On Playing Afternoon Gigs: 826LA Benefit Recap

When I was 19 a label paid for my band to go record in Oklahoma City. I learned things on that trip like how to massage an engineer's ego to avoid his coked-out rants, how to "not get artsy" with my drumming, and most importantly, that "rock don't happen before noon." And while our set at the Chickens In Love 826LA Benefit Show on Saturday began at 1:40pm, the old adage that rock don't happen early in the day rang true enough.

Having little experience on larger stages and having just played the ultra intimate Pehrspace last week, depending on a monitor mix without any kind of sound check was daunting to say the least. However, we still did what we do: we gave it our best and closed with our kids cover "Mexican Food." During the set I was consistently amused by how much self editing I had to do on the fly to avoid dropping the F bomb on a bunch of 8 year olds. Furthermore, our songs are pretty much all "adult content" and I felt self conscious singing about drugs and sex and loss pretty much throughout. We did receive some chuckles from those who know the lyrics at my alternate versions.

After us we enjoyed sets by the Pity Party and Submarines, but the true highlight for me was Thao Nguyen from the Get Down Stay Down. She brought it and sold it. Very impressive set. It's the kind of band I always wanna play with because her presence is so commanding. Hopefully we'll get to play with her and her whole band someday soon.

In case you missed the show or the live webcast (which apparently had 30,000 viewrs?!), here's us playing "Son."