I really can’t believe I’m only writing my third update. This week has been insane and is really still happening (why this late), so it is important to understand I haven’t had the time to fully reflect on the events of the past week.
It started with the street fair in Huntington Beach on Tuesday, where fish tacos are $2.25 and Main street hosts live music and a farmers market. Kory introduced us to two girls who are apart of the Good Vibes Tour, which is a group of people who put on shows for free or ask for non-perishables as an entrance fee to give as donations to the food bank. We got to see their “spot” for the street fair, which was at the surfing museum on a side street that connects with Main. They had some live music and a table selling shirts and pictures as well as a local shaper’s selection of surfboards. We let them know about our trip and talked about the possibility of playing the following Tuesday for Cinco de Mayo. We didn’t know for sure if we’d be playing or not.
The next morning Kory had a casting audition in LA so we decided to head out with him. We got the full LA traffic understanding this time. The past trips we’ve made it in about 45 minutes to an hour, but when its hard picking songs that you haven’t already played, you know it’s been a while. I think it took us two and a half hours to get there but we eventually made it. Kory’s agency was in Melrose, which we later found was the fashion district, and understood really quickly our wallets weren’t going to be of any use here. Every store was so uniquely designed and furnished you couldn’t actually tell what anything was, and then just around the corner there was so many signs for each building you were just as easily confused. It was like walking through a page of Invisible Cities.
We left and picked up a friend of ours from WA who had just gotten back from a tour with the YikYak app team. We brought him to Newport, Keaton, Tyler and Brandon came down too because Keaton’s mom had flown down as well from WA for her daughter’s baby shower. And on top of it all Haley who is also from WA and who was with us the first week we were here drove over from Vegas and we all had an awesome reunion back at the surf shack with a fire, food and Steve DJ-ing til 4 am.
After a second night of partying, we got a call from our friends asking to perform at the show in Huntington for Cinco de Mayo. We accepted. The following two days were spent compiling all the song skeletons we had and turning them into a performable half hour set. Of the forty-eight hours we had, half was spent entirely on reading or writing the lyrics a quarter was spent sleeping and the other quarter eating and keeping level heads. We performed well, had a small audience, but the important thing was that we showed exactly what it is we are capable of and explained why we do what we do and had a fun time doing it. Kory got some good film of it and I want to have it ready before I talk about everything I’ve learned from the experience.
In the meantime, I’m writing this and relaxing after such a crazy week and watching game of thrones. There has been a powerful storm swell that came up from the south and created XL waves at the wedge which is a local big wave surf spot here (symbolic of my weeks intensity.) The footage as been amazing but saturated. instead of maybe seeing 1 or 2 good shots of someone dropping into a huge wave, it was all over the place. People’s ability to have a camera on them all the time has created a tolerance for how great things really are, or maybe we just get so focused on one thing we ruin the ability to enjoy anything else. This week I started focusing to directly on wether or not I could memorize my lyrics and I exhausted myself forcing to work on it. But as soon as I messed up my first lyrics on the first song I knew that it didn’t matter because its just about enjoying the moment. I took this picture last week and it reminds me that even when the waves get gnarly and huge and the wind stirs up, its usually when the sky looks most beautiful