dallas blog

[Stout City Luchadores]

We left town at about 6pm. The van is a pretty nice rental. GPS, air condition, and a nice little plugin for the Ipod. We take off and everything is pretty smooth. The van consists of the band members and two of the band girlfriends.

A couple of towns into the trip and I feel melancholy. I blame the songs on the IPOD playlist. Everyone is in good spirits though We stop in Gonzales for snacks and cigarettes. After that it’s constant road warrior status.

I’m writing this somewhere past Austin. We’re listening to the Lillingtons right now. My cell phone is silent. Everyone has already either given me a good luck wish, or doesn’t want to disturb me. It’s a long road trip so I almost welcome the distraction.

Whats up for tonight? It depends on what time we reach Dallas. Maybe a bar or a drink somewhere maybe just sit in and read comic books. We’ll see

-end transmission- 8:31 pm 2-1-08

10:59pm 2-1-08

We have given the GPS a name. Her name is Nancy, and she sure is a Chatty Cathy when she wants to be. We have also noticed that she is slightly creepy in the sense that sometimes she seems to ignore us or give us false directions. Sometimes we certainly miss Yahoo Maps.

I’m writing this about an hour outside of Dallas. The mood in the van is great. This is the sort of thing that the band needs… a good long drive to bond, listen to music and hang out. We certainly seem to be forgetting the huge oppurunity that is up ahead of us tomorrow.

We stop way too much. This probably explains why we have not reached Dallas yet. Dinner was a 50 minute ordeal which involved 3 fast food restaraunts and many fouled up orders.

The phrase of the day people ask us whenever we stop seems to be “Are you guys in a band?” This has been asked by almost one person everytime we stop. (We have stopped around 6 or 7 times already for various reasons) It seems to be in odd places. I always wondered if we looked like a “real” band to people, and I guess we do.

-end transmission- 11:05pm 2-1-08

2:09am 2-2-08

Happy Groundhog’s Day. We arrived at about 30 minutes after midnight. The Hyatt is right next to the big shiny ball in downtown Dallas. It’s a little too nice for us. Make that A LOT too nice for us. The hotel room is on the 18^th floor. The crappy thing about this expensive place is that they want to charge us for using Wireless internet, which means I will have to wait till later to find a hotspot to actually post the blog.

We made it to the hotel with the help of NANCY the GPS navigation system, who strangely seemed to shut off as she announced our arrival.

We took a walk around the hotel. Apparently the Harlem Globetrotters are staying here tonight too. We must make the time to take a picture if we get the chance.

We have a lot to do tomorrow. Check in is at noon, we play at 4:30 and will probably do a lot of walking around.

-end transmission- 2:15am 2-2-08

10:16am 2-2-08

Art and I woke up, tried to get the others up too for a quick walk around the area in search for Wifi access we don’t have to pay for anything. So far there is none. We are attempting to walk around Downtown Dallas, but no free Wifi is anywhere to be found. We have to turn back soon, get dressed and go to register for the show.

-end transmission- 10:23am 2-2-08

8:22pm 2-2-08

When we arrived at the House Of Blues we were totally taken aback. The stage is HUGE. Nice setup indeed. We went to register and kind of check it out. We had to turn in the tickets they sent us with the money. When we registered… we found out we were 6 tickets short. We had no explanation for it. 6 tickets magically disappeared from our watch and all the Bodog rep could tell us was “Get some cash”. So we were faced with coming up with 90 extra bucks. This is a hard thing to do when you are a little garage band who put all your money into a deal on a rental and a room.

BUT.. we drove 5 hours to play this incredible stage and we weren’t going home till we did it. We each put in 20 bucks and came up with the extra money we needed to break even.

A little poorer, we grabbed some Mcdonald’s dollar menu stuff, and went back to the room to change and get ready.

The show went well. We played about 4:30, as always we played with our hearts out. I will go on record saying that there are tons of bands who are better musicians and have more talent, but few bands have our heart.

We walked around for awhile after that, Mardi Gras is going on in downtown Dallas. So it’s packed. Now we are back in the Hotel, fixing to drink some beer buy the pool. We will head back up to the House Of Blues closer to 1am to find out the results. The odds are against us. But then again, they always have been.

-end transmission- 8:31pm 2-2-08

1:40am 2-3-08

The traffic was so bad due to Mardi Gras in downtown Dallas, that we decided to walk to the House Of Blues. It’s about a mile and a half to the club, but, it’s in Downtown Dallas, so there is plenty going on. A few bums, lots of drunk people and lots of traffic.

We got to the House Of Blues just in time to see the last band play. The crowd had drastically changed since we played at 4:30.

We waited around patiently till the finally announced the winners. The winners were not us.

I’m fine with that. We played a good set. We played an awesome set in an awesome club with the best sound system money can buy. You cant be mad at that.

If we go after the wildcard, than that’s awesome, but if we lose the wildcard, I’m not mad. It’s the best we could do, and I’m happy about it. When we wake up tomorrow we are still a band, and that’s never been more important.

1:13pm 2-3-08

We are driving home, and are about 24 miles outside of Austin.

The band has decided to pursue the wildcard slot. It is not certain that we will win, there are about 19 other bands that want the spot. If it’s one thing I have learned it is that some bands have really spent lots of money and sponsorships to get where they are versus just getting by on luck and talent like us. So if we do win the Wildcard spot, we will get to play the House Of Blues in Chicago but we will also have to pay our own way up there. Bodog seems intent on letting us spend a million dollars before we win it. Either way its ok. It’s not a bad end of the road for us in the Bodog situation, we have beaten hundreds of bands to get where we are in the competition, but I have this feeling, we can make it just a bit farther. Then who knows? I’m not satisfied with just being a “good band” I want to do this as well as we can…. So fire up your computers lucha fans

Conclusion:

There is a reason I wanted to make it through to Dallas so bad. When we played in Austin, we had everything going for us. The band was hype and we played an incredible set. But we lost. I wish I knew what the judges were looking for when they picked a band, however, we still lost.

One of the bands that won was just too cocky. They jumped up on stage and starting giving out acceptance speeches as if they had won a Grammy. Then they started to croon on stage about how they are “the best band in Austin etc etc.” I knew right then and there, that I didn’t mind losing, I just didn’t want to lose to that band in that way.

So we fought. We fought hard and told everyone we knew to get on that computer and blow it up. And we did. We won our right as a wildcard to make it to Dallas and the HOB and show our stuff to a new set of judges.

The odds were against us. They always were. We are one band out of 23 and the odds of winning were pretty tough. We didn’t win, but neither did the cocky band, and one of the best rewards was watching that band get all upset and throw things in a tantrum. Hard work bought me the right to see that moment, and I’m glad I did.

No matter what happens, in Bodog or in our other ventures, we are a band. We hope to always stay that way. In no way to I want to make this our “crowning achievement” or peak with this. I want to keep growing with these guys and going strong. I hope you stick with us.