Day 7 at Preservation Pub in Knoxville, TN was another great gig!
We had a beautiful drive through the Smoky Mountains and kept pointing out the awesome views to each other. We stopped in Ashville for lunch and it was a nice upscale Mexican restaurant with great food and drinks although they charged us for water, wtf. Unfortunately a baby was crying a lot as we got served and drove Ellie and Dan outside. Hopefully the delicious afternoon margaritas made up for it.
We stopped at a local general store to check it out and then shortly got back on the road to Knoxville. When we arrived we had to load in through a back alley because the front of the venue is on a large no-vehicle plaza area. Kerri was driving and was a champ handling the car and trailer down the world’s longest and narrowest alleyway. Fortunately Dan helped to navigate and move trash cans out of the way as we pulled in the rear view mirrors to fit.
The alley was super cool though with string lights overhead all the way down and really cool graffiti murals covering the whole thing.
Load in was fairly easy and we were first so we got to take our time setting up and getting comfortable as Ellie and Joe went to check into the hotel.
The venue was more of a hang out spot for patrons rather than a place to go solely to see music, so Dan was worried it would be a shut out show (no merch sales, no clapping after songs), but we ended up converting the crowd and even sold merch before we played! We had another great set.
We had a small space to get off stage and get the next band on stage. We basically took up the whole dance floor. We hung out and relaxed a bit afterwards, and I checked out the rest of the building which was a multiple floor bar with a rooftop. It’s had this “crystals” theme to it which was really cool. They had thousands of dollars of crystals featured in several locations and also booths backed with crystal in the sister bar attached to the complex, it was wild. They even had a guy that I think read fortunes for people. He had a whole crystal station under the stairs in the main bar and a monk like outfit with massive crystal rings. It was a bit odd but fit the crystal theme once I realized there was a whole theme going on.
Load out was a little rough as we had to haul down the whole alleyway so we didn’t have to do the alley maneuver with the car again.
We were out before too late and I had an early bed time to try and catch up on rest as the sleep exhaustion continues to set in.
Band inside jokes continue to increase in hilarity and ridiculousness. The bond remains strong as we head into the final dates of the tour.