driving through sleet fog and pounding rain for 7 1/2 hours on a 5-hour drive. why is the 126 still closed? wine country is beautiful but not in the dark rain. brohamm rock to the rescue YET AGAIN. made the gig just in time to not get pizza but shitty sandwiches instead. left poor tip. club was good. the people were very nice. san jo girls remind me of reno girls. learned 'jumping for dollars' game from soda; could not get soda to play 'jumping for dollars' but still got to watch him do a 50-yard dash. fighting to stay awake on way home like never before. sidney bechet helps me out when i need lift. mike and i made feeble attempt at conversation then settled on alphabetical band names game; stopped quickly in great frustration after realizing there are very few band names that begin with X. a fine trip.

Sax sound truimphs and then...major malfunction! First it giveth then it taketh away. Soup saves the day again. Master of Puppets pumps us up before a total meltdown. A friend of ours saves the day and I hung out with my Mom. What a long, strange trip it was.

last night's show at the knitting factory was amazing! sound was phenomenal, lots of new faces-- thanks to the LA Weekly for making us a pick of the week and getting everybody out! also special thanks to mark miller for coming down on last minute notice and playing some guitar-- soda's broken pinky thanks you very much, and so do all of we. kudos as well to chat matt for braving a fever and a swarm of angry wisdom teeth in order to get his evil, chair-based rock on. kudos to me for fixing my broken horn with duct tape minutes before the show began! and to fay, for providing the duct tape! and finally, a special hello to that guy from japan... never did catch your name, but we'll be in touch.

ps. HOLY CRAP I FORGOT TO THANK JAY JAY FOR USING HER SECRET SPECIAL FEMININE POWERS TO SELL ALL OUR CDS!!!!! THANK YOU JAY JAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks Soda, you are a trooper; I know how much a broken finger can hurt, and you gutted it through in true style, looking like you were having the greatest time in the world up there.

Hats off to Deacon and Mark Miller for very capably filling up the holes, and to the Idaho Falls.

It was also most exciting to see many in the crowd singing along to the various songs, "You Cheat" in particular. Of course, my personal highlight was getting to watch baby Iris dance on the front of the stage as we played, but I guess that's just 'proud papa' syndrome taking over!

If you've not had the chance to see Torrance Jackson try to fit his "ginormous" (JJ) body into the typically tiny spaces that the Soda band gets packed in and crank out some awesomely huge sound, well, you just suck. He and the band turned a houseload of hipsters from being too cool for school, to down with the ho-down; the house clapped the gang through a well-requested encore and a helluva lot more afterwards. It's funny to think that I once saw this same gentle giant almost beat the shit out of my friend over at the Burgundy Room, but hey, my friend was being a jackass, and he can't sing like Torrance.