I will be visiting you on Saturday afternoon for a very short period of time. I hope that you have been taking care of my stuff, and that you are treating my family and friends well. I wish I could stay longer, but the window I have is only a few hours long.
Expect me around 11am on Saturday, and I’ll be gone by 3pm.
That is all.
I have decided to uplift my firmly planted roots in Houston to move west to San Antonio. My incredibly wonderful and giving friends have offered me a place to stay while I try to climb out of this financial hole I have dug myself since the beginning of this year.
I’m going to miss Houston terribly, but at this point moving away from here and giving myself a change of scenery is exactly what I need. This city has been wonderful to me, but I’m at the point where if I don’t leave then I’ll never be able to recover.
Most of all, I’m going to miss all my friends here. It’s not as if I’m never going to see any of them again, but it’s different when you’re a whole city away. It’s from their support that I’ve survived this long.
Over the next several months I plan on just saving up every dime I have so I can come back and fix my car. Once the VW is fixed completely, I’ll be able to return and visit much more frequently. Until then I am at the mercy of my housemates and my job schedule, when I get one of course.
Goodbye H-Town!
The following account is absolutely true. Names of the individuals have been removed to protect their identities.
A crew of five weary tour members were driving through California late one night and had decided to pull over at a beach in Orange County to see the ocean and get a little sleep before continuing on the long journey ahead.
After a brief walk to sight-see the area, the group put Napolean Dynamite on the mini DVD Player and settled in for the next few hours of sleep. Everyone’s minds drew from Tina the Llama and Pedro to a sound sleep within half a hour.
Approximately an hour later a loud rap on the drivers window awakens everyone to see two flashlights illuminating the vehicle and its sleepy passengers.
“Roll down the window,” states Officer #1.
As we packed up our suitcases and left the wonderful hospitality of Cactus’ family, we said our goodbyes to the Smith clan by taking a trip to Live Oak’s only lighthouse, built by one of Cactus’ own relatives. Of course it resulted in an awesome photo opportunity of Wordsmith and crew, as seen below:
I would like to personally thank Ron and Anita and everyone else in the family that came to show their support for Cactus and the rest of the tour group. We appreciate them letting us become part of the family for the five days we were lucky enough to be there. A special thanks to Anita for letting me borrow her camera for the rest of the tour since I lost mine. Without her generousity none of these pictures would be possible.
After the photo shoot, we began our long journey south to Los Angeles and Long Beach. We had two scheduled shows there, but due to events beyond anyone’s control they were cancelled. We still had two excellent contacts in LA that had leads on some other venues, so we had a chance to still perform somewhere.
We pulled in around 8pm and met up with Big G who had flown in from Houston at his hotel room. GoldenChild and DotCom were out talking with contacts trying to secure us a venue and were supposed to be back within the hour, but exhausted we just decided to meet with them tomorrow and head to the place we would be staying at while in the area.
On the way we stopped by Newport beach to see the Pacific ocean, and checked out a couple venues nearby. We showed up at Cactus’ friends house and slept for a short time before the next days busy events.
The next morning we awoke to our cell phones ringing, with GoldenChild on the line excitedly telling us to get down the Long Beach ASAP to meet up with the radio station 93.5 KDAY for an interview.
I had the pleasure of finally meeting Chero and Robin who were busy trying to get us a venue in LA or any surrounding areas. Within minutes of being there, Chero had gotten on the radio and was giving us shout-outs.
Finally, with everyone reuinited, the group set out for the Martin Luther King Jr parade on MLK blvd and Crenshaw. It was an awesome sight to see as everyone was gathered to the edges of the street enjoying the floats and attractions that moved slowly down the parade route.
We walked north all the way up to Crenshaw and 43rd before finding the KDAY float, during which we were all starving from smelling all the delicious cooking being sold in many of the residential houses we passed along the route. The bacon wrapped grilled hot dogs were particularly driving us crazy.
DotCom and Robin had to go back to the car to get some more CD’s to give to the radio station, so while waiting for them to return, Chero introduced us to her Black Panther friends who were relaxing around the corner.
We listened to them speak heartfelt about their beliefs and history, and got to see them stand at attention and march down the street. That was truly a spectacular experience for all of us and I was glad to be able to snap a few pictures of it, shown below:
It was getting late and we were about to leave when we met YoYo, a hip hop artist and now a radio DJ for KDAY. I was proud to shake her hand and hand her one of Wordsmith’s CD’s before she left the area for the day. I also got to speak with Loni, who also works for KDAY, about getting Wordsmith and GoldenChild an interview, but it was just too short notice. She did give me her card and was interested in hearing from me when we return to the West coast.
We started the long walk back to our parking spot, stopping at the McDonald’s on Crenshaw on the way back to fill our empty stomachs. By the time we finally got back to our vehicle, our feet were sore from walking at least 15 miles through South Central that day.
Relieved to be off our feet, we headed out of Long Beach to our final destination.
Yesterday we managed to get a club booking at one of the venues here close to where we’ve been staying in Northern California. It was a town over in Marysville, CA at a club called 227. Cactus had stopped in the club the day before and tried to get us a booking, but the club manager was skeptical because they’ve had problems in the past with hip hop acts. They left some information and a CD with them and came back the next day walking away at 3:30pm with a show for the very same night.
California has been so different that we weren’t sure what to expect coming in. We came in and checked the place out, did a quick sound check and were impressed with the layout of the place. Little did we know that almost every inch of that club would be packed tight with people.
As the performance time drew near, we watched the club fill up quicker with each minute passing. We were set to go on at 11pm, which is much earlier than usual. It didn’t matter because as soon as Wordsmith hit the stage the crowd lost their minds. People were coming out on the floor while they were performing and just started dancing. Every song went down amazingly and by the time the set was over people were BEGGING us to sell them a CD, which we did a good chunk of change on.
We relaxed and hung out at the club for a few hours after the performance, meeting many new friends in the process. Cali was certainly good to us last night. So good in fact that we got to experience our first California House Party. A couple people from the club had invited us back to their house for a little afterparty and we met like ten more people just hanging when we got there.
We got to meet a dude by the name of Kill that performed a couple amazing songs a capella, using only the wall and his fist as an instrument. He switched from hip hop and R&B so flawlessly that you would almost think it was two different people. I hope to hear from him soon, because he needs to be heard.
Today we’re spending a little downtime just relaxing with Cactus’ family. We’re set to be on the road tomorrow morning heading to Southern California and Long Beach. As soon as I get to LA i’ll most likely be able to find a decent WiFi connection so I can update the photo gallery a bit. Until then!
If you’ve noticed some weird formatting issues over the past few days, it’s due to the WordPress v2.0 upgrade I did on my server.
They included the TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor, which for people not used to writing HTML code, is really useful. For a web designer perfectionist such as myself, it’s extremely annoying. It would clean up my written code and change the formatting to what it thought I was trying to do, but it usually screwed my whole website up (such as making everything centered, or adding too many line breaks after sentences). I finally figured out how to turn it off (the profile editor, a new feature to WP 2.0) and everything seems to be back to normal.
They also included a new spam fighting utility in the new version using the Akismet spam checker. It uses Wordpress’s new database plugin to the server with a special key you have to register. When set up, it will check all of the comments on your website from previous and future posts for spam words and sites against it’s massive database. That combined with my image verification on the comments posts, I haven’t gotten any spam since I installed the new version.
I’m enjoying some downtime today from the tour at DJ Cactus’ dad’s house. We had a few equipment issues yesterday before the show so we pulled everything out and have been running through some tests and balances so everything sounds great for the next venue we have to use it at. Honestly it was something that should have been done before we even left, but we just didn’t have the time.
Tomorrow we’re all working on getting a venue in Sacramento signed since we have a whole other day in Northern California before we head south to Los Angeles and Long Beach on Saturday. I’ll be spending the rest of the night printing press releases and interviews from Wordsmith to present to the club venues to help get us in the door. I’ve also got a list of record companies in Los Angeles that I’m sending some stuff to in the hopes that maybe a few will show up and sign one of these groups.
Speaking of which, GoldenChild and his crew are heading to California tomorrow morning. Coming from Houston it’s a two day trip on I-10 all the way into L.A., but we’re just excited about him coming back. He missed a hell of a show last night at King’s Inn and it would be a damn shame for him to miss the two biggest shows on our tour in Long Beach.
On a side note, if you notice I haven’t been updating the photo gallery with the new pics instead of posting them on the main pages of dailyhaggis.com and onefryshort.com. here’s the reason: I’m on dial-up. Yes, ladies and gents, as in 56k baud torture. My galleries timeout when i’m uploading picture, so i’m waiting until I have access to a broadband connection before I update them. For not I’ll just continue to post them on the main sections so everyone can see em.
That’s all for now. The next post probably won’t be until I make it to Los Angeles and finish with the show at Club 49. I’ll post many pictures and will have another article by then.
The crowd was AMAZING. At least 250+ people at its peak!
DJ Cactus, SoL, and Kontact chillin before the set
Entering Oakland on the way to Fremont
Kontact, Wordsmith, and SoL on Fremont Blvd
Big props to Chero for helping us out with the venues and being on the exact same wavelength as everyone else. We look forward to meeting her and the rest of the LBC crew!
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