Boulder, CO – “Opening for Little Feet” – Fox Theater – December 13, 1998

I woke up on a sunburnt, brown, valore couch belonging to Charlie, a pal of a pal of a pal of Kipps who put us up after a late night turned into an early morning.  A river bent itself around the small timber-frame shack like a boa constrictor.  I noticed other lumps sleeping on other surfaces around the bright livingroom and registered them as musicians from various bands passing through town. Their instruments lay naked in various semi-precarious possitions. A guitarist was actually using his ax as a pillow. I picked at an unreasonable amount of dog hair in the blanket covering me, before realizing it actually was the dog’s blanket.  A golden retriever stared at me with hunched ears.  I imagined the inquisitive expression he wore pertained to my insensitivity having robbed him of his comforter overnight.

We opened for Little Feet at the Fox last night and the audience drank us up like a sponge.  Valiant fans shushed and shooed stray voices that arose to inadvertently distract them from earview.  They thought I was funny too and they laughed in tandem as I told only semi-funny jokes and danced around in gold and green shimmering stage lights.  I wasn’t even nervous.  But there’s nothing like a horrendous gig to make all subsequent gigs feel freeing and nothing could have been as horrendous as the gig in Telluride.

As I repositioned my sleep-kinked body to make room for the disgruntled dog, Charlie appeared in blue boxers and a head full of electrified hair.  Coffee in hand and lashes pasted shut he stole the space I’d just freed for his pup and muttered “I like you’re CD more than Alanis Morrissette’s” then, promptly fell asleep to open-mouth chainsaw the air with snoring. The other bodies sang along.