Out of Reverie is finally back on the road.
We got off to a late start in the morning, so we ended up arriving a little late to the Shine Coffee Shop in Sacramento. Rena, the place's proprietor, was very cool about it, though, and still had a spot for the band following the open mic.
Because of the shop's size and Out of Reverie's imposing sound, it was decided that Dain should play the show acoustic.
You could tell he had never played some of the songs acoustic before as the set was a bit sloppy, but the people in place seemed to enjoy themselves, even if they weren't jumping out of their seats.
It was just another change necessitated by the road and the things we cannot control. Though the rest of the band could not be involved, it was still a fun time and a chance to introduce the band's sound to a few new souls.
Dain even managed to sneak in the line "A sandwich you never knew you had" over the actual line that sounds strikingly similar in his acoustic rendition of "Can You Hear Me Now, Charlie Brown."
It's kind of an inside joke. You had to be there. And I was, so I am sharing the experience with you.
Not to mention the fact that Rena is a really sweet lady. She runs this awesome shop with great food and drinks and goes out of her way to help touring bands in a lurch.
And she makes one delicious Panini. Holy cow, this thing knocked my socks off.
I will delve into the realm of food blogger for a second and tell you to get your ass to Sacramento to bite into Shine's delicious turkey, provolone and roasted pepper panini.
Sam and I both gulfed down one of these warlocks.
The majority of our day prior to the show was spent in the van making the trek from Los Angeles to Sacramento. While six-plus hours of driving would normally be the low-light of any trip, it was really cathartic for the five of us.
Following the van problems and show cancellations, the long drive allowed for a feeling of progress. We were finally moving.
It also helped that a few of us had never been to Northern California so the trip was a new experience. It didn't feel repetitive as repetitive as the-back-and-forth between Los Angeles and Phoenix that we all know and loathe.
I decided to take the wheel for the first half of the trip and it was a doozy. After crawling my way through the Los Angeles freeway system, I maneuvered the van up and down and through hills and mountains. While it took a bit of work to weave between the semi-trucks and California drivers, I found the drive kind of beautiful in an alien kind of way.
The mountains were different than I had ever seen before with their abundance of green and sandy texture.
Then things got boring. We traveled upward for the first few hours and then the terrain leveled off into farmland and fields of dead brush.
At that point my eyes began to glaze as the Central California landscape lulled me into a daze.
In order to avoid a collision of some sort, we pulled into a gas station and Dain took the wheel.
Dain didn't fare much better, almost driving us off the road immediately when he misjudged the degree to which the road turned to get back on the freeway.
A few hours later Jake took over the controls when we had to fill up. He even managed to get a wink from a cute girl pumping some gas in front of us (McGee was tempted to get out of the van and ask her, "Hey girl, you eat yet?").
He brought us the rest of the way into Sacramento. We passed through some really smelly cow farms and Stockton and finally pulled off of the freeway into downtown Sacramento.
The beauty of the "City of Trees" took us all aback. The downtown area is dotted with classic looking brick houses and colorful townhouses and Shine sits right on a small corner in between all of it.
Before the show started Dain and I walked through the trendy district off of J Street while the rest of guys decided to just wander for a bit.
Then we made our way back to Shine to catch some spoken words before Dain's set. Afterwards we immediately hit the road again so we could make it to Jake's Grandpa's farm in Corning. It was another two hours, but the drive gets us to another friendly place to sleep and a little bit closer to the house show in Eugene tomorrow night.
Every day is unpredictable out on the road, but that has kind of been a blessing. Without a few canceled shows we never would have met Rena or experienced this awesome panini.
