In part one of his US tour diary, Crayon Fields’ GEOFF O’CONNOR survives hypothermia in a sub-zero pool, does some sightseeing in LA and heads to Austin for fresh towels, Dr Pepper and a showcase or two at South by Southwest. Part two here.

Day One

Having checked in to the delightful Bevonshire Lodge Hotel, which we later discovered had made No. 2 on the list of “Los Angeles Hooker Hotels”, we threw our bags into our family sized room and banged on the door of our traveling buddies Guy and Ben. For a 16-hour flight, my jetlag was pretty weak, so I decided to lace it with a bit of hypothermia and leapt into the hotel’s sub-zero pool. One-and-a-half laps later I was washing the ice off in the shower. That evening, after wandering around LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and having our first diner experience, Brett and I joined Guy, Ben and their LA friend Adam for a trip to the local karaoke piano bar. The locals owned the stage, and their pitch perfect renditions of Whitney Houston songs and bouncy show tunes provided an inspiring soundtrack to the raunchy music videos that played behind the bar. At 2am we were surprised to find out that the bar, along with the rest of LA, had reached drinking curfew. LA certainly has talent.

Day Two

Having survived our jetlag, we headed for the local thrift stores and spent the morning trawling through aisle after aisle of cheap junk, most of it too large to take home. We had lunch at Canter’s Deli, whose owner recently published a book about the early days of Guns N’ Roses and is probably responsible for the many signed LA Guns/Gunners posters that are mounted on the walls. Later in the day we spent a few hours at the enormous Getty museum which, with its discrete entrance and exclusive monorail access, felt like hanging out in a James Bond villain’s mountain fortress.

Day Three

Our first show in LA was at the Echo with a bunch of Australian bands for the Stage Mothers Aussie BBQ. We arrived early and managed to catch Songs, who were incredible, and spent some more time trawling the local thrift stores. With a broken guitar, a few funny leads and only a few minutes before we had to start, our set seemed kinda doomed. Luckily it was saved by a generous chap from City Riots who lent us his guitar, and then later that night checked into our hotel.

Day Four

The next day we set out for a long afternoon at the Griffith Park observatory, which is the location of the knife-fight and planetarium sequences in Rebel Without A Cause. While tearing at our bread rolls with butter knives, we realised some switchblades could have come in handy for us too. That evening we arrived at the Silverlake lounge for our second LA show and met the amazing Esther, who’d driven two-and-a-half-hours from San Diego with her husband to see us play (and then drove back after our set). She was really cool. Esther has made some strikingly accurate tabs of a few of our songs too, which are all floating around on the internet.

Day Five

Now it was time for Austin and South by Southwest. Each year the festival finds local residents who can put up the musicians in exchange for festival tickets, which worked out very nicely for us. Our hosts were all listed as having the surname “Peoples’, which I had first assumed was a made-up surname being used by a sharehouse who’d prefer we didn’t Facebook them. However, it turned out that they were the lovely Peoples family (I later checked their mail).

Having expected little more than a carpeted floor to sleep on, we were also pleasantly surprised when our hosts emailed us in advance to ask about what food we’d prefer, how we take our coffee and our T-shirt sizes. The only thing more impressive than their giant house was their train-sized barbeque, which I found kinda suspicious. They also had a fridge full of Dr Pepper and many, many towels. We spent a couple of hours getting to know them and settling in, before heading to pick up our passes and see a few bands. Mr Peoples proudly told us that his friend was in a very good band who were George W Bush’s favourite and performed regularly at his gatherings. I wish I could remember their name.

Day Six

It was now time for our first Austin show, which was a live-to-air for Seattle’s KEXP radio station being held at the Gibson Guitar showroom. We arrived just in time to catch Best Coast, who were one of our favourites for the entire trip. The show went well, and we were later interviewed by a host who did a great job considering she was extremely jetlagged and had spent much of the afternoon sleeping on a couch in front of loud bands.

It was hard not to notice a giant fluorescent Texas-shaped “Gibson” sign attached to a wall next to the stage, and a roaming photographer said it could be great to involve it in a photo somehow. I said, jokingly, it would cool to have someone hang off it by their mouth, as if they were taking a bite out of Texas. He took this as a suggestion, propped me up on a wooden barrel, and we wound up with this photo:

I’ll never forget the taste of those fluorescent tubes.

That night we saw Adam Green play in a strange barn-like venue and he was amazing. Midway through his set he winked at the front row and said, “I’m here to scout for some local talent.”

Day Seven

At the end of our first week, we played at the “Austin Town Hall” blog party,. The show was run by two lovely guys, one of whom looks exactly like Nate from Six Feet Under. The venue had saloon doors, three levels of stadium style church pew seating and a friendly man on the door who told us he’d seen The Grateful Dead 15 times and Phish, like, 30 times. Our rider was keg beer and breakfast burritos. Delicious! It was a pretty cool show, we got to see Let’s Wrestle who were great and an audience member told us we are “bad ass”, which is always nice.

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CRAYON FIELDS HEADLINE SHOWS

Saturday, April 24
Northcote Social Club, Melbourne, VIC
w/Aleks & the Ramps + Woollen Kits

Saturday, May 29
Oxford Art Factory, Sydney, NSW