CULTURE MYTH - Days 8: San Francisco

Written by Chad Taylor. Originally appeared on the Culture Myth website on March 26, 2016.

Rae Davis and Sara Routh
all pics by Chad Taylor

California gets progressively more lovely, the further north you head. In the matter of the Great Divide within the state, it is clear that I sit firmly on the NorCal side of things. The greens are greener, the hills are lovelier, and the people are -- if you'll excuse the ad hominem painting -- more chill and genuine.

Rae Davis and Sara Routh are spending their time here quartered in different locations. Davis is staying with friends in Oakland, while Routh and a couple of her friends have rented an AirBnB in The City. After splitting up to unpack at their respective host homes, everyone heads into town for a gig at the Revolution Cafe, and right into a situation that has the potential to be the biggest clusterfuck of the entire tour.

The Mission District is one of the most vibrant, vital parts of the San Francisco landscape. It is exactly what you would expect any large city's heartbeat to look like: colorful, loud, frenetic, slightly gross, beautiful, dirty, and eternally entertaining. Looking for the best cafes? The best little places to eat? The best art? This neighborhood--no matter what each city calls it--is the place to go.

The one potential drawback to that much going on in one small area, however, is the chance for overlap in events. Like, for example, today, when Routh and Davis rock up to the Revolution, and find a full-on street fair happening on the street outside. A street fair including an actual stage with musical performers, literally 10 feet from the Revolution's front door. This could be interesting.

CULTURE MYTH - Day 7: Goodbye, Los Angeles

Written by Chad Taylor. Originally appeared on the Culture Myth website on March 24, 2016.

Our first two-day stint in a town, and it comes immediately before a four-day stop in our next locale. It's an easy week in California.

The appeal of Los Angeles continues to confound me, but more positives are showing their faces all the time. Rae Davis and I start making a list.

- The oppressively Californian weather

- There's a place on Santa Monica that sells $2 thrift clothing. It's all in a giant pile on the floor, but there you go.

- There's damn good food to be found

- The city is large enough and diverse enough to not only have a little China and little Italy, but a little Ethiopia.

So it grows. Today was originally scheduled as an off day. Davis spends most of it relaxing around our host home, while Sara Routh has brunch with a friend, then heads to a photo shoot. The hot LA sun blazes away as errands are run and friends are commiserated with.

CULTURE MYTH - Day 6: Los Angeles

Written by Chad Taylor. Originally appeared on the Culture Myth website on March 23, 2016.

There are people who feel that Los Angeles is a city you know about right away: you pull in, and immediately know in your gut if you're going to love it or hate it. Conversely, I've heard that LA is so big, so diverse, that you really need to spend a couple of years submerged in it before you really have a handle on how you feel about it.

For me, as the most superficial of interlopers into the greater LA biosphere, I can say that it seems very much to be a place with a purpose. Not so much a city, as a tool. As such, I can understand why some people live here. If you're involved in entertainment in just about any way, LA is where you have to be. So for actors and screenwriters and directors and media types, I get it. I can see why people are here. What I haven't figured out quite yet, is why people would WANT to live here, all things being equal. The greater allure of the city, outside of the entertainment industry, has so far eluded me.

There's a shabbiness to LA. Part of that is affected. Shabby-chic is a definite way of life here. But another portion--I'd wager the greater portion--is just how the city has become. It looks tired. The people and their cars are all very shiny and well maintained and beautiful. But the city around them, the set upon which everyone plies their trade, is worn and frayed at the edges. You can see it in the trees and on the faces of buildings. A lot of it is unquestionably the fault of this great drought that is ravaging much of the American west, and hitting California particularly hard. But it's not the only explanation, because there is a general weariness that you can feel in the spirit of the place. I don't know if I've seen more than a handful of genuine expressions of emotion or desire in my time here.

CULTURE MYTH - Day 5: A rest

Written by Chad Taylor. Originally appeared on the Culture Myth website on March 22, 2016.

Rae Davis booked Sara Routh's tour. All three legs of it, in fact. For this west coast swing, Davis focused on finding gigs close to friends houses, which allowed Routh and Davis to save a ton of money on lodging.

We've talked about it before, but one can not put too fine a line on it: indie artists know they aren't going to make money on their self-funded tours, so every expenditure becomes vital to track. Anywhere you can find to cut costs, and potentially extend your tour one more day, you do it. This is what most galled indie artists who read about Pomplamoose's horrendous debacle of a tour back in 2014.

CULTURE MYTH - Day 4: Albuquerque and Santa Fe

Written by Chad Taylor. Originally appeared on the Culture Myth website on March 22, 2016.

We haven't even gotten the New Tour Smell out of our clothes yet, and Sara Routh and Rae Davis already find themselves in the middle of the longest, hardest stretch of the whole thing.

Leaving Omaha on the morning of day three, they drive eight hours to Oklahoma City for a show that night, then pile right back into the car for another seven hours of driving to Santa Fe where they grab a few hours sleep before playing an afternoon show in Albuquerque, followed by an evening house show back in Santa Fe.

Everything after this is cake.

CULTURE MYTH - Day 3: Oklahoma City

Written by Chad Taylor. Originally appeared on the Culture Myth website on March 20, 2016.

There's nobody here. That's not even that big of an exaggeration: the crowd is so small, that at one point Sara Routh makes everyone go around the room and introduce themselves. And yet, this place is what you wish every show could embody.

The venue. Holy shit, the venue. JJ's Alley Bricktown Pub is a tiny, dirty, glorious clusterfuck of kitsch. The walls are covered with such a jumbled, eclectic collection of doll heads, signs, doors, toys, glasses and various random fuckery as to be nearly overwhelming in their incomprehensibility. The first thing one does when entering JJ's for the first time is gape.

CULTURE MYTH - Day 2: Omaha

Written by Chad Taylor. Originally appeared on the Culture Myth website on March 19, 2016.

"This is so easy, since you gals don't really sing."

That's Kevin, the sound guy. He's a dick, but on the upside, he also doesn't know what he's doing. We'll get back to him.

The road will always find a way to test your patience. Sometimes, as everyone found out tonight, it won't even wait that long to do so. We are one day onto the road, a literal stone's throw from our home state, and a solid nap in the back seat away from our actual homes. And yet...

Omaha is a fine town. I've been to some really good shows here, and there has always been a genuinely solid music scene, thanks in no small part to the bands that helped established the Saddle Creek sound back in the early '90s. But I don't care where you find yourself in this world, nothing is perfect.

CULTURE MYTH - Day 1: Des Moines

Starting today, and continuing on or near the 10th and 25th of every month, we will be reprinting a post from Chad Taylor's blog, Culture Myth. Chad Taylor was the music reporter for Cityview magazine in Des Moines, although he has also written for other publications like DSM Magazine.

Written by Chad Taylor. Originally appeared on the Culture Myth website on March 18, 2016

Rae Davis' cousin came to see her play tonight.

"All this time, I didn't even know we were living in the same city," she says afterward, still in disbelief. "Then I look up from the stage, and there she is."

The Davis clan is not the only one represented in the Des Moines Social Club's Basement Bar tonight, either. For both Davis and Sara Routh, the venue is full of parents and relatives and friends and loved ones. It's full of family.

For nearly 500 years of our human history, it was customary for people at home to come to the shore and watch ships leaving the harbor. It was a chance to say a final farewell to loved ones standing on deck, and a way of wishing the vessel good luck as it pushed forth into the great unknown or, at very least, the great known but still really dangerous and unpredictable.