Priscilla, Queen of the Texan Desert. We met our dear new friend Travis at the in-store show in Dallas yesterday at Good Records. I woke up this morning on the leather couch in his modest, yet clean and classy apartment at about 10:00 and took a shower. When I got out and walked into the kitchen, Logan was having last night's pizza for breakfast. I joined him for an early morning slice and a nutritious glass of Pepsi while milling about Travis' amazing CD collection, deciding which CDs I wanted to copy before we left for Austin. Travis' friend John came over at about noon and we hung out for a while before going to the local Strip Mall Chinese restaurant where I sampled of their crabby cheesy puffs. Mmmmm. We then drove forever to Best Buy to purchase Logan a new camera since we lost his two days before in Houston. The selection was slim, but we settled on a nice Kodak, said goodbye to John, and split the scene. Hopefully we'll get to see John's band, My Spacecoaster when they come to California. Apparently, they are an At-The-Drive-In-esque acrobatic rock outfit that occasionally bash each other apart on stage. Their CD is great.

The road to Austin was pretty boring. You know, the usual - giant caterpillars devouring the countryside, giant floating brains to the East, nothing new. I was pretty excited to check out Austin - I've been hearing about what fun that place is for the past year. We arrived at Beerland in downtown Austin at about 9pm and set our stuff up on stage. There was one other band besides us scheduled to play second called Black Box. I got really excited because my friend Ben's band is called Black Box and it would've been great to see him, but Billy the bartender assured me they were local. Billy suggested The Casino El Camino if we wanted to eat, so we cruised a couple blocks to check it out. On the way, we passed the bigger Austin indie club, Emo's where our fears were confirmed. Rye Coalition were playing there tonight, too. We heard they were playing in town, but less than a block away? Dammit! Why are awesome bands always playing the same towns as us on the same nights? We drowned our sorrows in burgers (veggie- and ham-) and chicken wings and walked back to the practically empty club.

We went to the bar to get a couple beers for the stage and some Beerland Texas t-shirts where we overheard a couple girls saying they were glad they made it on time to see us play. That's one thing about this trip that is pretty amazing to me. Every show we play, no matter how small the turnout, there is at least one or two people who have come out especially to see us, often driving hours as was the case with these girls. That makes the smallest shows really great as far as I'm concerned. Billy commented that I was in the band and the girls introduced themselves as Angie and Priscilla. They are the Austin area's Death Cab Fans Numbers 1 and 2 and were amped to see us so we went up and played a few songs for them, Black Box, and the Beerland Texas staff. The sound was good. I could hear myself through the loud monitors which is always a good time for me and I think we played pretty well. When we finished, we loaded off and went to the bar to hang with our receptive audience of two and watch Black Box play. They were a three-piece consisting of drums, guitar, and sampler attached to a guitar body. Their set was very stripped down and lo-fi, but endearing nonetheless. Our new friends didn't care for them at all.

After the show, we had not yet found a place to stay. We had called John from Fivehead who offered his garage/cottage for us to sleep in, but he had not called us back. Priscilla offered her place which she said was really close and we accepted. We later found that her 'place' was a rented room at the local Days' Inn. We loaded out of Beerland, said goodbye to the friendly staff and headed over to The Days' Inn. Priscilla had a good friend who bartends at the local watering hole and who (in special circumstances) keeps the bar open past closing time for good friends. Judah and Lauren opted out of some late-nite pool and decided to take it easy at the motel. Logan on the other hand was raring to go. If there's one thing Logan loves, it's the al-kee-haul. He can't get enough, the big boozer. He's like a chocoholic - but with BOOZE. So the four of us headed to the bar to get our pool on.

We showed up about five minutes before last call and got some drinks (Logan got a coke - he was driving tonight, much to his dismay) and we sat down at a table. I immediately recognized Joel from Pop Unknown (a Texas band we played in San Francisco with last year) at a nearby table and went over to say hi. We talked a bit about our show and how he hadn't heard about it (dammit!) and he wished he would've known. Pop Unknown will be in S.F. when we get home, so I hope to see him then. By this time the staff was getting a bit aggro about getting everybody out so they could close up. They let us stay (we're very important people) and we hung out and played pool until about 4:00am. The jukebox was too awesome to leave. We played Death Cab and The Cure and Thin Lizzy and Jane's Addiction non-stop. Logan's team whooped my team's ass with a rusty belt pool-wise. I attribute it to his sobriety and not cuz of his scientific genius and masterful trajectory sense. Finally, at 4:30 we arrived back at the Days' Inn where Judah and Lauren were already camped out on the floor. Logan and I snuggled in one bed while Priscilla took the remaining bed and we drifted off.

Josh