I think I like Bozeman

No, Bozeman is not a person, on the contrary, it is a quaint yet modern little college town nestled against the rolling mountains in western montana. It's quiet sunday evening, and I'm sitting in a mission style sofa seat with my order of a medium pot of hoikjichaasledisfa (I couldn't pronounce it, so it's my closest recollection) tea in the Homepage cafe. This is one of the nicer cafes I've been to in my miles traveled thus far. The cafe resides on the main street here in Bozeman, a street where the memories of small town america survive in the form of renovated brick facades sport a modern retro flair. Just last night I was at the Baxter hotel where there was some great live music. The story goes, one of the guys the blues band came to our 3:30PM show and loved the band, thus he invited the band to bring their axes (translation for non-music....our instruments) and sit in that night. So, at approximately 10:38PM mountain time I piled into a van with 10 of my friends and we went to the Baxter. There were two bands playing the joint, a hippie/ska band upstairs and the blues band around the bar downstairs. Well, upon arriving, we didn't who was where, and proceeded to pay money to go experience the band upstairs. Well, what do you get when you listen to a ska band for more than 10 minutes....everything starts sounding the same, and all the pretense around you comes into to clarity and seems trivial. So, we went downstairs to the blues band, and immediately you just know, know that there's life in the music, you can feel it. It was, in the end, a good time had my all. The band announced us, feel the celebrity status coming on; some of the guys sat in with the band, made me proud to be who we are, circus. It's funny, I was just talking to one of my friends the other night how circus people refer to everyone else as civilians, in the same vein as the military do. Whether it be conscious or not, there's something about traveling to a different town every week and entertaining people for a living that separates you from the average....civilian. In any case, we left at 2AM, visited the Pita Pit, devoured a souvlaki pita, and called it a night. It was a good end to a good week here in Bozeman. To briefly recap the week for everyone; we arrived late wednes., had sound check, meeting, and opening night on thurs. The show that night was followed a corporate party throw in honor of ? (I don't really know, but the food was good) Then fri. morning took a tour that drummer friend Justin hooked up for us. We toured the Gibson plant and witnessed firsthand how their guitars are made. Ate lunch at a hip place called the Garage, and ithad amazing food. Then, I took the afternoon to drive around the town a bit and check out the local music store and motorcycle shop (I've been searching for a new mouthpiece and trumpet that's more suited to this gig as well as a leather motorcycle jacket so that I don't turn into a frozen (yet lickable) human icecycle on my future bike trip to Seattle. Neither destination was 100% successful, but I did learn some new things. Sat. basically rolled out of bed, warmed up my chops, ate some golden puffs (in milk of course, what? you think I'd eat them plain? bleh) and played 2 shows and then celebrated at the Baxter w/ the blues. Today woke up, listened to last week's service at WCC, and then got ready for work (ran out of water in the middle of my shower), played a show, then went out for a late lunch the drummer and one of the clowns at our favorite little place, the Garage. Tomorrow we all head out to Spokane, from the looks of the yahoo maps, they have a lot of coffee shops, although the quality of them remains to be seen. You know, I've been finding out that can pretty much tell the vibe of the town by the amount and quality of its coffee shops. It's an interesting phenomenon, perhaps I shall start cataloging them.....hmmmmm, maybe, well I leave with a picture of this week's view from my door step......until next time