more catching up

Thursday morning Jason and I had a nice breakfast and a healthy walk around downtown San Diego with Kaiser before we drove up to meet Paul and Ivan in Long Beach. The Long Beach gig was at a killer coffeehouse/performance space called Portfolio, and it was set up by Chris Schlarb, a very creative guitarist who runs the Sounds Are Active record label out of Long Beach. I played on an album on that label a few years back called A Prospect of Freedom, with Lynn Johnston, Ray Raposa (from the Castanets), and the members of Chris's other band, Create (!). Chris and I have been trying to set up a double bill with one of his groups for a while now, so it was good to finally do it. He played the first set with drummer Tom Steck in a duo they call I Heart Lung:

Their hypno-meditative improvisations set up a nice contrast to our set, which was strong coming off that good energy of the San Diego show the night before:

I like coffee. And I like playing in coffeehouses, at least once each tour. The staff at Portfolio hooked us up, too, so we were all properly caffeinated before this one...