Fires, Mushrooms and Mormons

                                                     (on tour with Gabe Smith)

   Fort Collins had been on fire for the last majority of the last month; the high park fire was the largest fire in Colorado History,

totaling a burn of 87,284 acres. Right under that record there was the Waldo Canyon Fire, still going, burning almost 20,000 acres and causing the evacuation of 32,000 people. Fort Collins was the current residence of Gabe Smith, I had come up for a month to record a split and go camping – which due to the fact that all of the outside of fort collins was on fire the time I was there, I never did. Now the split was finished and the month was almost done, I left with Gabe on a two day tour heading to Idaho, stopping for two shows in Grand Junction and Salt lake City.

      "Do you remember the first time we met Gabe?"

      "Oh that apartment, was I on a lot of psychedelics?"

   “the story I heard was that you had like, the day before I met you you had come up on a greyhound and met kelley...”

      "well what happened was, I was living in Provo, I had just dropped out high school, got out of my parents house and I don't know I was raised Mormon for some fucking reason, I think it's when my sister lived in Provo Utah, where BYU is. I went there and I got really depressed. And I had a good amount of money, so this guy had a bunch of lsd and a couple other you know designer drugs so I bought like 27 hits of various things and took most of them in the course of two days. I didn't freak out but I was just like I gotta get out of this town"

  "so I'm on this greyhound and had just woken up from like 8 hours of being passed out because of my binge on hallucinogenic drugs and I wake up and there's this short kind of Irish looking guy, he's got a really groggy voice and he's like, “hey brother do you want to smoke some pot at the next stop?” and I'm like, “yeah sure” so we get off and go around the corner and the bus driver comes around and he see's us and he's like well as long as you guys don't cause any trouble on my bus I don't care. so we're smoking and we finished the bowl and we walk around the corner and the fucking greyhounds gone.

  "We're freaking out because Kelly just by circumstance happened to have 2 vials of acid.and 3 ounces of mushrooms in his bag. So he was freaking out.”

“that was on the greyhound?”

This is Gabe taking a drink of a smoothie we were told had 4 ounces of mushrooms in it (photo: Sally Boyd)

   “yeah, that was on the greyhound. And my fucking iPod got stolen. so we hitchhike to twin falls, beat the bus to the greyhound station, and got back on. So we finally get back to Boise and I don't know, Kelly, he was a nice guy you know, I wouldn't probably hang out with him, but you know that was a bonding experience and he ended up giving a lot of people free mushrooms." 

"so I think i met you the day after that, we were hanging out, or how many days later,”

  “ya, it was a couple days”

"it was at rays house.. when I met you you had just scarfed down probably like an 1/8th of mushrooms or something like that”

“oh yeah, yeah I remember that”

“and you super stoked, Andrew Link was there, and you talked to me about starting a record label, and we talked about a record label for like 40 minutes or something like that”

“yeah, yeah I remember that now”

"you were like telling me you would start one in the future, and I was telling you why don't you just start one right now”

"well cause dude I didn't really know how to do that at that point. I mean like, I had you know just gotten out of a fucking really uptight, I mean my families awesome, but they're really uptight Mormons. And I kind of knew how to play instruments, but I knew that I wanted to do something well And that came from that psychedelic trip I had down in Provo, I didn't want to do everything I was seeing around me so that whole idea came. Since then everybody's made progressively larger steps to getting there"

After living in Boise for awhile, Gabe left and spent six months in Philadelphia working as a door to door alarm salesman and then on a chance decision, decided to move to Grand Junction, Colorado – a small town on the western slope side of the state.

 "I lived in grand junction for about a year in a half, starting october 2009, there wasn't much going on in that town and now there's a bunch of house shows which is pretty cool.

   I had moved out there, and I was looking for a place to you know, start doing house shows, bring my small booking abilities at the time into a greater focus. You know my friend Lincoln Holloran, he plays in Hello Shark, he told me to contact this guy, Layhee and I had also put up a Craigslist ad. Layhee messaged me on the Craigslist ad, and I had messaged him on MySpace at the time. So you know we started doing shows together and we eventually got this idea to put together this festival for three days, during, like around houses and we wanted to widely publicize it, so and that was, you know there's gonna be drinking at a house show pretty much, like it's gonna happen. So what we did to kind of cover our asses is I guess we turned it into sweater fest, so it was a benefit for the local homeless charity.

The view we saw driving into Grand Junction

    then we screened bands of 208, to kind of get people pumped on local culture" 

"So what's Grand Junction like?"

   "the people are awesome, the kids are so pumped on touring bands because there's not much else to do out there, I mean at least there's tones of outdoors, but as far as art culture goes, house show are really the only thing that a lot of people go to. I mean people that could go to bars would rather go see a house show out there, because it's so much more fun" 

Part II: The Show at the Sabotage Lounge

The Circle A farm is located in Orchard Mesa about 7 miles from downtown Grand Junction. The fire started the day before we got there, as we passed through a canyon just before Mesa Valley, we could see the flames rising up over the walls. Later that night, the fire ended up jumping the river and they closed down the highway for a bit. It was hot outside, 101 degrees.

Gabe and I arrived at the farm and met with Comfrey Root, who books the shows for the sabotage lounge and does work trade in trade for a place to stay at the farm. When we arrived we all looked at the fire update on inciweb.org. There was a chance Comfrey might miss the show, possibly having to split to help his mom evacuate her house in Fruita. I sat down with Comfrey and asked him a few questions about the farm and the sabotage lounge.

    “so what is Circle A Farms?”

“Circle A Farm is a small community based agricultural experiment here in grand junction colorado,

out ultimate goal is to be sustainable, but mostly just grow a lot of awesome food and make

pickles and stuff."

    “and how many shows have you had here?”

“"this is the 3rd show at this space as a whole, last summer we hosted Holy! Holy! Holy!

which was a fun time, from that I wanted to start using this space as an alternative venue,

and got it rolling as an art gallery and alternative traveling music venue.“

   “why do you identify as an anarchist?”

"to me identifying as an anarchist is something that's always changing like water, it's something that doesn't tie me down politically, but can always be identified as an alternative culture. I believe in a circle not a pyramid, is the best way to put it on a political level. I think the consensus based organizing that I've seen in a lot of anarchist communities is a very good thing on a small local level. I believe in local politics, and I find anarchism is a better solution on a local level than all the other things that we have pushed in front of us.” 

Clyde Mcgee at the Sabotage Lounge (photo: Sally Boyd)

    The show was a Friday, June 29^th set to play was Gabe as Happy Family, myself in Clarke and the Himselfs, Clyde Mcgee and the tape worms, Ryan Hennessey, Gabe's old band from Grand Junction, Dem Bones, and our good friend from Colorado Springs, Dear Rabbit.

  Dear Rabbit, also known as Rence Liam, I first met In Boise, in 2011, when he toured up from Colorado with Gabe on a similar 3 day stint. Since then I had played a few shows with him touring through Colorado and a gig in New Orleans when I lived there this past six months. Rence had just come back to Colorado Springs from a 6 week tour. The day before he got back home, he played a show in Pueblo and got a call from his friend telling him that he had to evacuate his house. Six days later he would be back on tour playing the show in Grand Junction. 

 Rence arrived at the Circle A in high spirits. A few hours of waiting for folks to gather and show 

the show kicked off with Clyde Mcgee opening a set on banjo and Dobro guitar. 

Next up Ryan Hennesy and then Happy Family. Gabe started doing Happy Family after he moved out of grand junction and split his band Dem Bones. As he said before he started the set, “"we're gonna play some songs. I go by happy family cause there's a bunch of  musicians across the country that I just love playing with, and when we play together it's one big happy family."

I started Clarke and the Himselfs as a recording project when I was 15, here's what it looks like now:

covering Poison Culture by New Science Projects

 

Rence tours a lot, he has been for awhile and most nights out of the week he finds himself playing a gig somewhere in the country. Tonight he addressed the crowd at the Sabotage Lounge;    

    "alright, so we didn't have to go to the second question, but I'm gonna ask you this, do you know what my favorite night ever is? friday, june 29th, 2012. This is a special night, it's more special than a lot of other nights, cause tonight we're gonna sing some songs. Now I'm gonna start the show off with a challenge to myself. I wrote this song on monday,

Rence gave a way this trucker magazine as a prize

to whoever could answer the question, what his favorite day of the week was (photo: Sally Boyd)

and I tried to sing it that night, and I couldn't remember the song. and i haven't played the song since, so that's a challenge. I couldn't remember it, four days later, after I evacuated my house and all that stuff. so I'm probably gonna forget this song again"

"if it's great it's great, if I mess up it's no surprise."

"but for now, we're gonna try to sing this song. there's a lot stuff up here on the stage here, and then were gonna try to sing this song, for the first time ever, I haven't sang this song since the monday night when I wrote it and I haven't practiced it at

all. We're gonna sing it, dear rabbit's gonna sing it, It goes like this as far as I remember"  Rence was about to finish his set, up next was Dem Bones. Gabe Smith's former band when he lived in Grand Junction, and a wide favorite around town.

  "Dem Bones is getting ready to come on after this and I want you to listen to what they have to say tonight, they're going to sing some songs. and right before that, i want to tell you something highly important and that is this, of all the songs that I've ever written, this next song we're gonna sing tonight is my favorite song I've ever written. The title of the song is called, With Them Shoes..."

  "Anybody got a bottle opener? If not I have one, I have one right here. I don't even know why I even asked. This is the one I brought myself cause..

 "You want a drink of the water? You can have a drink of the water. I'm gonna have a drink of my Laughing Lab. This is brewed back home in Colorado Springs, this is a toast to that place.

We got fires out there, we got fires up here, but most importantly is that we got fires in our hearts. so anyhow, check it out people, just for a second here if I could have your attention. the title of this song is with them shoes he only has one sock. and here's the important part; The important part, it goes like this.” Dem Bones finished out the show for the night, playing all their hits in a lovely drunken rumble that must have lasted an hour or more. The night was pure joy and theshow, for the 3rd one at the lounge seemed a success.

 I woke up early in the morning. News had that our show in Salt Lake City was cancelled, Gabe told me that his sister, who lived just south in Orem, could possibility get us another one but he was still waiting on the confirmation. If there was no show in Utah, we would just drive straight through to
Idaho. Having not gotten much sleep the night before, I went back to bed.
 Gabe woke me up at 1pm. The show wasn't going to work out in Utah, so it looked like a ten hour barge to Boise was imminent. We made $20 in donations after being split with Rence, and sold a few a cd's and buttons to top it off. Gabe and I saved enough money beforehand to make it to Idaho regardless of whatever we made on tour.
  "Do you want to go get fast food?"
We'd been eating government stipend food bank pizza and bread and off-brand stew for the last couple of days. "sure" We packed up out stuff, said goodbye to the folks at the circle A farm and headed out.
 On the way the burger king, I noticed a brown spider crawling up my right leg and flicked it off into the drivers seat. Grand Junction was hot, extremely arid and Hot.
 As we left Colorado and headed to Utah, we saw another plume of black smoke blotting out the sky just outside of Price. Utah apparently was on fire as well. The smoke turned into a thick haze as we entered Provo and began our trip through the valley. We had plans to go see Space Jesus at the Mormon temple in Salt Lake but it was closed by the time we got there, and we both agreed we didn't want to stop anywhere; It's a wretched valley and if we made good time we would get to Boise just after 1am.
 Rence had a show in Twin Falls on the First and another show in Boise on the 3rd. We both pondered what he does on his days off.
Gabe and I arrived in Boise on time, and I hung out without for another day before he left for Garden Valley to go to his Families Cabin for a reunion. Rence gave me a call later that day, he was in a town a day early for his show; I met up with him and drank some coffee, went to a screening of Magic Valley at The Red Room and found him a place to crash later on in the night.

I met up with Gabe again on July 4th in Garden Valley for the fireworks show in a town called Crouch. In the town center, which every time at that year is filled with a bunch of River Rafters and Mountain Hicks exploding a never ending supply of illegal fireworks while everyone gets drunk and listens to country music. I found Gabe here, with his sister Hannah and her boyfriend, the other Clark. The rest of Gabe's family was there as well, I gave his mom a hug, having seen her last when I spent some time at her house in Colorado Springs.
Gabe would be gone later that night, and the next day flying back to Fort Collins. Rence was somewhere in Oregon, eventually on his way back to Colorado. As for now I'll be in Boise until later this month when I'll be in Yellowstone, tracking buffalo herds with the BFC.