Asthmatic Giant! Tour Diary
By Darren Delmore

5/7/08 – Guadalupe, California

Man oh man the things we do for love. Or action. Or the companionship of another body while we slumber to make us feel less alone or not so dead and worthless. And leave it to a slipped doomer at a house show to conjure forth an ugly, jealous, Latin, emo side of a situation, only to send Asthmatic Giant! packing up prematurely and ready to throw down, rushing out to the Stony L-E only to drunkenly drive thru the nearest Carl’s Jr. in the dismal early hours of the morning for a suspicious Carl’s Catch amid overall horrid humanly aromas.

Our manager J. Shlune had us booked for a random May 7th gig in the ex-bootlegging town of Guadalupe, California. “What?” I badgered him. “Shlune? Dude. Come on.” Heinous Chainus, always hungry for cash money and thirsty for purple drank, was pleased as can be to play ten doors down from notorious Romo’s Carniceria at this secret Santa Barbara House Concert, even if it entailed cutting short his studio time on his solo Heinous Chainus electric drum project in Topanga Canyon. Bobby McFerrin (“Don’t Worry, Be Happy”) would just have to wait to cut his whistle tracks over Chainus’s curly locked solar drum spasmaticas.

With the venue being an artists’ loft 5 miles west of Santa Maria, I wondered about that hush-toned myth of the “raging underground gay scene” in Santa Maria, and if the flyer for the show would draw forth the likes of reclusive, central cal prone prophet Ian Gould for the music, or to be discovered on the receiving end of a set of glory holes in some master bathroom.

I met with the promoter around 1 PM. After backlining my guitar, mics and harmonicas, I quenched my mid-day, wind tarnished thirst in the Far Western Tavern, running into a drunken Nova Scotia trucker hauling broccoli back to Canada, and a former wine accomplice and solid Guadalupe town mayor candidate Jules Reuter. The open minded, 50 year old retiree was sporting a Melville sweatie and pink in the cheeks, clearly lookin’ for love, with a nice home in Guad and a cellar that’d have R. Hoove’s mom dropping her thong and using it to boomerang a nugget of hydro chronic at the allegedly wealthy, available man. We conversed about the loss of fruit in whole cluster Pinot Noir fermentation, life in the digital 40-something central coast dating pool, condoms that cover both shaft and testicles and how they really should be more widely available, and my forthcoming tour of Holland and France. He promised to come to the show after he watched the Lakers game in the Far Western. The guy from Nova Scotia took my picture a few times and sexually harassed the waitress while I killed time and a glass of local Chardonnay.

The ever holy D Numbers from Santa Fe, New Mexico (www.myspace.com/dnumbersband) called me around 6 PM to unlock the main door, and pubic-side burn donning Chandler Haynes from Twenty Mule Team was a minute behind them. We set up in the lower level space a la Jools Holland sty-lee, with a band in each corner. H.C. and I got the distortion levels right, and fired up the Yamaha. We were going to debut a new one tonight, as well as rock their world with a Yamaha-yoked “El Serpiente”. Pinot Blanc was already flowing like those springtime northwest winds against the loft. Ten years ago police wouldn’t respond to anything in this town after sundown, and until tonight, the only live music had been of the mariachi persuasion. Groundbreaking stuff. As a meager fifteen people or so trickled in around 7:45 PM, it was clear that Asthmatic Giant! was one step away from playing Salt Water Taffy shoppes and kite stores on the Mendocino Coast again. This rock business comes in waves, man. Like Lloyd Banks said, “When you’re as hot as an oven they embrace you with open arms. When you’re as cold as a freezer niggas treat you like they don’t need ya.”

“I.U.D.S.I.S.” I said into the mic over and over again to get the levels right.

By 8:15 a solid, amateur astronomy session was going down on the roof top, with a certain sort of woodsy fog surrounding the participants’ heads. It was clear that it was time for the Giant. H.C. had a mild panic attack after I told him we were on, but he was good to go with a little assurance. Jesse filled our glasses with a homebrewed Belgian Ale, before “The Wrecking Machine” had people going back for seconds on the Two Guys Pizza pies on hand. It was a gastronomic groove, is what it was. We followed it with “Can You See it There? Right There?”, and then a soul-quaking “El Serpiente”. Paul and Brian from D Numbers embraced us after that one. Clearly our sympathetic sonic syringe spiked some emotional vein. I saw the trails of tears beneath the Giant’s Ray Ban sunglasses as we ended it on cue. Time to bring back the upbeat “folk” in “folktronica”, so we roared into Bob Dylan and The Band’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” – a debut cover that had chicks looking at us and wiping the pepperoni grease from their lips. Finishing up with a new disco instrumental and flailing for the most part, we rejected a saucy heckler’s “One More!” in lieu of the liquid elixirs in the fridge and the stars in the sky.

Twenty Mule Team took it rock and rootsy, and then the thick bifocaled Ethan Burns took the mic, and, together with his older brother Zach on drums, unleashed a rockabilly monster that took the house down by surprise. Then D Numbers came through big time on their psychedelic-electronica promise, and girls were grooving in front like Burning Man had been moved to this pimped out loft in a town straight out of Mexico.

Asthmatic Giant! Tour Diary
By Darren Delmore

4/15/08 - Morro Bay, California
Hail pelted the dark sheen of the stony Element as we made our way along Highway One to the gig. Jet black and invisible to Babylon, our tour vehicle maneuvered off onto Quintana Road and into a rear parking lot area.There’d been a lot of confusion and finagling over which of the two bands would be the headliner. While told that our set would go unpaid by the house, our manager Jason Schlunus assured us that Asthmatic Giant! playing live would earn us our gold from the endangered bodyboarder population on hand (who were renown to ‘shroom regularly and smoke constantly) when the Double Disc debut album graces the online databanks of iTunes. Heinous Chanus, Schlunedawg, and yours truly Hellmore had a band meeting outside of the venue in Morro Bay, California. What to open with. Where I come in at and where Chanus takes a drum solo. We had new material on our hands here, from many blustery, heavy psychedelic evenings, but we weren’t sure that the beachtown crowd was ready to be exposed to it. The wicked knowledge proffered in songs like “Ballad of the Overmedicated Housewife”, “The Wrecking Machine”, and “Can You See It There, Right There?” would expand the collective consciousness to a dangerous haunted dimension. Most of the crowd on hand would’ve preferred some Brushfire Fairytales with their Coronas.

Aside from a secret midnight ramble at the famed Del’s Pizzeria, in which a feverish Red Dog Roldy joined in for a rare and Donovan Frankenreiteresque bongo contribution to the jam “Slippin’ and a’ Slidin’”, this would be the first show of our 2008 tour across America. Chaney hadn’t seen Red Dog’s beardy chicks that merrily lit up since the legendary post-TGIF bash in Carlsbad. Pretty sure the Alma Rosa Pinot Blanc and 16% alcohol Brochelle Zinfandel had a lot to do with it.

At soundcheck, the mustached venue owner came in and looked up at us on the loft belting out the jams. He scowled and demanded some Loggins and Messina covers tonight. Chanus told him to pay us, and that if he’s not paying us he’d give him some Loggins Linguica up his asshole if he kept fucking with us during our sacred soundcheck. With the Morro Bay Cannabis Club being long closed, I was hoping my bandmate would make it through the night, without gouging anyone’s eye out again.

After being brought on by promoter Marcos at 8 PM, we blew their minds with “The Wrecking Machine”. The crowd drank it up like my wine stash in the backstage area. Men romantically embraced their females from behind and did the rocking, connected pelvises thing like they do at Dave Matthews Band concerts. I’m pretty sure loot was being expedited back to what once was The Den in Grover Beach during “Can You See it There, Right There?”, but this was ultimately a punk show. Chanus and I had a band huddle after a riveting cover of “Dire Wolf” that electrified a random fat cell in accountant Pat Patten’s love handle and sent him flashing back to a kaleidoscope-colored 1984 Reggae on the River trip when the mane was naturally jet black and the ladies were mulleted and topless. They carried him out on a stretcher.

Roaring into “Hot Tokyo Nights” (with me coming in on the electric drum machine’s first gong, which worked well on the eponymous tour across Asia last fall), some last minute food orders were texted down to Harada sushi on the Embarcadero. The crowd just eats up Chanus and his oriental headband. Our costume designer suggested that at the Chateau Marmont in Beverly Hills while we drank Domaine Tempier Bandol Rosé, had small plates, and wrote the music to “Block 4 Cellular” last winter.

They called us on for an encore. We had to get in the Element if we’d be getting into San Francisco in time for Dim Sum and Sauternes, but they would’ve eaten us alive on our way out had we not given ‘em something more to chew on. So we did an extended version of “1985: Year of the Giant”, “Fishstick Fridays”, and then Merle Haggard’s “Branded Man” to close it. An inebriated engine, surely drunk on excess and Chumash Casino familial paychecks, screamed for “Branded Man” over and over, so we gave him it two more times then bid farewell. We’ll see ya in another five years, Morro Bay, and you drunken Eskimo you.