So here we are at the Hotel Colorado in Glenwood Springs. We’ve been playing out in Colorado for the last week and it has been insanely fun. We started the week off playing to an amazing dancing crowd at the Abbey Theatre in Durango. Coming from the Seldom Scene I’d never really played to a crowd where basically everyone I could see was dancing and getting into the music that way. It was really cool — they definitely fed us lots of energy. After the show I got to meet Burle, who lived up to all the legendary hype — he is the man!
Then, the next day we headed up to Lyons where we played to a sold out house at Rogers Hall. One of our favorite young musicians, Dominic Leslie, came and sat in with us at the end and completely tore it down. Later that night we headed off to Oscar Blues. After that things begin to get fuzzy… But thanks to KC Groves from Uncle Earl who put a few of us up at her place and John who cooked everyone breakfast.
After a lazy Sunday morning in Lyons we packed up the van and headed to Boulder to Beth and Gus’ house where we played a house concert. The amazing thing about trips like these is that you meet the nicest, most gracious people. Beth, Gus, and Kat should win an award for taking all of us Stringdusters in and putting up with us for the three days that we stayed there. They are truly some of the nicest people I’ve ever encountered.
Since we had a few days off in Boulder, Rebecca Hoggan from Hit and Run offered to take us for a hike one day. I think we all thought we were in for a mellow stroll through the shallow hills at the base of the mountain. Not so. We hiked to the summit of Bear Mountain, which most Boulderites conceded was probably the toughest hike nearby. Wow, I’d like to think it was the altitude… we, umm, are not in the best of shape. The view was amazing though and it was good to get some exercise, something that can be hard to come by on the road.
Last night we went to the Leslie’s house in Evergreen where we had an amazing dinner and an equally amazing slam dunk contest. Pandolfi (who was an all-american lacrosse player in college — pretty much the jock of the band) was the undisputed champion, of course. Many thanks to Donna, Owen, Dom and the rest of the Leslie crew for everything.
And today — my god, today was ridiculous. Today, on the way to Glenwood Springs we decided to stop at a rest area for a little bit of recreation. There was a huge white snowy hill covered in sled tracks that looked like it’d be fun to mess around on. But we didn’t really have a plan; maybe we’d just wander around on it, throw a few snowballs, make snow angels (I’d probably be the only one doing that), whatever. Winter recreation. But Jeremy had a genius idea to take the band’s inflatable mattress, blow it up, and use it as a snow raft of sorts. This provided hours of stupid entertainment. Oh man, it was fun. I took pictures and videos so maybe we can get some of them on the website soon, or at least the myspace page. Hope to see you all soon…
love,
Critter
p.s. sorry about the lack of journal entries but the blog hasn’t been working right…