Good People in Albuquerque

On Wednesday we drove from Artesia, NM to Albuquerque, NM. On the way we stopped at the UFO Museum in Roswell, NM. The first thing I noticed was the newspaper cutout above. I was amazed that I was reading about an incident that happened outside of Louisville, KY. This was actually one of the earliest reported UFO sightings. A pilot from Louisville saw a flying saucer and decided to chase it. This ultimately resulted in a plane crash that took his life... Kind of strange. I can't go anywhere without there being some sort of Louisville connection (small town, small world).

We arrived in Albuquerque in the evening. I decided to check out a little brewery called "Kelly's". The weather was very nice so I sat outside on the patio. The place had about thirty beers that they brewed there. I tried the IPA... That was enough. Nothing special at this brewery. I went back to meet Paul at the hotel and we headed over to the Il Vicino Taproom. We made it just as they were closing. I didn't think they were going to serve us, but man was I wrong! This was the BEST service I have ever had at any brewery and some of the friendliest beer drinkers that I have ever met. Paul and I each had a pint of the Wet Mountain IPA. It was a very nice and crisp IPA. I sampled the Wheat Wine (delicious) and with that followed a sample of every other beer they had on tap! By this point we had made several new friends (including the bartender and brewmaster). It was an honour to enjoy a beer along with the person who made it. They loaded Paul and myself up with some nice glassware and we were on our way to the next brewery.

Chama River Brewery was our last stop of the evening. Our to new friends, Russ and Dawn, who we just met at Il Vicino recommended checking this place out. We were hungry so we split several sides - Green Chile Fondue, Lobster & Basil Mashed Potatoes, Truffle Blue Cheese Fries, Green Chile Polenta Cake and last but certainly not least, Sweet Potato Brulee (pictured above). For beer we were in luck... There was a recent hop shortage that shocked the brewing community last year. Prices for hops went way up and that had a big impact on many of the smaller breweries. Chama River just recently signed a contract securing their hops for this year. To celebrate, they have been doing single hopped pale ales with each of the hop varietals. We were fortunate enough to be there when their Simcoe Pale was on tap. Yet another great beer from New Mexico.

On Thursday morning, Bert and I went for coffee and breakfast. We stopped at a little Italian style coffee shop. The espresso was nice and strong. We met a guy who farmed green chile's and I told him how much I loved New Mexico's chilies. Lucky for us, he happened to have some in his car and gave us several packets of this "505 Green Chile sauce" that he makes. I can't wit to get home and cook with them! The people we met while in Albuquerque were some of the coolest most down to earth people I have met on the road. It was very refreshing to meet such awesome folks. From there, Bert and I headed to Frontier (an Albuquerque landmark) for some Green Chile breakfast burritos.

New Mexico... I miss you already!

List for Wednesday, Thursday & Friday:

• Negro Modelo
• Il Vicino Wet Mountain IPA
• Il Vicino Wheat Wine
• Chama River Simcoe Pale Ale
• Left Hand Chainsaw Ale
• Boon Geuze
• Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA
• Kelly's IPA
• Santa Fe Brewing Company Java Stout
• Marble Brewery IPA

Enchanting New Mexico

On Monday we drove from Oklahoma City to Artesia, NM. It was quite possibly the most boring drive I have ever made. I-40 through Oklahoma and Texas is about as lame as it gets. All you have to look forward to is stopping in Amarillo, TX which is actually a giant truckstop that became a city. So if you're into buying weird random things from truckstops (which I am) this is the spot. After passing through there we still had far to go. We stopped in a little town to get ice cream because the weather was hot again. So far, we have been going from hot to cold to hot again and repeating this on a daily basis. We are enjoying the heat now because from here we'll go north and it's just going to get colder and colder.

We didn't know what Artesia would be like, but I did know that they had a brewery. We arrived in the evening and decided to go check it out. The town has several huge petroleum companies based around it. There is a giant well at the end of Main St. that you can see from just about anywhere in the town. The brewery is appropriatley named "The Wellhead". I sampled all four of their beers and have to say that I wasn't that impressed. However, I was happy they were there because they did have Stone IPA on tap. Another cool landmark in the city that most people would never know about is The Artesia Restaurant and Hotel which is featured in "The Man Who Fell To Earth" starring David Bowie (so yes, Bowie has been there). There is also an old elementary school that was built during the Cuban Missile Crisis that was the only school to be built entirely underground to function as a massive fallout shelter as well... Cool facts!

On Tuesday Paul and I headed south to see Carlsbad Caverns. I saw that in Paul's diary he had refered to it as "the largest known caves in the Western Hemisphere". As much as I would like to agree with him, I am from Kentucky and know that is not true. So continuing on with the facts, Mammouth Cave (in Southwestern Kentucky) is the largest known cave system in the World! However, Carlsbad Caverns does house the largest "big room" in North America... and it was big! I've been to Mammouth Cave several times so it was really cool to see how different Carlsbad Caverns was compared to Mammouth. I wish we would've planned it better to give us enough time to walk through the whole thing. Since we only had a little more than an hour we took the elevator to the big room and walked through that. It was well worth the trip! I would love to go back there in the Summer months to see the bat flight.

The photo above is my "road soda" of the day. An extremely tart Raspberry Cider made here in New Mexico. It was a little like a raspberry slushie would taste (only minus the ice).

List for Monday and Tuesday:

• Wellhead Roughneck Red
• Wellhead Indian Basin Wheat
• Wellhead Crude Oil Stout
• Wellhead Pale Ale (the best of the bunch)
• Wellhead Cisco Canyon Blonde
• Stone IPA
• Great Divide Hercules Double IPA
• Spaten Optimator
  

Above is a video that I tossed together of some clips that I filmed while walking through Carlsbad Caverns. The music accompanying the video is a recording of "The Marsh" from last Friday in Austin, TX at One World Theater. This is from the first show and it features the vibraphone trio from UT.

Sunday School

On Sunday we drove from Dallas to Oklahoma City. We left early in the morning because we needed to soundcheck at noon with a 2 p.m. performance. Whenever you're playing a venue for the first time you never really know what to expect. This show was free to the public and it was in a small lecture hall in the free public library. When we walked into the room I noticed a small permanently installed sound system. The promoter then told us that she was going to get the PA system and she returned with a small cart with several boxes on it. Here is where my day really starts. I spent the next couple of hours before the show setting up the mini-system and trying to tweak it to sound alright. Everything ended up being just fine. The audience was very nice and appreciative. When the show was over we had the rest of the night off so we checked out a spot called "Tapwerks" (pictured above with all the taps). Our friend, Brian, drove from Wichita and had read about this place on beermapping.com (a must visit site for anyone that is traveling and enjoys beer). The atmosphere in Tapwerks was very cool. They had lots of neat old beer memorabilia. I must say that the atmosphere was a little more impressive than the beer list. Although, I didn't expect much for Oklahoma City and it was better than what I had expected. I had a Anchor Old Foghorn Barleywine and a Great Divide Hercules Double IPA.

We decided to move the action back to my hotel room. Brian brought over a very nice selection of beers to sample (pictured above is the "kill shot" of those brews). Brian and his friend, Sarah, are the inspiration for this "beer diary". The have been bringing us delicious beers to sample for a couple of years now. It's always great to drink beer with Brian. He's extremely knowledgable and fun to talk beer with. He also hipped me to beermapping.com and for that, I can't thank him enough. My favorite beer of the night was the Boulevard Saison-Brett. This is a limited beer from a Kansas City brewery that has blew my mind in the last year. Their "Smokestack Series" is all of their big beers in 750ml. bottles and I have yet to try one that I don't like. However, the Saison-Brett is by far my favorite. This beer is dedicated to George Brett (Kansas City baseball player) so they used Brettanomyces yeast which is a wild Belgian yeast with a very nice "funk" to it. I love Brett yeast and I wish more breweries would use it. My ideal combo is brett yeast and strong american hops (an IPA with Brett yeast will be the next big "American" style... Just you wait!)

The night ends like most normal Sunday nights on a CGT tour. Hideyo reads random verses from the Bible while "Preacher Paul" educates us on what they actually mean. You can see for yourself what that is like in the video above. Next week we will continue on with "Sunday School". I will be learning some timeless Hymns to open the rest of the shows with on this tour. It should be fun! We'll do an audience sing-along that will go something like this:
"Paul loves Jesus yes I know, for the Bible told Hideyo so" ... Can't wait! See you Sunday!!!

List for Sunday:

• Anchor Old Foghorn
• Great Divide Hercules Double IPA
• Boulevard Saison-Brett
• Boulevard Imperial Stout
• Anderson Valley "Hop Ottin" IPA
• Bitch Creek ESB
• New Belgium Mighty Arrow
• Rocky Mountain IPA
• Boulder Brewing Mojo Risin' Double IPA
• Schlafly Irish-Style Extra Stout
• Left Hand Imperial Stout
• Left Hand Jackman's American Pale Ale

Bad Robot

This day in age we depend more and more on “robots” to make our lives better and easier. They have their purpose. For example, we have quite a few robots on tour with us (laptops, cell phones, GPS, pedal boards, cd burner and duplicator). All of these do great things... When they feel like it. If you were at the Houston show last Thursday or the Dallas show last Saturday, you were probably unfortunate enough to know exactly what i'm talking about.



The show in Houston was great and full of energy. Everything was going as planned the live recording was working just fine throughout the whole show. As soon as the performance was over, I tried to "finalize" the cd and for whatever reason the robot decided it didn't want to do that.

Similar happening in Dallas, but this time it was the duplicator instead of the burner. Yet, this was worse because I kept trying to get it to work over and over, but nothing. I knew it should've worked, but I couldn't figure out why it wasn't? I felt like the robot was laughing at me while everyone stood by patiently waiting. Paul announced to those waiting that it wasn't going to work and people could either get their money back, choose another disc or have us make copies and mail them later. About two minutes after this announcement was made, the damn thing started working. Sorry to all of you in Houston and Dallas who waited. I promise that i'll get my revenge and the robots will not win!

Friday was such a long day for us that I decided to give the ole' liver a break. One World Theater in Austin gave us Spaten Optimator so I ended up having a couple of those. The next night in Dallas we had a well deserved Belgian sampling that helped end that night on a better note.

List for Friday and Saturday:

• Spaten Optimator
• Terrapin Rye Pale Ale
• Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye
• Orval Trappist Ale
• Brouwerij De Block bvba "Satan Red"
• Brouwerij Lindemans Gueuze Cuvee Rene