The Thickets have a show in Bellevue Washington at the Penny Arcade Expo on the 26th of August. Or maybe it’s the 27th. Now I’ve confused myself. Now I had never heard of the Penny Arcade Expo (or PAX) before, but a lot of my nerd friends are pretty excited that we’ll be playing it.
We’re trying to organize t-shirts and stickers to have at the show, and we’ll also be bringing CDs down. Of course these are strictly promotional as we won’t be selling anything in the US (for obvious reasons). Of course whether or not the border guards believe that remains to be seen. We could have our products confiscated, or we could just be denied access to the border.
Even before the Bush administration, crossing the border was always a gamble. One time we played in Atlanta for DragonCon and Jordan got turned back at the border, so we had to have a fan drum for us.
The second problem is that of our bass player. When I was first asked if we’d play the show, I asked everyone if they wanted to do it. They all agreed. They all said they were available and would do it. That is, except for Jordan, our drummer. Nevermind though, our guitarist Mario is also our backup drummer, so he’ll sit in for Jordan. Recently, however, Bob backed out of the deal, leaving us high and dry on the bassist front. But wait – Mario has another band, and that band has a bass player named Aaron, who, I’ve been told, has played with us once before. So hopefully he’ll know our songs and, more importantly, agree to come down and play with us. I’ll be meeting him again this coming Saturday, and we can suss out what all is going to happen.
If we don’t have a bass player or one of our five band members is not allowed to cross the border, that would be sad. Even though PAX doesn’t have the budget to pay us to play.
The good news is, we’re working on new songs. Lots of them. I’m sure none of them will be ready for PAX, but Allen at Divine wants us to cut a new album, and so do we. And we’ve also decided that we’ll be spending the money we’re getting from selling our touring van on new costumes and merchandise. So now we’re trying to figure out what new costumes would be cool. Any suggestions?
Deep one barbershop quartet. Striped jackets. Porkpie hats. Gills. It would be great.
My votes for superhero costumes. – Thinktank (there might even be a brain helmet lying around here somewhere)
– Otto Destruct
– Deep Freeze
– and two others. Does the dude with the magno-gun have a name?
One other. I forgot Dark Crab.
I still say Galactus.
Wampa ice creature.
New album you say? Now? now…NOW! NOW!!!
I’m just about to buy CSB (having worn a serious laser hole into my copy of Spaceship Zero) and I would be pretty damned excitapated about a new Thickets disk. Also…it sucks that I’m on the other side of the continent from PAX…otherwise I’d be there (and square as the kids say).
As to costumes…how bout a surfboard and a third leg and you’re all set to be Gnarlythotep (hell you could cheap out and just dress as a Pharoah with a surfboard for the same effect).
Oh and as to a new album….YES!