San Diego, California is a beautiful place! A laid back kinda vibe, nice beaches and friendly folk. This was our first show in a string of dates through this beautiful state! Tonight’s venue is called The Casbah, so it was pretty cool to literally ‘rock the Casbah’ just one time in our musical careers, even if it’s not the actual Casbah! The venue was right opposite the San Diego airport, so we had quite the showing of landing planes right above our heads if we stepped out the front door.
Los Angeles, CA and if there’s a swimming pool you can guarantee that Slatts is only moments from jumping in it, no matter how cold it may be!! We played a venue called Complex that night and the pool party continued on stage as the audience participation fired up and threw water back at Youngy and all over everything, causing half the stage power to short out! We got through the set though and the staff mopped up the mess before Weedeater continued the frenzy. My friend Laura baked us some delicious cookies too!
The 3rd show in Cali was at Catalyst in Santa Cruz. This venue is HUGE, boasting 2 big live rooms, bars and a great little Pizza restaurant. We played in the smaller of the 2 rooms to a sizable crowd, considering Santa Cruz is quite a tourist hub. In the room next-door, old school rockers Y & T were playing. I’d never heard of them, but the old dudes (Weedeater and Squiz, ha) were all seemingly quite excited that these blokes were still going! I got a kick out of the posted set times, as you can see in the picture! The promoter told us we were playing at 10.10pm, and the schedule said we played from 10.05 – 11pm for 45 mins. A simple typo, but still fun!
San Francisco, California was up next! We got to spend a couple of days at Schenck Manor just out of town with our friend Jeff Schenck (who also snapped this live shot for us, cheers Jeff), on a mountain overlooking the bay! After a fantastic feed of Mexican food for lunch, we got ourselves together and headed into town. We played the DNA lounge, which has one of the coolest stages ever! Check out that drum riser!! My friend Anton from Sick Drummer Magazine also filmed this show! It’ll be cool to see how the footage looks!
A lovely morning view of the bay from Schenck Manor before we hit the road again, bound for Sacramento. Sac was the 5th and final Cali show on this run and it’s always a riot when we play out that way!! Tonight was no different, with many familiar faces turning up to the Starlite Lounge to enjoy the show! And enjoy it they did! Apparently word is spreading around these parts and the shows keep getting better and crazier! It’s so cool to see people getting excited about seeing a bunch Aussie blokes ripping out some tunes!
Portland, Oregon has always been good to King Parrot! The underground scene in the northwestern USA is unreal, and people there are very open to checking out new music. We played a place called Dantes, which had a huge stage and a great vibe! The greenroom was downstairs and not built for tall folk like myself. I was a little dazed at this show, possibly from the several knocks to the head I had endured warming up in the greenroom.. But the crowd went off and we all had a good time! And speaking of taking knock to the head, Danger Ehren of Jackass fame was there taking photos! He’s a Portland local and said he goes to as many shows as he can and takes photos when he’s not kicking his own ass on the Jackass set! Nice guy. Here’s a pic of myself with Danger Ehren outside Dantes in Portland, OR!
Seattle, Washington was next. I’m a grunge kid and grew up listening to Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney and the likes. So Seattle is a city I love to visit not only for it’s history and personal influences, but also, like Portland, for it’s thriving underground scene! We played a venue called Studio Seven, which is on the outskirts of the CBD. It’s a massive live room with mezzanine, a whole heap of rehearsal rooms and recording facilities. There’s even a Tattoo studio in there! The crowd are a bit more active tonight as we pound through our set!! We spent the night with our friends Theories (check them out, great band!!!), then made our way through the beautiful snow capped mountains to Spokane.
Spokane, Washington and it was well and truly cold!! We had now gone from Aussie summer, to the end of Euro winter, to summer like weather in the south of the USA, and worked our way back up to the tail end of winter, all within a few weeks. So the winter woolys came out again in full effect! As you can see, the boys have huddled up on the couch for warmth whilst Mr White and myself are photo bombing in the mirror!! We had played Spokane back in December when we were out with Down and Orange Goblin, so it was nice to see some King Parrot shirts in the crowd!
On to Boise, Idaho and what a cool little city this is! After a snooze and a nice stroll through town, we loaded in to Neurolux and prepared ourselves for the show! According to the locals, a number of tours will skip Boise and other Midwest cities in favour of the bigger, coastal cities. So a healthy sized crowd showed up for this evenings entertainment. And we didn’t need to hang our backdrop on this occasion as the venue already had a lit up crown on stage, fit for a King (Parrot)!! Here’s Youngy’s cute bum and me posing in front of the crown!!
Salt Lake City, Utah! It’s a strange town. We have a few friends there who are cool, but it’s a strange town. The support band was a family by the look of it, a father and his sons, all quite talented I might add. They dressed in wizard outfits during their set in this strange town. There was a great taco stand just opposite the venue in a strange part of town. This is the only photo I took in Salt Lake City, and surprisingly it’s a photo of nothing and it’s a little strange, just like Salt Lake City.
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King Parrot return to Australia next month to tour their brand new record Dead Set, out May 15th, with special guests High Tension and Colossvs. The full tour dates are here:
Thursday, 14 May -The Loft, Warrnambool, VIC 18+
Friday, 15 May – Fowlers, Adelaide, SA LIC/AA
Saturday, 16 May -The Corner, Richmond, VIC 18+
Sunday, 17 May – Wrangler, Footscray, VIC AA
Thursday, 21 May – Magpies, Canberra, ACT LIC/AA
Friday, 22 May – Corrimal Hotel, Wollongong, NSW 18+
Saturday, 23 May – Newtown Social Club, Sydney, NSW 18+
Sunday, 24 May- Small Ballroom, Newcastle, NSW 18+
Thursday, 28 May – Tatt’s Hotel, Lismore, NSW 18+
Friday, 29 May – Coolangatta Hotel, Gold Coast, QLD 18+
Saturday, 30 May- Crowbar, Brisbane, QLD U18
Saturday, 30 May- Crowbar, Brisbane, QLD 18+
Friday, 5 June – Prince Of Wales, Bunbury, WA 18+
Saturday, 6 June – Amplifier, Perth, WA 18+
Sunday, 7 June – HQ, Perth, WA AA
Album pre-order bundles with tickets available now: http://nervegas.com.au/king-parrot/dead-set/. And for more details on the band, follow them on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kingparrotband
Look back at part one HERE.
