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RJX loves Tahoe. Tahoe loves RJX. We played at Bar of America in Truckee close to 20 times between 2001-2004, but it’d been three years since we’d been there (on account of us not being a band anymore). Mike–visiting from NYC–provided the video camera, and thanks to our friend Peter for lending his impromptu professional photography sensibilities.
For some reason these remind me of a mid-career “back to the studio” type video that some bands make (Steely Dan comes to mind), but it’s just a live performance with really low lighting. And we seem unusually well-dressed and well-behaved. Okay maybe “old” is the word I’m looking for.
Skip ahead for complete mp3s of all 3 sets both nights. But first, seems appropriate the kick things off with the tune we wrote for the gig we’re playing, Truckee:
One last trip to the bridge. I think we knew the end/hiatus was nigh for this one, but the jams were kicked out nonetheless. mp3s:
I’m not sure that we even emailed anyone about this one - figured we’d pummeled our three Tahoe fans into submission enough and it was time to let local word-of-mouth work for itself. It, umm… didn’t… but we apparently had fierce competition from a nearby Reggae festival (where our three Tahoe fans went that night, along with a few thousand other folks). Nonetheless, Blake’s epic soundsystem helped capture our show, mellow though it may have been. Here are some mp3s:
Who can resist smitten/splooged forefathers? Actually, funny thing about this weekend was that the Friday night show was the first and only time in RJX @ BofA history that Bill Kenny (the BofA bar manager and patron saint of Truckee nightlife) gave us the thumbs down on the performance. Wasn’t harsh about it, just gave us a “eh, you can’t nail it every time” line as he was drowning us in tequila shots at the end of the night.
Needless to say, Saturday’s performance was about earning our keep at the one place that’d consistently brought out our best chops and creativity. These are a few of Saturday’s tracks, variously sliced up per Shirey’s media management whimsy-of-the-week:
- Sly and Robbie ad libbing - with DJ Mike Park on the loopy mic
- Too Many Sparks
- Where’s Walker jam > Funk Bomb
- Truckee jam
- In 3s jam
- 5/4
- Degobaah - no idea what tune this little nugget sprouted out of
It’s not that Bar of America was the only place we ever played, it’s just one of the few places we’d consistently get recordings we wanted to listen to later. The audio quality on this one is a little shaky since we left the audience mic dangling from a pole instead of propping it up to point toward the stage, but the show was solid enough to sink a little time into cranking out another CD. Plus, you get to hear some pretty hilarious audience banter as a result of the unfortunate mic placement…
mp3s:
- Killer Wife > In 3s (lyrics support from the crowd)
- Margaritaville
- Money Maker > Peace Frog
- Timbalito
We played this promo event here right after the “Village at Squaw Valley” opened. Gorgeous day in the mountains, great brews, saucy babe in tights on stilts - too bad the attendance wasn’t tremendous, but the place is a little off the beaten path. Regardless, we took home the biggest single-show paycheck of our uber-distinguished careers. We also got a kick out of the fact that jamband A-listers ALO (aka Animal Liberation Orchestra) were also on the bill but we were the headlining act. Not that this had anything to do with them having aNOTHER gig that night in the city they had to dash back for…
Eternal thanks to Dave Walters for recording and mixing down the tracks!
This was technically not our first gig at Sierra Vista - just the first one where the the power stayed on longer than 20 minutes and the roads weren’t buried in 2 feet of fresh snow. After being treated to a lakeside sunset meal from the dining room, we got a tour of resident sound guru (and Humpty’s alum) Blake’s storied vintage house audio set-up, including PA, soundboard, and monitor components from Grateful Dead and String Cheese Incident tours.
The turnout wasn’t stellar and our energy never matched the mile-high elevation, but the soundboard recording of our mediocre performance was pristine. Pristine enough that Andy–unemployed at the time–decided to sink some serious time into patching together a CD’s worth of tracks for mass-distribution at High Sierra Festival one month hence. Here’s a sampler:
- Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
- Ass Ripper (aka Ripper’s Revenge)
- Where’s Walker
- Too Many Sparks
- Hindsight
This was our first big gig weekend as a quartet after half our namesake (Jeremy Walker) high-tailed to Chicago. We had a bunch of new material to fill any gaps in the weekend–including the “Where’s Walker” tribute to Jer–but I think we were still surprised at how solidly the shows came together. This weekend definitely fueled our confidence to push onward as a 4-piece.
The buzz didn’t last too long though - within a week our studio on Natoma St in SOMA was broken into and Aaron’s classic Les Paul was ganked, along with a mixing board or something comparatively trivial. The superstitious among us (read: Andy) sensed our all-too-good Tahoe karma was coming back to bite us in SF. Aaron channeled his angst into our new tune “Complaints”, a gripe against the guitar-theft gods. Whatever it takes to crank out new material when your lead vocalist skips town!
Long-lost mp3 scraps from the weekend: