Day 20: Seattle, WA
Nau mai
Yesterday we played a show in Seattle, Washington.
It was a great day in the this fine Pacific Northwest city. Lavonda was parked in a narrow alleyway behind the Moore Theatre in Seattle’s downtown, basking in the filtered sunlight from this overcast morning and just waiting for someone to take a series of glamour pics to juxtapose her vibrant paintwork with the grimy brickwork that lined this tight thoroughfare.
I had my breakfast at The Crumpet Shop, a small café that serves up this somewhat uncommon food group that I am unable to resist if it has the unfortunate luck of drawing my attention. Sadly, they were out of Marmite so for my savoury course I had a pesto, tomato, and ricotta crumpet, and then for my sweet course a Ricky Razz, with raspberry preserve and ricotta.
The waterfront was particularly gorgeous when I headed out for a post breakfast stroll and after navigating through the bustling Pike Place Markets, I found myself on a nicely redeveloped promenade next to the aquarium, sharing the space with fisherman, tourists and families who seemed to be experiencing similar amounts of joy that I was at the graceful movements of the harbour traffic and the views across to Bainbridge Island and up the Puget Sound.
Jon had perhaps the most exciting day of all. After weeks of painstaking research, trawling through Craigslist, negotiations, bargaining, threats, and trawling through reverb.com, he had finally found an instrument that would be a worthy replacement axe. Shockingly this Les Paul was not gold, however it is finished in a shade that could be a light denim, or steel blue, or even cerulean. It is handsome, it is well built, and most importantly it has the correct neck thickness (which I’m assuming is the 1968 medium C shape, 0.880”/1.015”). He was at this guitar store for a couple of hours and we were thrilled to see him returning to the theatre with a new instrument under his arm yesterday.
As the afternoon arrived it was time to begin the day’s work, and we reconvened in the alleyway behind The Moore. A drawbridge came down from the loading dock, and the venue hands produced a loading ramp that came down right to the back of the trailer, giving us an easy push to the stage. This old theatre was as tall as they come, a mezzanine floor towering over the stalls, and then another mezzanine floor towering over the first one. Sitting up at the top of the room was dizzying and I held tight to my seat to avoid tumbling all the way down to the stage.
Surprisingly for such a big echoey room this space felt really good to play in. The stage had the best clarity out of any of the rooms on this tour. With a beautiful audience filling the room, stretching all the way up to the ceiling, further than we could crane our necks even, our evening in Seattle felt like a very special one.
The downtown Seattle waterfront after dark.