Tour diary: Paradigm

Evan Pouchak of Paradigm will be blogging occasionally during the band's western trek.

Days 1 and 2

We pulled out of Louisville at around 3:30 on Monday to start our tour of the Midwest and Colorado. We'll be staying in St. Louis until Thursday, when we travel to Kansas City and then Colorado the day after.

We've played two shows so far--Monday's show was in St. Louis at a place called Cicero's, which looks like sort of a cross between Uncle Pleasant's and a BW3's. We played in front of around 30 early-comers, of whom seemed to like what we do pretty well. The band after us was Madahoochie, a fun pop-oriented jam band with a deep pocket and an absolutely radiant stage presence, of whom were also kind enough to put us up until we left for Kansas City.

Tuesday threw us a bit of a curve ball--our original gig at Pop's Blue Moon was canceled due to renovation, so we latched on to a show down on Broadway with a band called The Schwag. The Schwag is a Dead cover band, and sort of had the same vibe as Louisville's Merry Pranksters. The bar was packed to the brim with deadheads. We played a set before they started, and then one twenty-minute-long tune during their set break. The dead crowd likes dancing(if you do it right they will dance on tables), so we stuck to more of the groove-oriented stuff in the catalouge.

Much of the trip thus far has been about sightseeing. Road trips tend to go like this: either you are on a strict schedule to get from one place to another in a certain amount of time, or you have a day and a half of nothing to do. Ours has been the latter, so a couple of us passed the time by checking out what I assume are the vital tourist spots: the Arch, Busch Stadium, the St. Louis Zoo, etc. At the top of the list, in my opinion, was the City Museum of St. Louis, which is a sort of cross between a museum and an indoor playground designed by Tim Burton. It's an interesting idea; instead of a museum focusing on strictly art or history, it uses found items(scrap metal, pipe organs, rusted out planes, pieces of skate parks) and makes them the exhibit.

Also, there's a seven-story high spiral slide. That in itself is worth the price of admission.