If you kept up with my blogs over the summer, you know I spent a good portion of it touring the country with Tim Lytvinenko, Bowerbirds and Megafaun. It was quite an adventure. Tim and I took countless photos and recounted all of our adventures on welldonetour.com, the photo-site we created for the tour.

It really doesn’t seem like long since tour ended, but Megafaun has already made their way all the way around the country and back to the west coast, this time touring with Bon Iver.

This was a big tour for them, as not only were the venues gigantic (and packed full of fans), but there was a huge history between these bands that made the tour particularly special.

See, there was this band. They were around long ago, and based in Raleigh, NC. Their name was DeYarmond Edison, and they were incredible. However, after a couple of albums, the band broke up, and two separate resulting bands formed: Justin went to form Bon Iver, and Bill, Brad, and Joe went to form Megafaun. This tour is a reunion that not only the bands, but a lot of folks, including myself, have been waiting for.

I went to catch the show at the Fox Theatre in Oakland. Seeing the boys playing a sold-out show in such an epically beautiful structure was wonderful. I’m so proud to see how far they have come in just a few months, and my heart was aching to be on the road again. I felt like dropping out of school and hopping on the tour bus and never coming back. One more beer and I may have been crying in the crowd.

(That’s Justin from Bon Iver playing bass in the background.)

Seriously, go listen to them right now.
Megafaun
Bon Iver

Thanks. END!

After a particularly long drive, thanks to my accidental detour through some random southern California cities, we arrive in San Francisco. At 5:30 AM…. most awkward arrival time yet, especially when I have to wake my new roommate up in my new San Francisco house, neither of which I have seen or met, to move my stuff in. She was awesome though, especially considering the strange timing.

I now live in San Francisco. Holy mother of god.

Adjusting to your completely new hometown isn’t so bad when you are surrounded by former-hometown-folk to keep you occupied. Tim is here for another week or so, and my friend Brandom happened to fly in on the same night we arrived.

So began adventures with Brandom.

We started things off at Boogaloos, who I have already deemed my favorite brunch in San Francisco. Not that I have come remotely close to trying 10% of the brunch spots in San Francisco, but I AM obsessed with Mexican food and eggs in combination right now and they do a damn good job at providing me with it. We split a temple-o-spuds and a polenta + eggs plate. The day is a win already.

I decide that it will be best to drive Brandom to all of my favorite places in San Francisco, as I am not adjusted to the walkability of the city yet (aka I am lazy) and I figure that if I keep the car moving, I will reduce the number of parking tickets I’ll inevitably acquire. So… first stop: Twin Peaks.

Twin Peaks is the biggest hill in SF. You can see everything. You just have to make sure it’s a clear day, because 80% of the time it’s foggy and you can’t see two feet in front of you. Today we can see!

I wanted to take a jumping photo but it was so windy we thought we may die just standing up. So we took some normal photos and went on our way.

Next stop: Crissy Fields. Fun park and beach with a nice view of the Golden Gate. I’ve taken many a photo here before, so it’s fun to see how they end up changing every time I come back.

I wanted to drive Brandom around the west side of the Peninsula, where the road lines the hills and you see nothing but water below you, but we got lost and ended up at the Harold & Maude graveyard. This happens to be one of if not Brandom’s very favorite movie, so he freaked out and demanded we go in and take photos. And so we did.

By this time, the day had passed and we were tired. And so ended adventure day with Brandom.

Fast forward.

With Brandom and Tim both leaving the next day, I decided it was necessary to take everyone to Land’s End.

Land’s End is this somewhat secret location that a lot of SF folk seem to know of, but have no idea how to find. And somehow I managed to find it last year, by following really vague directions given to me by my SF veteran compadre Nick.

Basically, you take several disjointed bus rides to the Legion of Honor parking lot, wander through a golf course directly behind the property, hope you take the right path until you see another path going into the woods blocked off by a gate, walk around the gate, continue until you see a staircase, walk down the staircase until you reach a dirt path, walk up the dirt path until you can’t walk anymore, because you are standing on the edge of a cliff where the ocean meets the bay.

So me, Tim, Dakota, Brandom and Lewis found the cliffs once again. It was pretty foggy and overcast, which at first we thought would be a huge visibility problem, but it ended up being quite cool actually. The fog rested on top of the hills and actually rested on top of the Golden Gate, leaving a clear hole underneath it that you could see through. Brandom described it as a hole out of purgatory. If purgatory were an awesome oceanfront array of cliffs and giant rocks and waves.

I said my byes to Brandom, then went out for one last night of welldonetour-dom with Tim and company. My fellow road warrior is off to Raleigh tomorrow. Our 2009 phototour adventure has come to an end.

I would have some sort of profound synopsis for you here, but I really haven’t had any time to process all of the ridiculous incredible things that have happened to my life in the past six weeks. Maybe I’ll have have my brain reassembled by then.

All I can say now, is that tour made me grow in so many ways, as a PR professional, as a photographer, as a planner and a thinker and a friend and a person. I don’t think I’ll have a grasp on the amount I’ve learned through this for quite a while, but know for sure that I am definitely a different, better person leaving this tour. I got to spend my summer with some of the most wonderful people I’ve met in years. I love Bowerbirds and Megafaun and Tim and Sarah oh so dearly and can’t wait to see them again, and I’m going to stop typing now before I get emotional in the middle of this coffee shop.

END!

Tuscon: Well Done Desert Birthday Adventure

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!

After randomly deciding to continue our tour over lunch in San Francisco, we are on our way back eastward, en route to the desert. We will be in Phoenix in 11 hours.

These drives really don’t phase us anymore. It’s just time to edit photos, or write stories for the blog, or listen to Harry Potter on CD, all from the comfort of our little tourmobile.

By the time we arrive in Phoenix, it’s pretty late… around 3 in the morning. However, we are not remotely ready for sleep. Arielle is awake and ready for us. So is Guitar Hero.

Fast forward 5 hours. Andy gets up to make breakfast. Tim and I are still playing Guitar Hero. We take a break to eat with him. Tim goes back to playing Guitar Hero and I go to bed.

Highlights from Phoenix Phase 1:

- Cartel Coffee‘s “cup of excellence.”

- A great Bowerbirds/Megafaun show, packed with fans. Dry River Yacht Club opened. An at-least-7-piece with an accordion and horn section, and a saucy lady with one hella voice. They were a perfect opener, embodying a lot of elements of Bowebirds/Megafaun’s style but with a clear southwestern mariachi-esque influence. I dig em. During Megafaun’s set, Mega Brad managed to successfully organize a next-day basketball game from the stage. He was ecstatic.

- Well Done Dinner night – A collaboration between master chefs Tim and Megafaun Brad. Curried ground turkey + guacamole burgers with roasted potatoes and other fun things. Holy mother of god.

- Taking whiskey shots from shotglasses made from ice, then smashing them on the ground because we can.

- Watching musicians try to play Guitar Hero.

- Bonding with Arielle & Andy‘s cats. I will be forever obsessed with Turtle, the most appropriately named cat I have ever met.

We finished off Phoenix Phase 1 with a sunset excursion to a nearby mountain. The view was epic. The lighting was epic. We all played around for a while, took some photos, then sat in silence together while the sun set. It was pretty awesome.

After our successful mountain excursion, we watched Megafaun pack their things and leave for Tuscon for more desert adventure. They suggest we follow. Next thing we know, we’re on another late-night road trip across the desert to Tuscon.

END!

10:00 AM. I awake to find Tim and Shaun missing, but there is a note waiting for me. They have gone to get brunch supplies. We are to do a series of tasks before they return, including “be awesome.” On it.

We have planned a Well Done Brunch. Invited: Bowerbirds, Megafaun, Hometapes crew.

We took this project pretty seriously. It’s the first-ever Well Done Brunch. We can’t let the people down. We have menus and everything.

Let me just give you the rundown of what we created.

Iced Coffees.

Mimosas.

Bloody Mary Bar.

Egg frittatas with bacon, white cheddar, garlic, herbs and veggies from the garden.

Blueberry corn pancakes, topped with maple butter.

Curry breakfast potatoes.

Roasted potatoes with garlic and rosemary. (compliments of Megafaun Brad)

Fruit salad.

Shaun was busy preparing a brisket to cook for the next seven hours, I played waitress and took everyone’s order, while Tim shelled out frittatas at a blinding rate. I’m not entirely sure how he did it. He has breakfast superpowers.

We ate like champions, then watched the boys play in the water hose. Just a typical day in tour land.

As if this wasn’t enough to call it a day at 4 PM, we all decide to drive to Washington state for the afternoon to play in the river and jump off cliffs. And that we did.

Finally, nighttime arrives, and it’s time to celebrate Adam’s birthday at the Hometapes abode. We run back to Shaun’s house and prepare yet another epic meal: beef brisket with raspberry BBQ sauce, sweet potato salad, brown sugar baked beans, cabbage slaw, gluten-free peanut butter cookies with fresh strawberry compote, and ice cream. This is getting ridiculous.

We head to the celebration. Brad has french braids in his hair. Mark is wearing Beth’s jorts. More eating like champions. Everyone is comatose by the end of it. We decide that the best day ever has to end at some point, and head back to Shaun’s to retire from yet another glorious night in Portland.

So that ends one of the best weekend of my entire life. Can’t we all just stay here forever?

END!

Day 2 began with Tim cooking the most epic breakfast from whatever he could find in Shaun’s kitchen and/or potted herb garden. Tim is known for his epic breakfast making, but this one really took the cake. I think we’ve earned our keep at Shaun’s house.

We spent the afternoon exploring the downtown Portland area with Shaun & Margaret, eating ice cream, touring giant bookstores, and enjoying gourmet happy hour treats (fried kalamata olives for one dollar? yes please).

We eventually head over to Porque No taco shack to meet Megafaun and the Hometapes crew. We are in the land of Hometapes, and we finally meet the staff of the label, including Sarah’s husband and label co-owner, Adam. I had a shrimp-chile-pineapple taco. I’m fairly sure it was the best taco I’ve ever had. Quite sure actually.

We swung on a tire for a bit, then headed to the venue.

Run-On Sentence:

Megafaun:

Bowerbirds:

The show was at Mississippi Studios. This was a big show, as it’s Hometapes territory, and the turnout was huge. Both bands played one of their best sets I had ever heard them play. The crowd was incredible. I tried to hover near the front and shoot as much as I could.

After the show, we did a quick visit to a neighborhood bar, then headed back to Shaun’s to make obscene amounts of iced coffee and make ridiculously detailed brunch plans until 4 in the morning. Totally normal.

Bed. Epic day of cooking begins in five hours.

END!