Euforquablog

A collection of photos from Euforquestra’s recent Midwest Winter Tour…

The Winter Tour schedule has kicked in to high gear, and last week we enjoyed one of the best weeks we’ve ever had traveling through Colorado. We left Fort Collins early Wednesday afternoon to play our first show in Vail, another awesome ski town to add to the list. We arrived to some wet road conditions and our GPS sent us to a dead end, so we explored for a bit to find the venue. After realizing we couldn’t get in to the venue for a couple hours we made our way through the village to find our hotel. It was nice relaxing afternoon that included a phone interview with local radio and various members killing time by hot-tubbing, surfing the web and catching up on episodes of Lost. Jeter and I enjoyed some coffee in the lobby as we waited for the rest of the crew before we went back to the club…

Our debut show in Vail was off the hook. The Samana Lounge is a tiny little venue but the vibe is really nice and people come out to have a good time. We played two long sets of music that night and were happy to have a packed dance floor all night long. We met some great people and reunited with some old friends that currently live in Vail.

After over-sleeping the next day we got a late start heading to Telluride. This was Ben’s first trip to Telluride and we spent much of the ride hyping up the beautiful scenery, unfortunately it was a long drive and we arrived after dark… but luckily it was a full moon and many of peaks surrounding the town were still very visible! We made our way down to the Fly Me To The Moon Saloon to load-in and soundcheck.

After all that was done we went and found a hotel and then rushed to get dinner. Let it be known that Baked In Telluride has some of the best pizza ever… and we eat a lot of pizza in our line of work!

The show that night was another rager. First set started off like many nights where people trickle slowly on to the dance floor, but by the time we closed the set with the Talking Heads’ “Nothing But Flowers” it was an all-out dance party. Second set was slammin’ from the downbeat and the momentum carried all the way until the end of the night. We took our time loading out as we were hassled by a patron that had had one-too-many cocktails that night (he meant well as he attempted to help, but he was quite a nuisance). We spent a little bit of time hanging with the owners and then retired for the night…

Friday morning in Telluride was sunny and beautiful! None of us had been to Telluride in quite a while so most of us were eager to get up early and enjoy our brief stay in town. After a nice continental breakfast (which included conversations with other hotel patrons that had been at our show the night before) Austin, Ryan and I hit the town. We wandered all the way down to city park to take a look at the big festival stage and then back through downtown.

After some browsing around town and a cup of coffee at the local coffee shop/book store, we met up with the rest of the guys and made our way to the gondola. Telluride has a gondola that’s free to ride… just another reason why that town is awesome. The view should speak for itself…

Before long it was time to get back in the van… this time heading to Durango (another band favorite). The Durango crowd has been one of our most receptive audiences in Colorado for a long time, so we were especially excited to get back there for SnowDown weekend. As we were rolling in to town we noticed that tons of people were already out in their full costumes for the night, so we had a feeling it was going to be a wild one. It was mid-afternoon when we rolled in to town and we headed immediately to our regular stay… the Alpine Inn. We played our friends’ wedding in Durango last year and they put us up at the Alpine Inn and we’ve stayed there every time we’ve been back since then… We always get a good laugh at their sign because it looks like it says “WHERE FRIENDS SEND FRIENDS LAUNDRY”.

We arrived at the Summit that evening only to realize there was an early show going on… The venue was already packed! The early show ended and the place was still packed. I think was the first time we’ve set up and soundchecked in front of an almost sold out audience. We worked our way through a pretty stressful soundcheck and then had about twenty minutes to relax while the local West African drum and dance ensemble warmed up the crowd. We hit the stage around 11pm and the energy in the room was through the roof!! The people in Durango make up the dancin’est collective that I’ve ever seen! People come out and dance. Hard. Most people finish their drinks and then they don’t leave the dance floor until the set is over!

During set break we met a guy that looked like he could easily be related to Jocko (John Brown’s Body’s sound engineer) or Ben Franklin (former Public Property drummer), so we took a picture with him and proceeded to send it to them both via txt messages immediately. Anyone that knows Jocko or Ben should agree the resemblance is pretty uncanny! After another ragin’ set we tore down and headed back to the hotel…

Saturday we were en route to another new town and venue… Pride of the West in Silverton, CO. This was the maiden voyage for every member of the band and we all had no idea what to expect. When we passed the Durango/Silverton steam engine on our way up the mountain we all had a feeling it was going to be a pretty cool experience. Silverton sits at about 9,300 ft above sea level, so we had to climb for quite a while, even from Durango, to get there.

As we rounded a corner we saw an entire town below that was about the size of a shopping mall in Chicago! We rolled in to town, passing the gas station, grocery store and post office on main street (which has no stop lights) and we found the venue. The club wasn’t open yet so we headed back down the block to our hotel… The Grand Imperial Hotel, est. 1882.

The Grand Imperial Hotel was amazing. It was a beautiful piece of living history that we were fortunate enough to experience. The furniture, the wood and brass/copper work throughout the building was amazing and there was a nice variety of paintings hanging on the walls. We wandered up steep stair cases and narrow corridors to our rooms on the third floor. For a band that’s use to cramming seven guys in to one room at Super 8’s across the country this was a real treat. We settled in and got comfortable and everyone went about relaxing the afternoon away…

A couple of the guys and myself decided it would be great to walk around town and check things out since it was a nice sunny day and we were in such an interesting place. We were intercepted in the hotel lobby by Greg, the venue owner that had brought us to town. He wanted to check in with us and let us know that we could load in to the club any time, so we went to work. We went down to Pride Of The West and started loading in. We spent a couple hours working through set up and soundcheck and then it was back to the hotel to relax before dinner.

We headed to the San Juan Grill for dinner which, to be consistent with the entire day so far, was awesome. We drank a bottle of wine and enjoyed great pasta dinners. The restaurant was bustling and it wasn’t until we finished our meal and were on our way out that people realized we were the band for the night and we got comments like “thank you for coming to Silverton! we’ll see you over there in a bit!” When we got to the venue it was already starting to fill in. We had a chance to meet and chat with some of the locals and it was apparent that they’re always very appreciative of musicians that venture up to their remote little town. Everyone I talked to was really cool and I started to get really excited to get on stage.

We hit the stage around 9:30 and people made their way to the dance floor. “Elegua” had been a nice opener for most of the week, so we stuck with that… and it was a hit. The people in Silverton responded well to everything we played, but the reggae and afrobeat tunes put an especially nice vibe in to the room that night. We played three sets that night and they were all a blast. Some times we have our most musical nights in these intimate settings… for me it felt like one of those nights. We had played three great shows leading up to this night, but Silverton was the big winner in my opinion.

During our final set we had one of the funniest experiences in Euforquestra history… We cover a Squirrel Nut Zippers song called “Hell” that features a big drum solo where the rest of us usually pretend to die on stage and we lay there twitching and convulsing while the drummers go crazy, only to be “revived” just before Austin leads us in to the last chorus. On this particular night, however, the stage was too small for all of us to fall over “dead”, so Ryan decided he would wander out in to the audience and “die”. The lighting was pretty low in the room, so when Ryan hit the floor no one realized it was the guy from the stage! People started trying to help him up or roll him over immediately but he just laid there, unresponsive. Before we knew it the bouncer had grabbed him by the shoulders and picked him up to carry him out and Ryan had to explain to him that it was all part of an act gone terribly wrong! We found out later that Ryan was dressed very similar to the town drunk that night and people thought it was him!

We finished our third set around 1am and spent the last hour just hanging out and chatting with folks (and apologizing to those that had been scared by Ryan’s stunt) before the bar closed and we headed back for one last night of hotel sleep for the week.

The next morning the man that runs the Grand Imperial Hotel informed us that the hotel is haunted by a ghost named Luigi and Ben and I actually slept in the room where he had committed suicide a hundred years earlier. Kind of an interesting way to start the day, don’t you think?

Greg met us back at the venue at 10am and we packed up our gear, said our goodbyes and hit the road. The weather was beautiful so we took Red Mountain Pass up through Ouray where we stopped for bagels and coffee. For those that aren’t familiar, Ouray might be the only town in Colorado that truly rivals Telluride in terms of scenery (at least in my opinion), so it was nice to stop and take in the sites for a bit. After food and caffeine it was back in the van for another ten hours all the way back to Fort Collins…

2010 is off to a great start. Thank you all for the continued love and support. We are very fortunate to be able to do what we do and we can’t wait to get out there to make more stories with you all (and then post them here on the Eublogestra). Until next time…

Well, ladies and gentlemen, 2010 is finally upon us. It’s hard to believe we’ve been in Colorado for almost a year and a half now. We had a really amazing year and want to thank all of you for the continued love and support. 2009 was a busy year for us as we completed our third studio album, “Soup”, at Backbone Studios in Loveland, CO. It was a long time coming (three and a half years since our last release) but we feel like it was worth the wait. Along with the studio album, we also continued to keep our tour schedule busy and full at all times, playing another 110 shows last year. We were fortunate enough to play a lot of big shows with many of our heroes, including The Motet, John Brown’s Body and whole bunch of shows with the Kyle Hollingsworth Band. We also had some great festival experiences, including Michael Travis and Jason Hann (of EOTO and SCI) sitting in at Wakarusa and two amazing nights at our own Camp Euforia 09.

2009 also saw the departure of two founding members of Euforia and Euforquestra, Josten Foley and Eric Quiner. After many long years of traveling and playing music together these guys decided it was time to move on and pursue other focuses in their personal lives. It’s always hard to part ways with people you’ve worked so closely with for so long, but the band was supportive of their decisions and we continue to be happy for them in their new endeavors (PS: congrats on the recent engagement Jos!).

As a transition to fill the void of two members we under went a couple big transitions. Adam Grosso, the band’s long-time bass player, became our drummer! Adam has been a drummer all his life and has been very happy with this change. Also, our good friend of many years, Ben Soltau, moved out to Fort Collins to join us on bass guitar. Many of the folks around Iowa City know Ben from his other projects, New Beat Society, We Funk and the Big Funk Guarantee. We’re thrilled to have him on board. Finally, Walter Hannah has stepped in on keys to fill out the sound. Walter is an amazing organ and keys player and it’s been great working with him so far. We’re excited to see what this new group does in 2010.

All the members of Euforquestra have had a great break over the holiday season to spend time with family and catch up with friends, and now we’re excited to get back and start the new year off with a very busy month of January shows. Again, thank you all for the continued love and support. We couldn’t do what we do without it. Be well and we look forward to seeing you on the road in 2010…

Hey everyone,

This is the brand new Euforquablog! Keep checking back for updates from the road as well as other misc info from the world of Euforquestra.

The new album is done! It’s been three and a half years since we released an album and we feel like it was worth the wait for this one. The album was recorded at Backbone Studios in Loveland, CO. It features 11 tracks, including the upcoming single and title-track “Soup” (which will be available for free download next week).

We’re working on a Facebook promotion right now that will hopefully result in us giving the entire album away for free. If Euforquestra has 3,000 Facebook fans by October 1st we will make the entire album available for free download at Euforquestra.com on October 6th. Swing by the band’s Facebook page to start spreading the word. Just click the link underneath the profile pic that says “Suggest to friends”.

We’re also excited to hit the road next week to tour with the Kyle Hollingsworth Band in the midwest. Kyle is going out to tour in support of his new album “Then There’s Now” which will be available later this month. We’ve got shows together in Madison, Iowa City, Chicago and Muncie next week and the following week we’ll be opening his CD release show at the Fox Theatre in Boulder, CO. Swing by Kyle’s blog for updates from his end as well.

Finally, here’s  a video of an acoustic performance at the Backbone Studios open house last weekend. We’ve talked about playing an acoustic set for a long time and this was a great excuse for us to work on up. Hope you enjoy it!

This is the first post on the brand new Euforquablog.  Check back often for interesting posts and continuous updates about the excitement that is Euforquestra!