Well, well, look who we found here in Durango?!?!?
That’s right! Our amazing friends, Bonnie and Phil, aka, Nay Nay and Dr. Phun, decided to take a little road trip out to meet up with us for a couple days here on tour. Last year, we told them how darling this town was, and many of their friends have been telling them to visit for years as well. So, they decided to hop in their Subaru and take a little Summer road trip of their own. So nice to see familiar faces and have a little extra love while we’re in a town where we know virtually no one.
Our first show in Durango was this Friday night at the 11th Street Station, a huge outdoor plaza with upwards of twenty different food trucks and treat vendors to satisfy any craving. The front patio is where the primary action takes place, so that is where they put the bands. Our gig was at 7:00 pm, so we arrived around 5:00 to get set up, with plenty of remaining time to enjoy an amazingly delicious ahi poke bowl before our gig.
A couple really cool things happened at that show. First off, one of the employees from our son’s camp, “Colvig Silver Camps” brought her whole family out to see us. Their plan was to all buy Champagne Sunday T-shirts and show up to camp the next day, decked out in CS gear, and see if Rudy noticed! Apparently, he’s been pretty laser-focused on writing in his journal this summer, so maybe he won’t even notice them…I doubt it though! They all had some pretty lovely things to say about Rudes (naturally), and loved the show!
Another cool thing was getting to meet an old college friend of a friend we had back in Ventura. Although the connection was off to a rough start when the woman gave us our mutual friend’s maiden name, and I politely acted like I knew who she was talking about, actually thinking she was talking about an acquaintance we have in Tacoma. After the show, she came up and cleared the whole misunderstanding up by revealing the name WE knew our friend by, and we had a great laugh about the whole thing!
The last crazy thing we heard was from a guy and his wife that ran the smoothie truck at the Station called “Love n Juice”. He said, “I saw you guys in Seattle in 2009 or ’10. When I heard you, I said to my wife that I KNEW it HAD to be the same band! Great job on still doing this!”
I couldn’t believe that! What a small world! And it says something for that recognizable Champagne Sunday sound! And in that same vein, several employees and audience members commented on the uniqueness of our music, the positivity and joy, and the overall good vibes they got just listening (even those who couldn’t see us the whole time cuz they were working) and being near us. We got a lot of comments on our love for one another and how it just shone through in everything we did and sang. We try so hard to keep that out front and consistently the force that drives the shows. So it’s always really nice when it lands and people “get it”.
After the gig, we took Nay and Phun to the Steamworks Brewery, where we went last year, for a night cap and a wind-down. A great first CO gig in the books!
