Alright then, great roadtrip, guys!