So Thursday night (March 11th) was our show in San Juan Capistrano. The venue was called the Coach House where Pepper played often years ago when they were starting off. When they told me they were going to come support, I was tripping! Stoked, and nervous too! lol... The service at Coach House was off the hook. There was a helper, August, who was dedicated to keeping us stoked. Open bar, open menu, green rooms with the sickest decorations, and so much aloha and respect. There were two other local bands who opened for The Green and I... (I gotta find the names!! They were good!!) Then the boys hit the stage. Rocked their set, I did mine repping my Buti Groove shirt for this show:) Cruized with some friends from Twitter/Facebook after (big ups girls for driving 5 hours!!!) and we spent the night in the bus in the parking lot! The yushe.
Went for a run the next morning by myself in SJC, rocking out to the new Iration album (congrats on being #1 on iTunes reggae charts in your debut days!!) Then it was off to Ron Burgundy's hometown... SAN DIEGO!!!!
San Diego was awesome. (Friday March 12th) Rolled in, my brother picked us up and first things first: BURRITOS. Then second things second: LAUNDRY!!! We cruized at his house watching movies and catching up while my clothes washed, then he took us on a mini tour of Coronado Beach as we caught the sunset! Rolled us back up to the 710 Beach Club right in Pacific Beach, and it was already packed. Although we had a couple of issues with peoples personalities at the venue (douches), we had SO much fun. SUCH an awesome turnout, line out the door, over capacity, etc. Aloha spirit wide. Only thing is, someone stole my Tamba hat right off the stage!! I wanted that hat for the tour, girl! So un's. ;) Sadly we had to bounce immediately after the show, cause we were heading to ARIZONA for a performance at the annual Aloha Festival in Tempe at TWELVE NOON.
Woke up at 11 in a parking lot in Tempe... (hey that's a cool first line to a song!) and I had to get READY to be on stage, more importantly SING in an hour in front of potentially 50,000 people. (Annual festival in AZ hosts over 100k people over the weekend... HUGE festival at Tempe Beach Park, sponsored by our friends at Hawaiian Airlines!;) I was exhausted... semi-sicky vibes going around the bus little bit, and I was tossing and turning all night. So my voice was acting kinda nuts. Slapped some make up, threw all my un-brushed hair under my hat, brushed the jaws and rolled out the door, singing to the sound guys radio the whole ride over to the park. I think I did okay considering I just rolled out of bed. The boys rocked, and everyone else loved it. All the Hawaiians and polys were just so stoked to see some peeps from the islands. Although this was my show I knew the people wanted to hear The Green, or would at least fall in love with them if they did for the first time. So I asked them to play none other than.... "I wanna love you love you girl..." Signed autographs, shirts, cds etc with The Green and grinded.... YUP: Spam Musubis.
That evening we wanted to do something, and our friend from Hawaii, Blaze who's living here in Tempe right now for NFL training camp, suggested a bomb sushi spot called Sushi 101. We all met up there and grinded some of the most ridiculous rolls we've had, let alone from a land locked state like Arizona! Sake bombs wide. Then we had to hit up Mill street... I guess that's where its bumping we heard... so we stroll through the number one college party town in the nation (ASU) and roll upon some douchey douche bag door guys at one of the clubs. He checks id's.. checks all the boys in front of me, then when he gets to me, my hologram sticker thing was coming off my ID so he's like, "No your ID is damaged) and wouldn't let me in. Les and Z were all like dude, come on, etc etc... finally after begging he let me through. No Aloha. :):) After more drama that I'm not at liberty to discuss on a blog... ensued, we were able to sleep and prepare for day 2 of the Aloha Festival.
Which brings me to today. Today was awesome. We played at the smaller stage, at 2:30 so I had time to warm up, get ready proper, etc. We had a super good production meeting this morning with all of us, just focusing on how to streamline our procedures, duties, evaluating mistakes, quality control, blogging/vlogging responsibilities, post show etiquette, and bus behaviors, etc. I think that really made us closer and pumped us up on stage. Not to mention we sold like 10 times more cds and merchandise today than yesterday, which was a goal of ours. This bus does not pay for itself! We gotta hustle, my friends. Hustle.
Ate some huli huli style chicken (sooo many food booths to choose from! Shave ice, hawaiian plate, teri chicken, malasadas, etc etc etc) then we went back to the bus for some R&R. We all watched a bit of Coming to America, showered in the hotel, relaxed some more, then some of us went to watch a movie, others (me JP Zion Ross and Kaiks) went to CLAIM JUMPER for dinner! Again, one of those HAD TO things cause we're on the mainland!
Now its like 1am and we're on the move again, heading as far as we can towards Austin Texas for South by Southwest Music Festival! We have to stop in El Paso for 8 hours or so so John our bus driver can sleep. Heard some scary stuff about El Paso. We probably won't be leaving the bus.
