Travelling Mercies: 2

If a mini tour is a pregnancy (which its not, don't kill me women, I just need a measurable time parallel), then my tryst through the Bay Area would've been the 2nd Trimester. Some kind of amazing, I'll tell you. I did almost as much spectating as I did featuring, but I had a great time. Features, I got to see: Buddy Wakefield in Oakland, Ainsley Burrows at the City Slam (for which I spotlit) and Chas Jackson at the Golden State Slam, all of which impressed, A LOT. In between, I also featured at San Jose for the wonderful Kat Dietrich and concluded my time there by featuring at Berkeley.

Yo...This shit was awesome.

So many of the Bay's finest we're in the house that night including a beat-boxing 9 year old that rocked the house before my teaser. As good as he was, he would not be the most impressive youngin I would see on this tour (in the business, we call that foreshadowing). The Berkeley Slam was hosted by Jamie DeWolf and my God, I never wanted to see a Tourettes show so badly. He was unreal, which you can imagine I'm sure. Funny, rude, engaging, just an unflinching energy that was awesome to see. My set went over extremely well. Even debuted a new piece about infidelity I was slightly nervous about. I definitely have to shout out the people I hung with most of the week: Ekabhumi, Kristina Robertson (who I saw every single show), Tatyana Brown, Jaime Britton & Stephen Meads (who probably did my favorite poem/performance of this tour so far). Thank you all for making me feel at home 2,000 plus miles away.

By Thursday, I was on my way to Arizona to do a few shoes and hang with my man, 50 Grand Ed Mabrey. Ed, did this up right, set up shows for me, treated me like a brother coming into town and we've had a great time thus far. On Thursday night, I got to be part of a benefit concert that included quite a few bands. Including my new favorite artists. I will now direct you to the Alex Aiono section of the blog.

Meet Alex Aiono



He's 13 years old. He's Samoan. He plays the ukulele. He's a good looking kid. He's all kinds of awesome.



Its not just the fact that he's an immensely talented pre-teenager, that sounds like a grown damn man and is charismatic as hell. He's super humble about it all. Which means he's just that good of a kid (shout out to his parents on that one) or he has no idea of the kind of attention/praise/love/female attention/accolades that will get thrown at him in the next 3-6 years. He's also got a great family as evidenced below



And for the John Legend fans, you'll appreciate this:



Ok, I'm done now.

So its Saturday and I'm headed to Tuscon tonight to do the Ocotillo Slam. Lindsey actually, extended their season and created this show since I was going to be in town...no pressure there. I guess I better not suck tonight. But I'm really looking forward to it. Sunday, I've doing an appearance at one more Open Mic, then headed home on Monday morning. Can't wait to see my wife. And I keep hearing about all this snow Bullshit happening back east. If my flights get fucked with even a little bit, its gonna be me, Mother Nature and a hate crime, trust me on that.