Chapter Fifty Eight:     Cheyenne & Denver

Sí, cabrón it's me again, everybody's favorite guitar hero Miguel deSanto himself, putting in my 2 pesos worth of interesting comments and astute reportage. Yes, I'm on the S&F tour bus once again and I'm oh-so-happy to be here. Never mind why, although you can probably guess.

We did the Paramount Theater in Denver, Colorado yesterday evening and it was great! A real blast. Touring with our two bands together seems to have been a concepción supremo! I feel I-- we --are doing the best concerts in my life. And then-- sí pues --there's these girls I love so much that I'm almost loco, you know? No wait, I don't want to be such a macho dude all the time, there's also these guys, Adam and Pokey, I love them too, mis hermanos.

We've only been together for two concerts so far, Salt Lake and Denver, but they both feel like just about the best I've ever participated in. And it's not just because our two groups have locked on to a sweet new groove, it's the audiences, man. At least so far. They're different, more young people, but more older people too, we're playing to a broader spectrum than Chrome Pie usually does. And we're responding to that by playing music at a higher level.

Espera, this is supposed to be about the Denver concert. But I need to start after the Salt Lake City concert. I'd spent the night in the S&F bus-- actually, I've more or less moved in since I'll be driving with them for the whole concert tour.

Mostly my band is more or less aware of what's going on, or at least they assume I'm doing a macho cocksman number with either Melly or Lissandra, or maybe even both, but I'm not telling them any details, so they're just guessing. Drives them crazy, but I don't dare tell that I'm actually having a genuine love affair with ALL FIVE of the S&F women, that might be just too much for them. It's bad enough just dealing with Benny Joe, who still thinks that I OWE him in on the Melly-Liss ride. Even after Melly told him that she didn't want to have sex with him, he still believes it's his right. Groupie rules, I guess. Doesn't matter that those girls aren't groupies, but fellow musicians. Oh well, at least he's still being careful about challenging Adam.

Coming back into this bus is like a coming home to my family. My brothers and my... well, not sisters, more like wives. They all visited me that first night. I wasn't planning to be so greedy, I figured just Mell & Liss together would put me in heaven, but they all offered and I couldn't say no. Masnia, Magga, even Maki. And without any shyøma, good thing I had some Viagra. Adam and Pokey got into it too, everybody had fun, but then they went off to sleep, while I was busy on and off all night.

Next morning we were ready to go by 11:00. Our next scheduled stop was in Denver, we had 3 days to get there, 534 miles, 7-8 hours-- in other words, no hurry. But Chrome Pie has this history with a bar in Cheyenne, Wyoming, so we jusr HAD to make a stop there mas o menos along the way. 440 miles later we were at the Buckhorn Bar right about dinner time.

Cheyenne's not a very big city, for those of us used to LA or Mexico City, but that's a charm in itself: no real traffic hassles, easy in and out, no parking problems. And there's the Buckhorn Bar, where Chrome Pie used to do a concert at least once a year, although now it's too small-time for pros like us. So now we just drop in unscheduled and unannounced and blow the place away for free.

We just parked in the street outside the bar, 3 busses and a semi. Cheyenne is a small enough town that you can get away with that, parking is almost never an issue in the evenings. Both bands and all our roadies went inside and started drinking, half an hour later all our drivers were too drunk to drive away, so it was settled: we'd stay here for the night.

The Buckhorn Bar is one of those dive bars, half-disreputable, but therefore fun. Crusty old cowboys and college students get together to drink beer and hear heavy rock music. There's usually a fist fight or two in the course of an evening, which I stay away from-- not going to break my guitar fingers! So it's not my usual kind of place, but the other guys like it there, so I usually go along for the ride.

Adam was open-minded enough to go inside and check it out, but it wasn't for him, since he doesn't get drunk and loud music hurts his ears. Pokey and Maki don't like to be tempted by alcohol so they gave it a pass and went off to find a restaurant. But all the other girls, musicians and road crew, were definamente interesada in a little decadence, so I went along. Someone has to protect our muchachas... from guys like me.

Well, as if they needed my protection with Magga along. The clientele may be rowdy cowboys, but they showed nothing but respect for Magga, who stands over 7 feet tall and weighs about 400 pounds. The biggest and brawniest cowboy challenged her to arm wrestle. Ended up pitting her arm against 5 cowboys at once and they still couldn't pin her down. So she had fun.

I got tired of the noise, and am trying not to drink so much anymore, so Lissandra and I went looking for something to eat. There's really not much to see or do in Cheyenne, but I happened to know a nice diner not far away where they have really good pies. We went back to the tour bus by 9:00. Then we had a very nice night together in her bunk. Dios mio, I love that girl.

It took a while to get started the next morning, seems our roadies had really had a little too much fun (cervezas) and were now paying the price. Benny Joe was messed up too, seems there wasn't a girl for him, since we hadn't done a show and there were no groupies to be had, so he got into a fight with a college guy. The guy was a varsity boxing jock, so Benny Joe lost that fight muy pronto and compensated with some heavy drinking.

It's only 102 miles from Cheyenne to Denver, so we were there by 2:00 in the afternoon. A day early, which was good. We chose not to hang out in Cheyenne because there's a hell of a lot more to do in Denver. So once we got our busses and gear parked in a lot behind the Paramount, we were free for the next 24 hours. That put us near the 16th Street Mall, restaurants, bars, movies, the works, so we went that way.

Rather than go around in an uncontrollable mob of 20 people we split up into handier units. Most of the roadies just wanted to go find a bar anyway. I went with everyone in S&F by default because I was the only one who'd been to Denver before, having done several concerts here, so I was elected tour guide.

Seven people, three of them sasquatches, all of us more or less famous, streets crowded with students, tourists, locals, all out to experience something new and interesting-- like us. You can imagine.

Denver can be fun, it looks interesting, bright and shiny, and my friends were excited about this new place-- especially our squatchettes -- but there were lots of people on foot and it was hard to move through the crowd without becoming a bigger crowd. We had hoped to sneak around semi-incognito, but Adam was too visible-- just his size, head and extra-wide shoulders so high above everyone else --and once people started looking at him they also recognized who we were. Autographs, fotos, selfies, handshakes, the curse of being too cool. There were also posters up and down the streets announcing tomorrow night's concert, so it was common knowledge that we were in town.

But people were friendly, happy to meet us, it was basically fun. Still, hard to function, but we did manage to find some organic groceries in several of the street markets. We gave up on the idea of eating in a restaurant with 3 sasquatches, although we did manage to buy some Tibetan momos from a street vendor that were pretty good. Then went home to our band-bus and made dinner ourselves.

Later I went out to a bar with Liss and Melly, just for an hour, to experience Denver, not to get drunk. That night I got to spend in Melly's bunk. Dios mio, I love that girl.

Lissandra just handed me the bus laptop and said it was my turn to make a report. All right, I've learned that I can't write anything too sinful for this gang of thieves, so I'll give you my version of the Denver concert.

We played the Paramount Theater in Denver last night, Monday the 11th of May. The theater itself was a lot like that other Paramount: the Paramount Northwest in Seattle, last year when this collaboration with Chrome Pie (and me!) got started. Both Paramounts are classy old theaters from the 1930's with an audience capacity of about 1700. Also right downtown, which gives it a special feel.

The show was to be at 7:00 pm, but we'd been to the theater at 2.00 to set up and do sound checks. Also some interviews for the local media. I stayed in the background, not being a musician-- although I have started doing background vocals... I didn't want to be caught on camera admitting that I was only there because I'm Pokey's girl friend (or his groupie, if the media decided to spin it that way).

Luckily, nobody was really out to interview ME anyway: Melly and Lissandra are halfway to being movie stars so they got a lot of attention. And they're both really good at manipulating the entertainment media to their advantage-- they have this whole ACT.

Melly's always been famous as the daughter of movie-star Sally Rathers AND the maybe-maybe-not beautiful blonde human girl-friend (who can say?) of Adam Leroy Forest, the world-famous Singing Sasquatch. But Lissandra's not far behind-- who IS this exotically & erotically beautiful Latin potty-mouth confusing the semi-pristine (if not bestial) image of the potential Melly-Adam romance? Is she with Adam... or Melly? (If they only knew she's with ME sometimes! And Pokey.)

But really, the media's attention was even more fervently focused on Masnia. And maybe to a lesser degree, Magga. They are simply SO exotic. And really, those singing and dancing squachettes are becoming more popular all the time, especially with young girls. Luckily, Masnia is not only fluent at English, but also poetically eloquent. None of us are more quotable than her. Which is great: none of us want to inadvertently blab our romantic secrets to the media industry, but as it is, their attention is distracted by just the right amount. The journalists are still asking only the right questions, as of yet suspecting nothing about shyøma, so it went all right.

Squatch & Friends played the first set in Salt Lake City, so this time Chrome Pie got to play the first, idea being to rotate, so that neither of them has to be the humble back-up band. That way all the BIG STARS get top billing to soothe all egos. Every other time, that is.

This was the first time we'd tried rotating, so it shuffled the repertoire around a bit, which caused a little confusion at first. But that was okay because the musicians just took it in stride, laughing instead of freaking out and we could tell that the audience enjoyed the informality of the concert. Especially due to Scott and Adam being so comfortable on stage, generating lots of personable contact, even conversations with the audience. Which was a lot easier to do in such a cozy theater than when we played at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena last October, that was just too big for us.

CP played six of their original songs, mostly written by Scott, starting with some from their newest album, Pie A La Mood, eventually getting around to their most popular older hits, like "Please Don't Kill Me, Baby" and "I Wish I Was Happy". After that Adam joined them on stage, then Melly on piano, then all 5 of us girls popped up as background singers. By the time it was S&F's turn to do our own original songs, everybody was on stage jamming together. We did an extravagant blues number that was fun for everybody. About ten people from the audience were allowed to come up on stage and dance, Magga and Masnia dancing leaps over their heads, it was pretty wild!

Adam took over with "I Like To Run", a full-blast rock & roll version. Then our newest never-before heard songs from our unfinished studio album, some along with the Chrome Pie guys, then the Mexican-inspired songs mostly with Mike --oops, I mean with Miguel deSanto-- doing his Spanish guitar magic. Anyway, for some songs we were one big 10-musician band and others down to 4, even a couple of solo performances. It was diverse, changing all the time. And it sounded good, I was impressed, felt that we were way better than in rehearsals.

I really love doing background vocals, actually getting to be part of the band. For a long time I never felt I could sing, I've always been too embarrassed to raise my voice. But on stage I'm forced to project, it would be too embarrassing not to. So now I'm beginning to sound pretty good, even to myself. Melly gave me some great advice: "Dance as if no one is watching, sing as if no one can hear you!" Said she read that on Facebook.

Besides, none of us girls is an opera singer, not even Melly, we don't need that kind of voice for the music we do. Although Masnia's still just discovering what she's capable of. Maybe opera for real, who knows?

After the show there was the usual get-together, which Pokey and I attend for a few minutes out of politeness. But once people start drinking heavily it's time for us to go. It's too bad that alcohol has to be such a big part of it, we were supposed to have agreed to a civilized balance so that Pokey and I could be social too, but that seems to be hard to maintain once an after party gets rolling. Well, in our own S&F ranks it works, but CP and their roadies have their own needs. So we go off to our separate bus-homes.

Then again, we probably have a lot more sex than they do. I know, CP gets groupies, but that's a new scene with strangers every night, I don't think I could really enjoy that. I like making love a lot more than having sex. Mostly with Pokey. Ok, and Liss. And Mike sometimes. Oh yes, and and and...

We've only done two concerts as of yet, and they've been really well received by the audiences. Right now we're on our way to Kansas City. We've only got one day to make it, but it's only 600 miles away and should take a bit over 10 hours if we drive non-stop, which we probably will. Not much to stop for out here in the endless cornfields of Kansas. Man, is it flat.

"Well, we been to Kansas City, Kansas City, USA..." Hey, we could make a song about that, now that we've done our Kansas City concert last night at the Starlight Theater. We were almost worried about the weather since it's an outdoor scene and the sky was turning overcast, but we were lucky, it didn't rain. Maybe today, skies are even darker and it’s getting chilly.

We liked the theater itself, tho, it was nice to be playing under the open sky and it's a beautiful place, set in a park, green all around even tho it's near the city center. We were all sorta reminded of the Globe Theater in Ashford, Oregon, you know, the one copied from the original Shakespearian theater. Although they tell us the Starlight is at least twice as big. It puts on Shakespeare plays too, musicals, big productions. It sits about 8000 people and was almost filled up, so it we're doing big concerts now.

We set up early and had the usual photo-op interview sessions. The Local TV stations, music media folk, the usual people were interested. But this time the Bigfoot Researchers Organization of Kansas City wanted to interview us. They almost went apeshit, this being their big chance to interview some real live English-speaking sasquatches. We learned that there had been a squatch sighting just north of town a few months back-- a local sheriff had seen one running beside the road at night. Anyway there are still some old-school squatch-watchers trying to prove that the "Mythic Bigfoot" exists, even tho Adam's been proving it (as in case closed) for almost 20 years now.

Not that they had any new or original questions that Adam hadn't answered all of his life in the media. Truth is they were most interested in Magga, because she was less "corrupted by civilization", but she isn't good enough at English to give quotable answers to silly questions. So Masnia tried to translate for her, but Masnia is so fluent that she confused them: those squatch-watchers couldn't really accept that she was a Bigfoot at all, she looked and sounded too much like a modern American teen-ager. And since she was wearing clothes, her only signs of Bigfootedness was trimmed hair on the back of her hands and being a bit taller than the average girl.

But about the concert itself, it went, well, well. It was our (S&F) turn to start first, so it began as a rerun of our Salt Lake City program, just a few songs changed around. We're still experimenting to find the right repertoire. It's still not perfect, but we're getting more relaxed as a mega band. I'm even beginning to get a good rapport with Benny Joe's drums, we're learning how to trade off instead of competing with each other.

As a gag for the locals Adam and Scott did a duo of that classic old Rogers & Hammerstein song "Everything's Up To Date In Kansas City", real country-bumpkin style. But not all those other KC songs that the locals are probably tired of anyway.

But oh, man, our best number of the evening just had to be "High Priestess". Everybody was cooking on that song, a version we couldn't have pulled off with just the four of us: so much hotter with Lee's keyboard and Melly's piano crashing off each other, Scott's heavy rock guitar blending in with Miguel's acoustic flamenco stuff, two basses and two sets of drums getting lost into the rhythm, all the girls squealing like a chorus of angels in harmony. Adam laid aside his guitar to give the lyrics his full attention, and man, that was EPIC! Full-blast Voice of God vocals, the place shook. It's usually a 4-5 minute song but we jammed it for 11 minutes and nobody got bored. Not sure, but I think we were glowing. Standing ovation, anyway.

It's moments like that... that make doing music REAL.

After party, not so much. Once in a while, sure, but every night? And even more intense after every concert? Too much partying for my (or Maki's) taste, so we usually just leave and go to our bus. I feel I should be more sociable, but it's hard for us ex-drinkers to be around people getting drunk so often. Maybe it's unfair of me to complain about that-- me who used to be the worst alcoholic getting drunkest of all. Of course our buddies just want to relax and have fun, meet groupies. I mean: Drugs, Sex and Rock & Roll, that's why they're on a concert tour.

Our next show will be in Des Moines, Iowa. It's only 200 miles away, three hours driving time and we had 3 days to get there, so we had to kill some time. We decided to stay in Kansas City for two days, it looked interesting enough. We Googled "what to do in Kansas City" and there were the usual diversions: the National World War I Museum and Memorial, a bunch of parks, a Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the Sea Life Aquarium, the Zoo. Hmmm. We'll probably just practice music.

We wondered if our squatchettes, being creatures of nature, y'know, would like a zoo or not. They'd never seen one, not even in Seattle. But it was something different so we decided to try it. Most of CP and their/our roadies went off on the Brewery and Distillery Tour, natch, except for Mike and 19-year old Sunny, who's still enough of a kid to want to go with us to a zoo.

The Kansas City Zoo was nice and modern, roomy, not a horrible place at all. Magga and Masnia loved it, went crazy for the penguins, loved the boat ride, and the monkeys. Okay, we all did, monkeys are just so funny. But hey, you really do get another perspective of a public zoo when you visit it with three sasquatches. Not just the people but also the animals reacted to them. Like our group was a Zoo exhibit too. Anyway, it was enough of a success that we decided to visit the Aquarium tomorrow.

Tonight we'll go out and eat together, probably at the Farmer's Market, as informally as possible. Unless it rains, we'll see.