Woke up today after a nice sleep; Steve and I in the van, Jason and Boomer in the hotel, ready to get the day started in Dallas. We headed towards downtown Dallas with no goals in mind and ended up next to the largest building we could find ready to explore the city. We walked around for awhile downtown and decided that we wanted to get to the top of a building and see the view of the city. We walked into a really nice looking Sheridan hotel and promptly walked past the front desk acting like we lived there and rode the elevators to the 32nd floor. Jason found an employee door to a staircase and we followed that up to the 39th floor. Somehow in that shuffle we all got separated roaming around a seemingly empty top 10 floors of the Sheridan. Jason and I met in a banquet room the size of an entire floor and played on a baby grand piano for awhile, got some milk from the fridges and went down to the bar where we inevitably found Boomer and Steve talking with an old record producer. We took some pictures with the dude and headed back to the van to find the venue, The Lakewood Bar and Grill. We arrived at the venue and parked and still had about 3 hours to kill so Steve went on a walk, Jason took a nap, and Boomer and I took the old First Act acoustic guitar and merchandise booth out for a walk to see if we could drum up some support for the show. We saw a Whole Foods nearby and decided to try it out. We walked around the aisles, playing guitar and singing to innocent shopping people. We serenaded a lady and got some energy bars, some gum drops, sung to a couple of little girls (ending in a $.50 tip), and then posted up by the olives and played for another 15 minutes. At the end of that 15 minutes a couple stopped and listened for awhile and we got to talking to them Hank, the guy, said that he played harmonica. Just as he said that, one of the store clerks decided that random kids with guitars don't belong in Whole Foods and kicked us out. We decided to go right outside the doors and play, Hank with his harmonicas, and played a couple of tunes with us outside. After the , we headed back to the van, unloaded our stuff in the venue and got ready for the show. After watching the first half of the national championship game we started playing for about 4 people in the bar. At the end of the first set we had a couple of fans, one already wearing an Ave. shirt and holding 2 Ave. cds. As we started playing the second set, Hank and his wife showed up and Hank hopped up and started playing harmonica with us on about 5 tracks. At the end of the show we traded some information with the people there, got a few contacts in LA and Portland, and packed up our stuff and started on the road to Austin TX, live music capital of the world.
-Aaron E.
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