Show report by Vyan

In direct contrast to our last show at the Town Pump, this show - at the Speakeasy Hotel in downtown Reno was far from a breeze.

It was a nightmare.

But it's a nightmare I'm well familiar with in the world of live music, and particularly hard rock. Things you can't control happen all the time. You get used to it. Eventually.

Keen

The first wake-up call that this wouldn't be a cakewalk was that while riding up the hill from Sacramento to Reno in Jay (Guitar) Pate's SUV, we started to hearing a strange knocking sound from the engine. Then we started smelling a strange machinelike burning odor.

Uh oh.

Our initial thought was that this was transmission trouble, since the car was also towing all our gear in a trailer and the tranny was starting to burn up as we climbed into the Sierra's. Fortunately our other guitarist Dave, is a mechanic in his day job. We eventually pulled over so he could take a look at things and it was all right, just a bad valve leaking from the manifold. Noisy - smelly - but not dangerous. We could still make it to the gig.

First crisis averted.

Then came crisis or rather problem number two.

When arrived at the venue, which is a small hotel/casino just a few blocks from the main Reno gambling "strip", and we found out that the radio advertising that had been setup for the show had been hyping the wrong day. The show was on Friday night, the ad had said it was on Saturday - so we could expect a significant drop in turnout due to the confusion.

Great.

It's something to be expected when you do an out-of-town gig - nobody there knows us, at least not yet - but it wasn't exactly what we hoped for. Still there were a few fans that had come out to venue, which had recently been sold in the past two months and the new owners who were attempting to use live music to offset the fact that the didn't have a gambling license. (The license had left the venue with the previous owners)

The venue itself was a actually a small convention center attached to the hotel. I say it's small as a convention center compared to others I've seen in Sac or LA, but as a local live music venue it's was a pretty good size, with the capacity to hold 600-800 people easily. Unfortunately - a capacity crowd was the last thing we could expect on this particular evening.

After all these problems, the big bright spot was the other bands themselves, starting with Reno natives KEEN! I was already a Keen fan, as I've found out about them a couple years ago via mp3.com and had downloaded a couple tracks. I have to say that live - they put their recordings to shame. I was extremely impressed by the vocals of Chelsey (Keen) as well as the drums and backing vocals by Jesse Easter, as well as the inventive playing of Nate Pearson (bass) and Casey Keen (guitar). IMO these guys had the ellusive "IT" factor. It's difficult to describe, but it's just something you can feel. Having been together for several years, the band had apparently been courted by Atlantic Records for a while before having a falling out with the label and taking a year off. This was their fifth show since that break, and the cobwebs were definitely off. Besides performing the two songs I already knew "Smile on your face" and "281" from mp3.com, they also threw in a medly of Tool songs, and managed to perform them with ease while still maintaining their own unique signature sound in the process (which is equal parts Tool and Evanecense, without the Linkin Park pretensions) Good stuff.

After their set I had a chance to chat with Casey and Chelsey Keen - who are a couple, but from what I gathered not in an icky "White Stripes" on-again off-again brother/husband/sister/wife kind of way, just a regular couple who play together in the same group - about their band and experiences. A little "road story" trading if you will. And Chelsey had this one story about a nightmare gig they'd played in Reno where some guy had shown up at the venue spouting gibberish and completely naked except for a one single item of "apparel".

A carrot stuck up his butt.

Ewwww!

Eventually the police had arrived and carted the guy off, but he left a souvenir.

The Carrot, now broken, was sitting on the ground right by Keen's van as they tried to unload their gear and leave. And it's not like they were gonna try and move it - I mean, they knew where it had been, right?

Let me say it again, ewwww!

Lingus

Anyway, the band up second was Lingus, also a native Reno NV Group. These guys were definitely heavy - with a sound that mixed many different bands, from Metallica and Slayer to Monster Magnet. They put on a smooth show, with some great grooving riffs, leads and impressive growling vocals in harmony. Nice. I like. If you can catch this band - anytime - anywhere - you should. Unfortunately there weren't a lot of people catching them here this particular evening. And once they finished we learned another little detail about the Reno live scene.

Surprise number two : They have a curfew for kids in Reno.

Kids have to be home by 11pm, which happened to be just when Lingus finished and about 20 mins before our set started.

Oh well, there were still people there - maybe a half dozen or so - and they still deserved to be entertained so we went on and did our deal ignoring the limited audience and running through a shortened version of our set in order to leave some time for the last band - Esoteric. Two buddies/musicians - Dave and Adam of the musical duo Zero Ground had ridden up to Reno with us and were creating their own little two man mosh pit as we played. Hey - at least they were glad to see us perform - especially after all the free beer we'd given the way up to Reno - what's a road trip without a cooler full of Coors, I mean really? I did have a bit of a hard time hearing myself with the monitors, but it was still fun to just go at little crazy on stage and not have to worry what anyone thought. Sometimes these small crowd shows are really liberating.

After we finished our performance, we received surprise number three: Esoteric, who are from the Chico area of NorCal, had decided to leave and skip playing entirely. Oh KAY! Whatever.

As a result the remaining Speakeasy employees proceeded to shut everything down and then let those of us who remained have free access to the hotel's bar for the rest of the night. No charge.

Sweet!

Afterward, the gal who had bartended the gig even hung out with us until a late 3am trip to Denny's before we eventual made the long drive home. She felt we were a change of pace from the average Reno resident, with plenty of quips and one liners provided by Jay and the other Dave. (Our trip down to Reno was truly something - with lots of extremely blue humor and Adam Sandler references - " F*ck me in de f*cking goat ass." - flowing nonstop. Definitely a highpoint of low brow comedy, indeed.

Anyway, as bad as this gig eventually turned out - we made some new friends with the guys (and gal) in Keen and Lingus, as well as the employees of the Speakeasy - and we didn't have to worry about any butt-carrots sitting by our gear, so I still consider it one in the "plus column".

Others may disagree, but that's my story - I'm sticking to it.

Vyan