This particular adventure was centered around the birthday of my dear friend Tim Lytvinenko. If you kept up with my blogs this summer, you know that Tim toured the country with me with Bowerbirds + Megafaun, and he takes care of Raleigh for me while I’m in California. He’s a kickass web developer and is doing some incredible work with Luceo Images (who happen to be showing in NYC right now – go find them if you’re in the area). You should check them out.

Anyway. For Tim’s birthday:

- A big group of compadres gathered at Tim’s for an epic curry feast, courtesy of his family.
- We kicked around a large ball containing ice cream ingredients until ice cream was formed. Flavors: avocado and Guinness. Yum.
- One full, we all sat down and began a white elephant gift exchange of sorts – the only real difference being that, instead of people picking gifts, ladies were picking men.
- Once men were drawn/selected, the pairs were matched up and handcuffed together. Yes, you read that right.
- All of us, once handcuffed (there must have been at least a dozen pairs), headed to the bus stop to be shipped to the one and only Glenwood South to do what we never do… go dancing on Glenwood South. Destination #1 = The Pourch. (punny, yes.)
- We quickly dominated the club, dancing in attached pairs, sometimes getting creative and find ways to interlock multiple cuffed groups of people into one giant dancing human mass.
- It wasn’t long until we all got kicked out. No big reason… just for being handcuffed.
- We then found the R-Line, which toted us to our favorite downtown neighborhood, where we only had time to run to Landmark and Busy Bee, where we danced, still handcuffed, til the bars closed. People began finding ways to disconnect, but Chad and I were determined to be the clustercuffs winners and stay hooked together until approximately 3 AM. We deemed ourselves winners until Logan and Stefanie arrived and were in fact handcuffed the longest. Assholes.
- Then we all danced around Tim’s living room until 6 in the morning.

Normal birthdays FTW!

Ok, here are some photos. I didn’t bring my camera downtown, as it’s not really possible to take photos while handcuffed… you’ll just have to imagine the chaos for yourself.

Raleigh adventures, I love you. Please don’t ever change.

A few fun facts about Mark – He’s an internationally-acclaimed composer, director, and multi-instrumentalist performer. He has toured the US many times, playing venues including the Fillmore and Great American Music Hall in SF and Tonic and The Knitting Factory in New York. He has composed award-winning scores for films, dance and theatre productions. Long story short, the guy is talented. I’ve spent many hours discussing tour stories, music PR/marketing, and classical music with him (I’m a classically trained pianist, by the way), and we’ve quickly become bros.

You can read more about Mark and listen to tracks from his newest album on his website – www.markgrowden.org.

Anyway, here are some photos from the backyard.

Another fact worth noting – His backing band (pictured with him at the top) also happens to be the backing band of Tom Waits. Fun facts indeed.

END!

We arrive in Tuscon a few hours past midnight, as per usual. We found fauns and tapes scattered about our temporary desert hotel – the home of Matt Huggins, who happened to be out of town for the night. They have beer and Doritos ready for us. Night 1 Dorito party continues until we all fall asleep.

Tuscon Day 2:

Day off! We have absolutely nothing to do. It’s wonderful.

Brad, Phil, Sarah and I set out to find a pool. It is not long before we stumble upon the neighborhood waterhole. It looks great. However, it is locked. After some suspicious hovering, we manage to convince a nearby sunbather to let us in. By the time we are done with our swimming for the day, we realize that we are actually now locked IN, with no one around to help us out. We quickly learn that it is fairly easy to climb the wall and fence and hop down to freedom. We are feeling crafty and triumphant.

My birthday is at midnight. We have dubbed tonight the first of two celebrations: Tequila Birthday Hot Tub Fiesta Night. Invited: Well Done Media, Megafaun, Hometapes, Matt (our host who is not here). We would have invited Bowerbirds, but Mark and Phil were off camping in the desert wilderness, and Beth was in Raleigh for a wedding and flying in an hour or so before the show. Sorry Bowerbirds.

Sarah and I go stock up on a plethora of supplies. Shortly after we return, our host Matt arrives! He is great. Apparently he was at the Phoenix show and I was standing only a few feet from him for a large portion of the night, and somehow managed to not meet him. Oh well, now is the night. I make him a celebratory margarita.

Tequila Birthday Hot Tub Fiesta Night continues with more pool. more hot tub, more margaritas, more fiesta….

Tuscon Day 3:

I wake up feeling pretty bad.

Brad is up, cooking a Well Done Birthday Breakfast. He refuses to let anyone help him. This is his project and his only.

On the menu:
- Breakfast potstickers. Filled with breakfast sausage, onions, mushrooms, and cheese. Served with maple butter cream sauce. Jesus.
- Brad’s super signature roasted potatoes.
- Fruit salad with berries, citrus, and mint.

Good birthday so far.

More fun news – Megafaun gets word that their album was given a four-star review in Rolling Stone today! Rolling Stone! We find the magazine and gaggle at the page for a while. It’s beautiful.

We all take a break to do some work for the afternoon, then part ways so Megafaun can go soundcheck and whatnot. Tim, Matt and I remain.

I ask them what they want to do. They tell me that it’s my birthday, so I have to choose. I choose exploring and sushi. So that’s what we do, but not before I go outside to try and capture yet another incredible desert sunset with my camera, with marginal success.

So we head downtown.

[Birthday hard hat, compliments of Matt. Safety First.]

First stop: Hotel Congress. It’s the venue where Bowerbirds/Megafaun are playing that night, and it also functions as a coffee shop, restaurant, bar, night club, and, as the name implies, a hotel. It’s really an incredible building. I could live here.

The show has been postponed, as Beth is on her way back to Arizona from a weekend in Raleigh, and her flight was delayed. We find the remaining band members in the corner banquet room where they are set to play. Tim makes everyone huddle around his laptop, where he plays them the stop-motion Megafaun music video he’s been assembling for weeks now. They love it. We head to find sushi to celebrate.

We find sushi, we eat sushi, then wander back to the venue to find Megafaun about to start their set. They are not hooked up, but apparently this is intentional. They randomly decided to play tonight’s set completely acoustic and unplugged. After coercing the crowd to snuggle up and sit down as closely as they could, Megafaun played an incredible intimate set, full of extra stories and random conversation with the audience. They also gushed for a while about us and the work we’ve been doing, and made us wave awkwardly as they did so. It was neat.

Beth finally arrived, and the Bowerbirds began their set, which was plugged, unlike Megafaun, but wonderful nonetheless. They also made me awkwardly participate in a mid-show birthday conversation where I had to yell across the crowd to answer their questions about where I was standing and why they couldn’t see me and confirm how old I was. The show continued, and me, Sarah, Carson, Megafaun, Matt and Tim danced around and drank cider and generally enjoyed ourselves.

Very good birthday so far.

Once the show ended, reality started setting in about the fact that this was the last show we were seeing on this tour. We gave our last hugs and final goodbyes to the Bowebirds, as they were staying in the Hotel Congress for the night, then headed back to hotel Matt for hot tub party number two. The celebrations continued until it was daylight again.

Tuscon Day 4:

We all wake up a bit groggy and determined to find a proper breakfast burrito. Google points us to Viva Burrito, a cheap fast-food-ish establishment down the commercial highway. The burritos are only two dollars, so assuming that they are relatively small, Tim and I each order two. Turns out we were quite wrong. We now have four very large burritos to consume, and most of us are too hungover to really consider eating one. So I take a few bites and stash the rest for later.

It’s time to say goodbye to Megafaun and Sarah. What better place than a Viva Burrito parking lot. We take some photos, give lots of hugs, and bid farewell to our wonderful bearded road compadres. We will miss them dearly.

With a quick stop back in Phoenix to re-visit Andy + Arielle, we head back to our final tour destination, San Francisco.

END!