The Forbidden Sleeping Bag Dance of Soon Yi. At 9:00 am, Soon Yi the Pug (Slowdance Records CEO since 1999) licks my sleepy teeth clean (um, gross) and climbs into my sleeping bag. Grunting and snorting as she goes, she makes her way down to the far end of my sleeping bag and settles down to sleep between my feet. My worry of crushing the poor dog soon fades and I drift off again.

At about noon, I'm up again and stirring the rest of the kids for some peanut butter toast and fruit. It's day two of sleeping on Ezra's floor and we're pretty much just chillin - checking the old email, making a few phone calls, making frequent trips to and from the van, and chasing down the local postman to take with him my postcards. We pack up our stuff and get on the road at around two. Last night's show was a good time. Between the Dysfunctional Family Feud and the free Pabst Blue Ribbons at the Blackbird, I had my fair share of cocktails, I'm not gonna lie to ya.

It's a rainy, three hour drive up the five to get to Seattle and another 15 minutes to Redmond where the show is. After getting directions from the friendly Redmond Starbucks Coworkers, we arrive at the Old Fire House. It really is an old firehouse, converted into a music hall and teen center. Along the walls, are flyers from previous shows that they've hosted, including Fugazi & Jawbreaker to name a couple. It's warm and the staff is friendly so we hang out in there for a while where we soon meet Baxter, the three legged dog (See photo) who may live at the Firehouse, I'm not sure. Matt from the band The November Group and Tomo from Asahi set the show up for us and they're both sweethearts. Matt greets us and offers us day-old donut holes and ramen for dinner, which Logan and I promptly begin consuming in their little kitchen. It becomes clear that the donut holes aren't gonna tide our eternally hungry crew over for very long, so we get directions to the local favorite Mexican food place, Acapulco Fresh.

Now, I've come to find that the further away from Mexico you get, the less scrumptious the Mexican fare. For example: Southern California and Arizona have probably some of the greatest Mexican food ever, while on the other hand, east coast Mexican food is generally god-awful. This hypothesis of mine, combined with my theory that Mexican restaurants using the words "Grill" or "Southwest" in their name are bound to suck hellamuch, made me wary of Redmond's "Acapulco Fresh Mexican Grill". However, the affordable prices were pretty attractive and upon sampling their wares, I'd give the place a thumbs up. Maybe my theories don't apply unless there is an 'e' on the word 'Grille'.

Enough about that. The first band, Bras Lux goes on at about eight. They're a predominantly instrumental three-piece and pretty good. It turns out that the second band's drummer is stranded somewhere with a broken down car, so we take the stage second. As we're setting up, a lot of our friends show up: Tomo and Kelly and friends from Asahi, our friend Greg Patterson, and Matt and Mandy, who we stayed with during the recording of our album. We're all set up to go and 1, 2, 3.... Judah's mic isn't working. Um, there's no sound coming out of Judah's mic. So we wait a few minutes for the sound guy to fix the problem. La dee da. So, yeah, how' bout them Ducks? O, what, we're ready to go? Alright 1, 2... o jeez, Logan's mic doesn't work. Check, check. Hello? So, yeah... Oh, okay we're ready.... 1, 2, 3, 4, duummmm, dahhhhh..... doo doot de doot dooo daaaa......

Thirty minutes later, we were done. I think the show was pretty rocking. Rana, a staff member at the Old Firehouse bought one of everything we had and gave Logan a candy bar to boot (See photo).

Hourglass Lake goes on right after us. There's five people in that band including a girl who plays keyboards and viola. She provided the shining moment in my eyes when she rocked the last song on viola with a delay pedal. Following them was Dolour, a quartet of local Seattle boys who performed a sloppy, yet endearing set of finely crafted, piano based pop songs.

So to make a long story slightly less long, we say our goodbyes to Kate and Matt and crew at The Old Firehouse and head back to Matt and Mandy's - our home away from home in Seattle (See photo). I lay out my sleeping bag on the futon in the living room and begin brushing pug hair off from the previous nights. Oh, I'll see you tomorrow Soon Yi.

Nighty nite.
Josh