PHOTO BY KATY DAVIDSON
ome Portlanders spend their spring break
at home, renting movies and cleaning out
their closets, watching bloated clouds
spew rain.
That is my idea of personal hell.
When I’m offered a week off at the end of
March, I like to do what anyone sensible
should do— get out of town.
So, for spring break this year, I decided to
take my three-piece pop band on a tour of the
great American West.
1 play guitar and sing in Dear Nora, a quaint
group of melodic musicians; my good friends
from Lewis & Clark College, Marianna
Ritchey and Ryan Wise, play drums and bass,
respectively.
At the end of February, we put out a four-
song 7” album on a local label, Magic Marker
Records, and late March seemed like a great
time to explore other cities’ all-ages clubs while
promoting our first official release.
The hardest part about going on a tour is
actually planning it. I spent the first three
months of the new millennium on the phone
booking shows, contacting other hands, renting
a car and finding tentative places to sleep (i.e.,
couches and floors).
As proof that modern-day miracles do
occur, Dear Nora drove away from Portland on
the overcast morning of March 23. Though we
are all too young to rent a car legally in the
United-States, we zoomed down 1-5 in a brand
new, sporty-for-us Ford Taurus. (D on’t ask.)
Our first destination was a record store called
the Works, located in downtown Areata, Calif.
Once through Grants Pass, Ore., we snaked
out toward the ocean on a windy, gorgeous
stretch of highway. When we rolled into Area
ta, "it was all about the rock,” as my punk
housemate would say.
Lunchbox— a lounge-pop band from Oak
land, Calif., that has also released music on the
Magic Marker label— opened the show. The
d r i v e w h t i P rid e
Ri • '
Three young Portland
musicians hit the road
on a do-it-yourself
adventure
by
K aty D avidson
evening was a reunion of sorts, because our
band had played in the Lunchbox basement
last December during a short tour of the Bay
area. Later, we discovered that community was
a recurring theme throughout our tour.
Interspersed between rows of records and
CDs, about 20 people watched the show. We
were a tad nervous, but we played solidly and
nicely. We topped off the night at the Areata
bowling alley, which doubles as a pool hall and
a karaoke bar. Around 11 p.m., we nestled into
our sleeping bags on the floor of a small record
ing room in a elegantly run-down house near
the beach and fell asleep thinking of the days
ahead.
Early the next morning, we set out for San
Francisco. Gradually, the mountains turned to
meadows, and trees morphed into immeasur
able rows of grapevines.
We hit the city by early
afternoon and were able to
stretch out under the sun
in Golden Gate Park for a
few hours before reporting
to the club.
That night we played
an early show at San Fran
cisco State University with
a cute, sloppy band called
the Cave-ins to a college
crowd of about 50.
We played the next
evening in San Francisco
as well, at a bigger club
called the Bottom of the
Hill. We opened for lesbian
singer-songwriter Sarah Dougher, so a good
percentage of the crowd was queer, and we
played to the largest audience of the tour— 120
people or so.
The funniest moment of the show occurred
when I jokingly asked the crowd to be com
pletely silent for the next song. From the
depths of the quiet audience, a young woman
offered an annoyed-sounding “Fuck you!" and
everyone started laughing. When she realized
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what had happened, she explained to me (and
everyone else) that she was talking to her sis
ter. I offered: “Well, maybe you should be nicer
to your sister next time.” Then I asked if she
wanted to come sit on the stage with us.
The next night we played in the demilita
rized zone known as downtown Los Angeles, at
a makeshift club aptly dubbed the Smell. It was
Sunday, and the Academy Awards were being
presented across town, so we pretty much fig
ured our show was doomed. Up until the
minute we started playing, the concrete-ware-
house venue was completely empty. Suddenly,
40 people showed up out of nowhere. We
played with a ton of energy, and the crowd
danced like they were on American Bandstand.
The next morning, we drove across the
desert to Phoenix and admired how drastically
the landscape had changed in a mere four days.
That night, we fell asleep in my comfortable
hometown of Cave Creek, Ariz., listening to
the crickets and coyotes singing to the moon.
Well-rested from our night off, we played a
tight show in downtown Phoenix the following
evening at a small all-ages club and art gallery
called Modified. We opened for Dougher once
again, so the show was another reunion of
sorts.
The venue was packed and we played well,
but the audience seemed to stare at us like
stunned cows all through the set. At one point
1 asked, “Did you guys eat something bad for
dinner?” After we played, 1 sat at a table to sell
records and T-shirts to pay for our gas expenses,
and people approached me one by one. “We
were so quiet because we’ve honestly seen
nothing like your band," they said. Though I’m
sure this was meant as a compliment, I realized
I could interpret the statement in a number of
different ways.
After a night off in Telluride, Colo., we
7372 $ W Capitol Highway
Portland. OR 97219 • 503-2464267
We are located In Multnomah Village near
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■ K aty D avidson is a Just Out staff uniter. She
can be reached at katy@justout.com.
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pushed on to Denver. As we approached the
city limits, clouds gathered above us like hang
ing clumps of dirty ice cream. We cautiously
inched closer as heaping buckets of fresh snow
fell onto the freeway.
Much to our surprise, we played at an enor
mous venue called the Bluebird Theater, simi
lar in size to the Aladdin Theater in Portland.
Illuminated on the grand marquee out front,
our name stood like a soldier in the snow. The
surprising part was that people actually trudged
through the bad weather to see us.
Driving between Denver and Salt Lake City
the next day was about as fun as drilling nails
into our skulls. The freeway was snow-packed
for the first three hours and traffic-filled for the
final hour. We rolled into Salt Lake about an
hour before the show was supposed to start,
and that night we played to about 35 rebel
Mormons in a shack called Kilby Court.
Our final show was in Richland, Wash., at a
Chinese-American food restaurant called Lee’s
Tahitian. We played with a performance art
duo named the Lamborghinis and a punk band
called the Turn-Offs. We called our last perfor
mance the “Speeding Ticket Benefit Show” in
honor of the cop who caught me cruising into
the Tri-Cities at our usual 80 mph.
It was emotional to finish our tour, but we
were ready to become ^acquainted with our
own beds. In a delirious state, we drove back to
Portland after the show and arrived at my
house at 3 a.m.
Many major label rock bands like to tour
the United States in the comfort of tour buses
and hotel rooms. For me, the best thing about
the trip was the no-frills attitude. I would do it
all again in a second.
C
r lo r ist
C h r i s t i n a S ig w a r t
clsigwart@hotmail.com
122nd & East Burnside
www.vwcity.net
Dear N ora members (from left) Katy Davidson, Marianna Ritchey and Ryan Wise
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