A day in the life of a ColdFire groupie

One of the things I admire most about Adam is his ability to dedicate himself fully to his dream - playing music. His talent is raw and he possesses an ear for music without formal training. Rarely do I meet someone so passionate about a goal. It is at once impressive and contagious in that I now experience a healthy anxiety about the status of ColdFire. I want this band to succeed no matter if that success means fame or simply an outlet they can use to express themselves. I LOVE BAND.

That said, last night ColdFire played with three other bands at everyone's favorite metal dive bar: Samurai Duck. Everyone has their own fears, routines, and rituals the day of a performance. Adam's are specifically linked to the process of transporting the band to the location of a gig. Everything must be on time. Adam's definition of time distorts on show days though. While I am interested in getting place on time as well, I often forget to figure in gig time. Frankly I don't know the formula for calculating gig time and I try not to ask about it. I'm good at driving, taking pictures, and adapting to new schedules. I'm pretty sure n-2 fits somewhere in finding out how much time we have to get places on show nights, since last night ColdFire got on stage at 10:30 p.m. but we were there and unloaded and playing pool since 8:30.

Anyway. Samurai Duck is a metal venue, yet it doesn't discriminate. All sorts of people show up there. Last time a guy brought a cake inside and talked to it. He ate it with his finger. I have a soft spot for that guy though. Read blog #1. Another regular who once danced provocatively to "Belly Drop" reportedly stabbed a cabbie. Yesterday Justin (the bassist) brought a group of 7 friends - complete with a guy wearing chaps and another who disintegrated exponentially with each drink. More about him later.

As groupie I have the following rules/moral obligations/desires: I photograph constantly, I bring drinks occasionally to the band, I call everyone I know and invite them to shows, I attempt to pay attention to sound levels, and if something goes wrong onstage I try to quietly resolve it. Last night I also controlled (loose term) Dan's video camera. The other Justin (Kevin's nephew) kindly traded off with my digital camera taking photos so we could both keep an eye on the video camera, which is probably expensive and was teetering precariously above a beer soaked floor surrounded by drunken morons. After a couple songs we realized an eight foot tall guy was standing in front of the video camera. Luckily Adam brought his tripod, so Justin and I coordinated a covert camera move, Blair Witch Project style. Later when Dan watched the part on film where I tried to sneak onstage and get the tripod only to discover it was not the tripod and in fact some other ambiguous long black case, he proclaimed, "Sweet! Chicks are crawling on stage! Oh wait, that's Kira." We found the tripod eventually and tried for a pretty long time to attach it to the camera. It's hard when you're working in a dim dive dodging darkly dressed drunkards and dropping parts of the tripod on the bar floor (yeah, did you catch that alliteration? It wasn't intentional but I just went with it). My favorite part was when Justin said, "The camera hears everything we're saying." Keep in mind I was holding my digital camera as a light source while Justin was both trying to attach the other camera and dropping tripod parts. We gave up and put the camera on the water cooler on top of the bar.

Everything was going great:















Derrik and Adam were jamming,




















Justin was belting riffs (Adam helped me with the band jargon),

















Dan and Animal were laying down beats,

















AND Justin's extremely intoxicated friend was climbing onto the stage and taking the mike! I took a couple pictures because I thought they'd invited him on stage to say something or announce a song. It turns out they hadn't. Soon Adam had to pull the mike away while Heidi, Justin, and I tried to convince the guy to come down. He sort of jumped into my arms, but happily Justin caught him before I died. Later he tried to join the band again but I convinced him in the nick of time to sit down next to me off to the side. Adam was ready to gently nudge him offstage with his foot, he said later (but not in those words). "This one's a good song, huh?" I offered. He replied he jusht wanted to shing backup.




















He danced uncomfortably close to Justin (bassist) for the last two songs. I guess every show has its crazed fan.

Despite the chaos, ColdFire rocked that metal scene. My contracted anxiety about the shows is always calmed by the clarity of their sound and the positive impact they have on their crowd.

"'Peace' can't be said enough; we should hang these flags up..."
-"Burning Flags" lyrics by ColdFire