Little Run: On the Road with Little Man

Little Man got out for a little tour run this past week hitting Milwaukee, Madison and Chicago trying out new songs and promoting Orbital Amusement. Here's what all went down.

DAY 1: A van of drummers and me.
My old Little Man drummer Sean Sauder came along for tour help. It's great to have someone to help with driving, moving gear and to sell merch. Happy to have him along. Then there's my current drummer Sean Gilchrist and my bass player Brian Herb who is also an accomplished drummer. Packed up gear and drove to Milwaukee. It wasn't until a couple hours in that I realized that the van conversation was all drums and that I was surrounded by - drummers. I have to say drummers are usually interesting characters. You probably know some crazy folks. They might be drummers. These guys here in the van are great. I love 'em. Thankful to have them help me out and be a part of this band.

It's a beautiful drive across Wisconsin from the Twin Cities in the summer. We made it through just fine with a stop at the good ol' Subway. Swarmed in the parking lot by an entire high school cheerleading squad. I so wanted them to spell out the band's name. L-I-TT-LE...M-A-N! That would have been fun.

We played a place called Club Garibaldi in Milwaukee. Cool spot. Very Minnesota "nordeast" feel. Carved wood, brass and vintage looking stuff about the place. Very nice staff. We really enjoyed hanging out and having dinner outside over at The Palomino.

The Cactus Club is just next door. First night out was slightly rag-tag for me starting off, but then we rolled right into the set real good. Plus I got try out a guitar pedal from ZVEX I brought along straight from their office called the Machine which gave me some inspiration. Big room, meet some real nice people here. The night ended at The Sleep-In. This hotel was really great. Plus we got the big handicap room to pile into. Whiskey party.

DAY 2: Celebrate with The Mel's and the ghost's.
Headache. Perfect place for lunch was Glorioso's. An amazing Italian deli in Milwaukee. You HAVE to go there.

It poured rain at this time. Hop in the van and on the road to Madison. We got to spend the afternoon at Sean's sister-in-law's place not too far from the club. It was really nice to have a place to chill out, sit on the porch, grill and nap. Beautiful day.

Here's me at the cool little shed out in the back yard.

The club was The Frequency. We had played here before not too long ago. Love this place. Great rock & roll club. Staff is awesome. So I'm sitting at the bar with my feet tucked back on the stool rung and I thought someone's foot bumped into mine. No worries. Then it happened again about 2 minutes later and I look back to see who's kicking my foot and NO ONE WAS THERE!!! Here's when I asked the club manager Darwin about paranormal activity. "Oh yeah," he said, "this place used to be a funeral home." He's seen a couple strange things including a little girl. That could have been who was playing with me. He's also heard voices as clear as day in the basement. Pretty neat stuff.

Our friends from back home, The Melismatics where on the bill to celebrate the release of their new album. It sounds great. All of the people in this band are really very cool folks and it's always great to be on a bill with them. They put on one hell of a show. Fun to get in a slot hockey game with bassist Mark in the haunted greenroom basement. 5-3 me. I love those things. Also Garbage guitarist Duke Erikson was in the club and we got to talk a bit about guitar gear. Very cool.

We played a great show here and it was a fun audience. After bar we shared a bottle of Prosecco on our host's deck till the very wee hours. Salute and bouna notte.

DAY 3: My old residence, Chicago!

After a great home-made breakfast we headed to Chicago, Illinois. Sometimes I miss this city and it feels real good to roll in with the band back to the place I lived for about 8 years. Tonight we play at Reggie's Music Joint for their 6th anniversary bash. Real cool to be a part of that. We played with some great bands including The Ghost Wolves out of Austin.This is a fantastic place with a great vibe. Lot's of people here all night. Got to meet up with some great friends. Some old friends even from way back when I lived here, and most of them saw Little Man right at the very beginning of getting the band started in the late 90's. Real strong show hear and I loved every minute of it.

After the show we checked out The Dictators next door for a few songs. Then we loaded out and headed for my good friend Dave's place. You know Dave? He was one of my drummers with Little Man when I lived in Chicago. He plays with Ike Reilly now. We're musical brothers. Our beer run on the way to Dave's took us four tries at the late hour, but we found some. At Dave's apartment we got to listen to new mixes of ours and Ike's. Great to hang out with him, but yes, now I'm hanging out with four drummers. Old Style (hey we're in Chicago!), PBR beers all around and more whiskey.

DAY 4: Travel
Continued party till 4, up at 8. Drove home to the Twin Cities. Construction was hell. It took us an hour to get to the freeway. We couldn't even make it onto the free way before the guys wanted to stop and rest at the Dunkin' Donuts. Construction still on the freeway and tolls on a very hot mid 90's weather with no A/C made for a longer trip back, but boy what a fun time. Great run. TOURRRR!!!!!

Little Man Mini Tour Log

DAY 1

It’s just a little mini tour. A beautiful day for travel as we packed up and headed for Madison, WI. Saw a bald eagle on the way! Once in town we got set up at the Hilton (great view of the capitol building from our room). The Iron Man Triathlon is happening in town so there’s a lot of people in florescent colored running shoes around.

We headed over to The Frequency to check the club out about two blocks over. Cool place with a lot of character and a great staff. We got a review in The Onion here! Picked up some fish and chips at the Irish pub a block over and then prepared to unload and sound check.

The show was solid. We played about an hour set. I was very happy to see a former guitar student of mine and her boyfriend there who had just moved up to Madison for college. The greenroom was super cool. We played one of those old slot hockey games and a Popeye Nintendo sit-down console. The band we opened, for was from Seattle and we were in such awe with what they were doing. It was jazz. Sax though some awesome effects, guitar, stand-up bass and drums. Very impressive.

Feels good to be out playing. We mention we’re from the Twin Cities and people talk about The Current and bands like The Melismatics. It’s cool to recognize the reach of the TC community on the road and play our part in that too.

DAY 2
A little bit of rain in the air today. We slept in passed the Triathlon. Lot’s of people huffing and puffing about, walking their bikes and such. Grabbed some lunch on the way out of town. Bass player Benji, for this tour, is killing us with his Paul Stanley and Christopher Walkin road directions. Drummer Sean is cuing up interesting info from his iPhone. We listened to David Lee Roth’s vocal track only of Van Halen’s Running With The Devil. Crazy high James Brown style stuff he‘s doing.

Arrived in Dubuque, IA. Beautiful riverside city with some cool bridges. We’re down a notch over at the Days Inn from the Hilton last night but at least we get free wi-fi and a continental breakfast. The club is The Bank and when we arrived I recognized it as it’s old name of The Silver Dollar Cantina which we’ve played before. Super hospitable staff and a complimentary meal.

We got to play two sets (just us on the bill tonight) so we were able to sneak in some acoustic songs here and there. It feels good to settle in with a couple of sets actually, but for me I’m pretty whooped afterward. Met some very nice folks here too that I feel can really help spread the word for us next time. Band party, just the three of us, back at the hotel afterwards. “We have Two Women waiting there for us” we’d say of the Wisconsin beer we picked up of that name. It’s been the inside joke the past two nights. Tomorrow’s last night is in Des Moines.

DAY 3
Today we travel over to the middle of Iowa to Des Moines. We hit the coffee shop in downtown Dubuque on our way out for a quick breakfast and had a better look at the city in the daylight. The weather’s awesome today. This part of Iowa is cool to travel through. Lots of hills and rivers. All farm land. About a 4 hour trek. The Stone’s “Exile On Main Street” and The Faces “Never A Dull Moment” are great albums to listen to driving through these parts.

We arrived at the Quality Inn and grabbed some Vietnamese for dinner. The restaurant was called A Dong, so add in your own jokes. We saw the sign and had to stop. Very good food. Also the architecture is really neat in this city.

The Vaudeville Mews is in a cool part of town. This club has one of the best sounding rooms. Tall ceilings with a balcony. The drums sound huge in here. We were supposed to play the middle slot with 3 bands on the bill, but we get there and now it’s just us and one other band, and of that other band, only two of it’s members were there. I would have loved to have heard the full band because I liked what I heard from them. So we ended up headlining the night and played a longer set.

We played one of our bests shows. A truly fantastic set. We opened things up and jammed quite a bit and enjoyed how the sound was on stage. The room it’s self was inspiring with it’s natural reverb. The turnout though was not so great, so that was a bit disappointing with such a super performance. You can’t let that get to you when you’re playing, especially having it be the last night of the run. We just have a fun time playing so we give it %100 no matter what. The folks that were there appreciate that and were very supportive. We sold some merch too make up for everything.

The next morning we hit the pool for a swim before heading back to the Twin Cities. About halfway there a nasty smell filled the van like burning rubber or plastic and then some smoke stated to come up through the dashboard! Hit the hazards and pull over!! The smoke stopped as we jumped out of the van wondering if we should start pulling the equipment out. We waited a while for everything to cool down. Started it up. Vitals were still all good and we tried to find the problem but couldn’t see anything. We decided to proceed with caution and everything seemed to be fine. Some sort of electrical problem. Getting it to the shop first thing in the morning. Whew!!

And that’s it. Just a few days on the road. At this point it’s hard to come home just starting to get into the groove of everything. You want to just keep going. But these short tours help out in the long run. All in all a real good time hanging out with these guys and spreading the music out beyond Minnesota.