We’d been looking forward to this show quite a bit. Tommy was right to say that the hotel is more like a hostel. It reminds me of my college dorm – someone is always awake and every activity is broadcast for everyone else to hear through the cacophonous walls. It’s terribly hip though. How many other hotels would book a band like us for their lounge? It was also sort of a special return for Bill because it’s the place where we inducted him into the band official (see old tour journal entries from 2004’s summer tour). Also, we get to play long at the Monte V. At this show, there happened to be an opening band so we only got to play 2 hours instead of the typical 3 hours.

We woke up in Phoenix and pretty much just hit the road after bidding Christine farewell. Phil suggested we check out the local radio stations and we wound up on some station that intrigued us. It sounded like pledge drive for some nationwide public radio station. The hosts of the show kept talking about various cities being or not being “fully funded”. We couldn’t figure what this pledge drive was meant to benefit. Then, finally, an underwriting announcement came on and it was obvious that this was, in fact,, some nationally broadcast pledge drive for a Christian public radio station. This made us laugh because Adam invented a game called “Jesus or Poontang” in which you listen to random radio stations and determine the subject matter or inspiration for each tune to be one of the two (and it always does seem to be one or the other). We thought it was funny because we weren’t even playing the game and they managed to fool us… this time.


Flagstaff is really a cool town. We arrived pretty early – around 3 or 4. The Monte V gives bands a room for the night but our room wasn’t ready – someone had been in there then ight before and was still there. . So we waited, wandered around town, got some food at the Downtown Diner and even played pool. A couple of hours later the guy still wasn’t out of there and told us he’d be out in about an hour. I still don’t who this guy was or what he was doing in there – especially since the standard contract at the place says you have be out by noon the next morning. When he finally came out at 7:10PM, the room was totally clean and he exited with a couple of violin cases.

This was the same room we had when we played the place back in 2004 with Tom Bowman and his legendary wooden dowel – which he stole from the Monte Vista room’s window. We were pleased and tickled to see that and identical dowel had taken its place. Adam found it and I immediately took it to show Bill. At this time, Adam set out on the town, Tommy stretched his slackline for some balance practice in the park and Bill, Phil and I took about an hour and a half nap. Later we pissed Bill off by playing the backpacker guitar and a piece of a broken tambourine Tommy found under one of the two bunk beds. I guess he wasn’t awake enough for that.

Oddly we felt slightly hungry and went over to the Alpine Pizza place where Adam found us later. Here we had a really tasty and quite overpriced pizza. Who the hell counts whole wheat crust as a topping?

By the time we returned to the hotel, the band from MN was playing. They were good and very tasteful. Seemed like people liked them pretty well and I thought they were good… however, I missed most of their set because I was busy upstairs reviewing Iron Maiden songs we’d never played live (and barely mastered even in practice) that were on the set list for the night. It was a bummer that, during the actual show, we ran out of time (seriously) before playing them.

We set up our stuff and had Tommy facing sideways. I love this set up because everyone can see him – particularly Phil and I. Phil and I are always on stage left, which stinks for right handed string instrument players, because we’re usually looking at our fingerboard hands (the left) and have to turn around one way or the other to see Tommy, usually losing our line of audibility to our monitors or amplifiers (meaning we turn our heads away from our own amps and then can’t hear ourselves as well). With Tommy on stage left, everyone can see him. The sound on the stage was really good and I didn’t even need ear plugs even though I was right by Tommy.

Adam made a great set list of clustered songs and we followed it pretty closely until the end of the night. Our first set went well. I’d told Tommy and Phil what to expect when we were in the room preparing – the people at the Monte V are usually tourists and they’re not there to hear music… we’re just a soundtrack to their evening – background music. The fact is, though, that it’s hard for the Invincible Czars to be just background music. We’re a little too… engaging? Loud? Powerful? Obnoxious? You’re your pick. Regardless of anyone’s opinion of our music, I don’t find a lot of people who can just ignore presence on stage. I’m trying to be conceited about it but it’s true, we’re not a background music kind of band – love us or hate us, we’re pretty active entertainers.

Anyway, as a result I always get a little agitated when people stand there watching us like they love it and then give us the golf clap… or no clap. This show was no exception. Even though I’d told Tommy and Phil about how the show would be, I still got annoyed near the end of the set when people weren’t even acknowledging us. Gotta get over that. Now – I buy the argument that frequently they don’t know when our songs have ended. It happens a lot when we go into Mursketine II from Mursketine. Adam’s so seamless that it just sounds like another one of our unexpected (as expected) changes within the song of the moment. However, at the Monte Vista people get DRUUUUUNK. I had no idea how wasted this audience was until the very end when they came up to try to talk to us – many wanted our hats, wanted to know where we were from (which was funny since Adam had mentioned it about 500 times from the stage) and one even stole a shirt from us when I wasn’t looking. Argh!

We had prepared ourselves for LOOONG improv sections in songs like Gleezle Vayn, Working song (Brown Whornet) and many others… however, I was keeping my eye on the watch and trying to allow for enough time for us to get to ALL the songs we’d put on the list. Well, this turned out to be unpopular with Adam and Bill. When I pointed out that we only had enough time for our second set to be 30 minutes, I think they understood why I’d been so quick to end some of our jams – even though they were good. We had some of the best improvs we’ve EVER had at that show. I personally think, though, that their shortness prevented them from going too far and becoming boring. ☺ the final tune in our first set was Working Song and I usually take a longish guitar improv solo. Bill thought I was going to do this as usual and exited the stage for some air. Unfortunately, I was turned away and didn’t see him leave. I brought us out of the improv and turned to find him gone. I thought maybe he got annoyed that I took too long of a solo. Ha!

Anyway, I got semi-defensive about this critique and said I’d love it if someone else would direct the improve sections. This is almost always a joy killer on stage. Fortunately, I was less hot headed than usual and we rebounded and had some really good jams in Doctors Excuse and ESPECIALLY the set opener Arabian Dance. We played our countrified version of Iron Maiden’s “Invaders” in the first cluster of the first set and later some one requested that we repeat it… but we played Run to the Hills with a broken snare drum instead. Adam started singing about Moloch the owl god during Cue the Tie Fighters and attributes this to the fact that Tommy and I almost simultaneously broke the snare drum head and my strap lock (which I recovered in spite of the fact that it went flying in pieces into the darked room among a large group of dancing audience members.)

Also, the whole night was peppered with versions of “If I Had to Do It All Over Again” (also by Brown Whornet)


Afterwards, we left our stuff on stage and went to our room for some shut eye. There was even a parking spot that we were able to occupy overnight. Unfortunately, though, one of the employees claims he told us to be out of the spot by 8 AM and confronted Adam about this at 1 PM the next day. Adam replied that this was laughable… we didn’t even stop playing until 2 AM. Anyway, this was the only fiasco of the whole visit to Flagstaff.