weed hounds southern tour, pt 9 – houston
alright, going back in time a little more our next travel destination on the tour was to be houston, texas. texas seemed exciting. my television, 80’s kid brain thought of things like pee wee shouting “the stars at niiight are big and briiiight” CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP “DEEP IN THE HEEEART OF TEXAS!”, scenes from king of the hill, tumble weed, wile e. coyote and the road runner amongst other things. of course i expected to see similar scenes all over the state.
we started our really long haul across louisiana for what seemed like 18 hours
a lot of texas was just flat. this is a slight incline. they didn’t have much of these
we passed through some other cities.. i think that was dallas off in the distance?
when we finally made it to houston we were stoked to see this wall with our name painted on it, but we were also incredibly famished. we spoke briefly to someone at the venue and they gave us the name of a local taco joint that should still be open. (keep it mind it’s only about 5 or 6 o’clock at this point)
we jump back in the van and head off in search of food
we drove straight through the downtown area of houston and back about 11 times trying to find this freaking place and it was nowhere to be found. when we figured out the venue fella had given us the wrong street name we pulled up to find it had been closed for 3 hours already. in texas taco places close at 3PM! what the shit is that about?! people wanna eat night time tacos too. we tried to go to the sandwich hut across the street and got sass from the lady running it that they just closed. fuck dat. we landed at a po-boy spot with semi-delicious food and terrible service. you seriously can’t give a dude a spare plate to split his salad up with? c’mon
after eating we felt a bit better and headed back to the venue, super happy fun land, which was quite a site. it was a converted warehouse filled with decorations probably excavated from the garbage and thrift stores, graffiti lined the walls and there was even a kitchen selling beer and snacks. there was movie theatre seating facing the huge stage and large sound system
the place also had a huge piano along with a bunch of board games strewn about. nick got on the keys and jammed some sabbath if i remember correctly. so this is the first time i have a copy of the tour journal to reference what went on. laura recently hooked up a photocopy of the whole thing for me. here’s a sketch i did while in houston of one of the games they had at SHFL
it was like two rails that went down on a slant. you had to direct a silver ball to the 1000 point mark without dropping it early. it was so fucking hard but i did it twice.
this is cliff, or at least i think that was his name. i’m mad at my camera for this shot. it’s not at all what i remember telling it to do. but whatever. he was the sound guy at SHFL and a pretty nice fella. he pretty much ran the operation but he was definitely shoeless at all times which was sort of strange considering how messy the venue was. he must have stone feet
the girlfriends arrived and hung with us for a bit while the crowd rolled in. during this time i rolled around on my own on the long board for a spell. the neighborhood around the venue was completely empty… just factories and train tracks. the board was super fun though
the first band, muhammadali, set up and began playing. the sound in the space was huge. the drums would bounce back at you while you played… it was the first time on the tour i could really hear myself.
muhammadali were awesome. they were super high energy with rock and roll tendencies, but more heavy on the quicksand / queens of the stone age vibes. i wish i had got a recorded copy of something
it felt strange sitting in the movie theatre seats, almost rude or something, but it was comfortable so i didn’t mind too much
after ali we set up and played. harris the super fan made his first appearance that night and was up front fist pumping and neaaaarly moshing for us the entire time. he would be at all three of our texas dates. he was friends with this guy luis (i think name?) who we met a month earlier in brooklyn. he was visiting from texas and told us we mailed him a shirt once. we remembered his name the second he said that! it was sort of weird meeting him in brooklyn, and then meeting him again in texas. i thought we sounded good this night but we had some big disagreements after the set. the bickering killed the buzz of the night for me in a major way but i tried to enjoy myself
girlfriends went on and did a great set. one of the highlights of super happy fun land was the industrial sized fan they had facing the stage behind the seats
i remember standing there being so happy when that breeze hit me
i should’ve shot some color of girlfriends but around this time in the trip i was running low on film
i don’t remember i might’ve shot some stuff with jenny’s cam? i dunno
we hung for a bit and chatted with the locals, sold some jazz and relaxed
everyone cell phoned quite a bit
girlfriends decided to leave their gear at the venue and pick it up in the morning when they had more energy. a definite wise decision
we then parted with girlfriends for the night. they had a really small one bedroom to stay in and could fit us there but we were welcome to stay at SHFL so everything was dandy
plus when the place quieted down the kitties started coming out! AGH! KITTIES!
this dude had HUGE ears! lc has a pic of me with one of the kitties on my shoulder. i need that pic. that night i grabbed the air mattress and started inflating it and walked over to where my bags were. i saw an enormous and incredibly fast, texas-sized bug doing laps around the doom bag. i was pretty freaked out about what it could’ve been so i decided to move my bed as far away from it as possible in hopes i wouldn’t wake up dead. they got scorpions in texas… shit. i slept fairly well in the fun land but lc had some weird stories to tell in the morning. stories involving men in the ladies room and some other weird shit. the next morning we opened up the giant sliding door to load out and THE WORST stench waifed in. it was the scent of the nearby construction site’s porter pottys baking in the sun. utterly gag inducing. with that scent fresh on our mind we got hungy! we headed over to the taco joint a second time. we knew where we were headed this time and got some amazing food. breakfast tacos and myself had not yet become acquainted but i’m we got to know each other. after our meal we were back on the road headed toward austin. coming soon.