Oh yeah ... Denver!

So Riveter brought to the Larimer Lounge in Denver on Saturday.

And it was a great time.

We drove over Saturday morning, arriving at my gramma's house (because what true rock 'n' roll tale doesn't include a stay with gramma?) around 1.

Laurena, Kelley and I spend the requisite time making ourselves pretty and gathering our jumpsuits and acoutrements d' rock stars. Then we headed downtown to check out the club.

Once we had located our final destination, we scooted over to LoDo for some P.F. Chang's. Can I just say:

Dear Mr. P.F. Chang,

Your food rocks. I wish I had a couple extra stomachs so I could've kept eating.

Oh, and Chinese food is the perfect pre-show meal.

Love,
rivetergirl

So we left LoDo properly carbed up and ready to start our pre-show preparations. We arrived at the club at the designated two hours before our show time. We loaded in our gear then spent the next couple of hours visiting with our friends who'd come to see our show on the fabulous Larimer Lounge patio.

Because they'd run out of buns, they were serving free barbecue, which Johnny assured numerous times was going to sit well in his stomach.

Then, before we knew it, we were suited up and ready to rock. (I should note that our "green room" consisted of the backseat of our SUV ... thank goodness for tinted windows.)

We loaded our equipment on stage, individually tested the instruments and microphones and then the sound guy said, "OK, play."

And we did.

We rocked a 45-minute set of all originals except for one cover — Dylan's Don't Think Twice and even got called for an encore ... Woot!

Here are some pictures from our set:


The last picture is the Denver band, The Sights They Affect. The shirtless bass player broke his E-string — something that I've never seen happen — early in the set. The guitar player plaintiffly asked if anyone in the audience had a bass they could use. Laurena offered hers.

Oh, the delight of seeing that guy rocking her red heartbreaker was worth the drive to Denver alone. Truly a brilliant cap to a great day.

And the band rocked. We really dug their sound. The singer was adequately emaciated and full of enough self-loathing that it made the fact that he stood introspectively on stage work for him. Their bass player seemed to be trying to work a Flea vibe, but really only succeeded in looking like a lost frat boy ... except the mofo could play, that's for sure. Their rhythm guitar playing was cute enough and I keep forgetting they had a drummer completely.

But that sound ... it was really great.

We saw a lot of other bands and this guy, too.

Yeah, that guy. One guy, a keyboard, an acoustic guitar and a show that probably took every free minute of the last six months to prepare. It was crazy and bizarre but also kinda good.

He wants to do a show with us here in Grand Junction, but ... oh my, I can't even begin to think what the folks in GJ would think.

But we did decide that when they are making the Riveter rockumentary, we'll totally use this guy as filler between scenes. In the meantime, it was decided that he should do iPod and Levi commericals.

The end of the night saw us driving back to my gramma's house while KP, Laurena and I laughed over Bill's intestinal urgency.

See, the one bad thing about the Larimer Lounge were the bathrooms.

The ladies room had to toilets. One had a curtain and one had a door that you could move in front of you while you peed. Oh and the sink was backed up. Delightful.

But those were 4-star accomodations compared to the men's room which you could smell 50 away and had one toilet that was duct taped closed.

So Bill's refusal to use the ladies room before we left the club made for a long ride back to gramma's. I tried to stop a couple of times but nothing was open at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night.

Poor guy. By the time we'd brushed our teeth and made the bathroom available to him, he was sitting in my gramma's recliner, looking all gray and sweaty.

Not even a double dose of Febreze air freshner followed by a Glade chaser could stem that stench.