Vail, CO – “Sleeping Head to Foot” -Garton’s – March 14, 1999

Soundcheck was cold.  My fingers barely shaped chords let alone plucked strings.  Dellucci requested Brian soundcheck his kickdrum and the rest of us zoned out, staring into the dark empty venue, feeling the water in our cells quake with every ‘thud’ ‘thud’ ‘thud.’ 

While I waited for Brain’s hammering to end so I could check my own instruments, I reminisced about the spectacular evening last night at The Howling Wolf in Aspen.  A slew of increasingly familiar faces called out songs off Tomboy Bride, danced, and played air guitar (which I particularly enjoyed).  But there were new faces too;  A group of radio DJs from KSPN said they’d be psyched to play our stuff on their station and a crew of ski patrol hotties in ragland sweaters swarmed us post-show and pushed hot toddies into our cold hands.

At 3:00 am we crawled into wobbly hotel beds.  Having secured the last room in town, we designated the two queen-size beds “the snoring” and “the non-snoring” sections.  Soucy and I took the one on the left and Brian and Delluchi took the one on the right.  We arranged ourselves head to foot and, throughout the night, dealt with a bandmate’s stinky gig socks in our faces and the occasional kick stuttering our slumber.  Kenny took the rollaway (smart move Kenny).  We were exhausted but not tired so we stayed up and talked about our dreams.

I snapped out of my stage daze as Delluchi repeated “Sally? Can I get you to sing into your mic please?” 

We ate at the venue.  Soucy got very excited about a large salad and made me take a picture of it.  Over shrimp tails and croutons, Brian told us his mother had been learning to play the electric guitar and suggested we have her sit in with us. We thought it was a fabulous idea.

We’re driving to Boulder tonight after the show to catch the tail end of The Funky Meters at the Fox Theater, repack, sleep for two days, then head West.  

Zing. I am so pumped.