My love for Squeeze takes me several places this year - first San Diego and San Juan Capistrano.
I arrived in San Diego on Monday, April 9th without any delays. My layover in Denver was painless. I caught a cab to Downtown San Diego where I would find the Gaslamp Plaza Suites and my travel companion Gill. Back a few months ago, I posted that I was thinking seriously about going to San Diego to see Squeeze because the show was taking place on my week off, so why not? The only sticking point was that I had no one to travel with me. One day, Gill, whom I met at the Rochester Castle concert last summer, sent me a message on FB and said she was going to come from London, so I immediately made my plans and we coordinated to make a great trip.
Anyway, once I arrived at the hotel, I put my things in Gill's room because mine wasn't quite ready and we went for lunch. We ate at a place called the Merk where I devoured a wild mushroom pizza. The we wandered down to the harbor to kill a little time. Very touristy but the water is beautiful and the sun was gorgeous.
We cabbed back to the hotel and by that time, my room was ready, so I went and cleaned up and rested a little. We had big plans for the evening - the first of three gigs to attend.
Last fall, Glenn Tilbrook toured the UK and brought along an American singer/songwriter named Steve Poltz. He was set to open for Squeeze the following night. The UK branch of the Squeeze family grew quite fond of him, including Gill. She contacted his sound guy, Chris Modl, about attending a Stageit concert. I guess that he has been doing these Internet shows for a while. Gill contacted the sound guy (Chris), he gave her the address and we went . Our cab arrived in an industrial park in an iffy park of town. Chris shouted Gill's name and we were ushered into the studio, which was not very big. Steve was getting something from his van and greeted us warmly. We sat on the couch as the two set up the lights, the guitars, the computer, and the camera for the show. On top of that, Steve was preparing to leave on Thursday for a five week tour of Australia, so there were calls about t-shirts, CDs, and other merchandise.
After a technical delay, the performance started. For the next 45 minutes, Steve played songs and told stories behind the songs. Gill and I quietly applauded after each song. I was a Poltz virgin up until that point, but he won me over, especially after the shout out to all the Detroiters in the house.
After the performance, Steve chatted on line with viewers for about 15 minutes. Some of those were people both Gill and I know. It quickly became quite silly and time to leave descended on all. I went to call for a cab when Steve offered to give us a lift. We asked if there were any good restaurants around as we had skipped dinner and so the three of us hopped into his very cluttered van for dinner in North Beach. There were large fuzzy animal heads (a rabbit and a teddy bear - don't ask) in the back and I kept playing with those. We arrived at a Mexican restaurant (I have since forgotten the name) that was out of this world. I ordered the tofu enchiladas with ranchero sauce, rice, and refried beans. Steve is super nice and down-to-earth. His creativity is constantly churning.
After he dropped us at our hotel, we wandered over to a bar named Croce's where I flirted with a waiter half my age. We drank, swapped stories, and laughed. All in all, a perfect first day.
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