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Martin Atkins has a cool HQ style record label [INVISIBLE RECORDS], screenprinting shop, studio and killer music beeswax school [REVOLUTION NUMBER THREE] up in Chicago. We decided to make a trip this weekend just to check it out during an R3 seminar.
R3:
http://www.revolutionnumberthree.com
INVISIBLE RECORDS:
http://www.invisiblerecords.com
A little background. Martin is awesome. He's an author[TOUR SMART], a super star drummer[PUBLIC IMAGE LTD, PIGFACE, KILLING JOKE, DAMAGE MANUAL], a teacher[COLUMBIA], a producer, a husband [TRINA!], a father [IAN, HARRISON, SYDNEY AND COLE] and a mentor to so many people trying to help themselves in the vast sea of the music biz[ME].
Now I must introduce you to Katie. Katie is Martin's assistant, and MY GOODNESS would I ever love to steal her. I thought about throwing her into the trailer and bringing her back to Austin with us, bound and gagged.. She is priceless. I want a Katie. Everybody should have one.
Katie called me a few days ago and asked if we'd like to play a show while we were going to be there. Um, YES! We set up a show in Detroit as well, since we had some band beeswax to do there anyway. Yay two shows!
Jason had a ticket to Alice in Chains Thursday night, and there's no way that I would ever ask him to give that up... We loaded up when he got home, around 2am and hit the road! I was sick and slept for alot of the 20+ hour trip up there to try to recover my voice and health. I drove some, though PJ and Jason covered most of it. We drove through some insane Bible Belt stuff, like a HUGE MASSIVE GIGANTIC cross in Missouri that baffled us completely. It had a website address on it.. Wish I'd written it down.
Jason came up with a new tourist welcome sign:
"Missouri Loves Company!"
We drove through Texas, Arkansas, Missouri and into Illinois. One of the guys said something like,
"Illinois is about to get a little noisier woooooo!"
[that's "noise" with a silent, "s".]
We are huge dorks.
We got to Chicago in the stiiiiill of the niiiight. Jason needed pizza, so we hit up a place called, GINO's. This place is apparently quite famous for it's Chicago deep dish pizza awesomeness.. The guys tore into it, and I ate a little sauce and breadsticks... Still not feeling 100%. It was yummy sauce. :) I called my mom, and she told me that I'd been to Chicago as a wee tot. Who knew? I read a day later that Dollparts had recommended GIno's! HA!
We made our way across the beautiful, quiet city to Martin's house.. The kids let us in and showed us to our quarters in the basement.. The dog, [Poridge or something??] growled at me, but he ended up being sweet.. Very fluffy and big. He was our buddy.
At like 7am, Martin entered the room with a loud CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK. He let us know that the school stuff would start up if we wanted to join, or we could hang out at the house all day... I got up, had a nice hour or so with Katrina, Martins beautiful wife and walked to the school..
There were all sorts of classes going on, from marketing to band social dynamics to circuit bending. Really cool, really hands-on stuff. We were fed nummy food, made by Trina, Steve and Harrison. Mmm!!! All of the awesome interns kept things running smothly.
While I was at the school all day, the boys went on a hunt for drum symbols in Chicago. I was suspicious as to why it took like seven hours to find symbols, and to my horror... THEY WENT OUT FOR SUSHI!!! Without ME! They are both SO fired!! For reals!! We are officially broken up again. I mean it!!! Ohhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When i found out, I beat them both with my hat bag. NO MERCY.
After breaking up [I mean it!], We set up and played around 8pm.. It was really fun!! It was a very small, private show just for the seminar attendees who stayed late.. Martins kiddos and wifey were there too! The reception was great... What a wonderful little group of people. They were very cool.. Made some new friends for sure!! Martin was really sweet. I'm certain that we were ridiculously overly loud and obnoxious for the small room, but he and Katie were super gracious and appreciative of the show. Thanks guys!!! Of course, PJ and Jason nailed their parts. :P YAY! They're still fired, though. And I'm going to do something horrible to them in their sleep.
We played with interns at HQ for a couple of hours after everyone left. REALLY COOL people... Martin knows how to pick them.. Jason went down into the studio and recorded some sound effects stuff.. I was like,
"UMM I don't know if you're supposed to do that.."
Back at Martin's house, we were greeted with sheets of notebook paper taped all over the walls, instructing us where to sleep, which door was the bathroom, et. It was really cute. Harrison left them for us. He's in seventh grade, I think. Super smart kid, very cool. I grabbed them all, and hopefully I packed them with us.. I wanted to save them as souvenirs.. The boys were still up, having a slumber party with some of their friends who had been at the show. They were all wearing their One-Eyed Doll shirts, autographed to the max. :) I told them tour stories and got lots of presents, including Matt's name badge and a super rad German military hat from Ian! They were so fun to hang out with that I forgot about Jason and PJ, who were waiting for me! I decided to kidnap Harrison. I taped him up and everything, and he broke free. :(
After all that, the three of us went on a mad hunt for a real Chicago hot dog for PJ and Jason. We found a place called, "Chicago Food Courts" that was still open and entered, to the apparent dismay of the guy behind the counter. We were still in costume, so I can understand.. To his further dismay, Jason called him, "Sweety Pie". PJ and Jason ate hot dogs with, "the works", and I had some kind of a gyro thing... I got hooked up pretty fat. I think it was the, "Sweety Pie" comment, to be honest.
We drove to Lake Michigan in the middle of the night and gazed upon the beautiful Chicago skyline... WOW. What a lake, what a city! Jason was told that Jazz clubs are open until 5am, so we went hunting for one called, "The Green Mile" and dropped him off. Downtown was PACKED at 3:30am!!
PJ and I went "home" and crashed in Harrison and Ian's beds. Jason came home much later and slept with the dog. :)
It was so hard to leave the next morning.. I love Katrina and the boys and just wanted to stay... While Katrina wrote down her RAD soup recipe for me, PJ got pulled over by a Sherrif for waiting out in the road with the car. Ooopsss... :P
OFF TO DETROIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's another blog.. COMING SOON!
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