It's another late-night entry!

The trip to Colorado and back went well. We got very lucky with regards to the weather. A large storm system was positioning itself to be very threatening, but we managed to get out of the Salt Lake valley before it slammed in.

We went through Heber City, UT and the Uintah Basin and by the time we hit the Basin, all snow had stopped and the roads were dry. The road conditions remained fairly good all the way to Steamboat Springs.

While we were executing the show at Colorado Mountain College that evening, the storm caught up with us and dumped several inches. The snow stopped falling by the time we were finished with the show, so we brushed off the vehicles, loaded up, and went to our hotel.

Overnight and early in the morning, the snow hit again. Several more inches fell. By the time we were ready to depart for Silverthorne, it had stopped. The road from Steamboat Springs to Silverthorne was not without some element of danger due to the recent snowfall, but it had been plowed and salted. Even though we sent Tim and Amanda ahead early to ensure our gear would arrive in time, we arrived in Silverthorne at the time the venue asked us to arrive.

Some more snow fell Friday night and Saturday morning, but not much. The drive back to Salt Lake was also relatively easy-going.

The shows? What? You're wondering about the actual shows and not just about the weather and driving conditions?

Oh. Okay.

Thursday's show was small and somewhat informal, but gave us a good opportunity to work with Tommy, who's in charge of events at the college. It sounds likely we'll be going back to entertain Steamboat Springs' student body again in the fall during their Welcome Week.

We also recently learned that Club Levelz in Steamboat Springs has closed its doors due to some building code issues. We have no information as to when or if the club will be opening its doors again. We hope to find a different venue to cater to our fans in and around Steamboat Springs.

In September of 2004, Sons Of Nothing played at the Silverthorne Pavilion as part of our first run ever through Colorado. We had played the Sandbar in Vail the night before and gotten some warm fuzzies out of it. We really didn't know what we were getting into in Silverthorne.

The folks at Silverthorne had really put a lot of effort into that show. They had a really sweet lighting rig set up and first-class sound. Unfortunately, the turnout was lackluster. Those who did come seemed to enjoy themselves plenty, though, but everyone in the band was a bit bummed knowing the town of Silverthorne -- which owned and operated the pavilion -- had obvioulsy lost money on the event.

So, I was pleasantly surprised to hear they wanted the band back.

We figured we played to about 80-100 attendees at the 2004 show. This time, that number was closer to 400. The lighting was scaled back a bit, perhaps as insurance against losing money again. The people were every bit as enthusiastic as before.

Many in the audience were people who had come back to see the band again and brought friends along. One guy e-mailed me saying he and his family were on a ski vacation in Keystone and heard a commercial on the radio for the show and hauled his family over to see it. He loved it and hopes we'll make a stop in Kansas City sometime.

It's probably likely we'll be visiting Silverthorne again this year.

Both nights, we were able to retire to our hotel rooms at a "decent" time (decent being before 2 a.m.) and both nights we were spared the punishment of dealing with air thoroughly polluted with cigarette smoke. Both nights were also all-age shows, so we got to instill some Floyd into the hearts of some young hearts too. So, cool!

Saturday morning, as we left, everyone was in a bad mood, for many reasons. Thom and Matt discussed a variety of performance issues from the night before- missed notes, cues, etc. There was also some discussion about Tim getting overly "gallivanty" and playing to the crowd a little too much -- something he's done in the past when there's a big, exciting crowd.

Juli had a really bad headache. Daryn was... groggy. I was just kinda ticked because everyone else was.

As we were driving home, though, I got thinking about everything -- the big picture and found myself smiling as I drove. I started to really appreciate all of the positive aspects of the two shows and made a personal proclamation to not let the others' bad attitudes get me down. We played two good shows, got paid decent money, played to a huge crowd in Silverthorne, beat the odds with the weather, didn't have to deal with the plague of cigarette smoke, and got promises of more dates in the near future. I mean, what's not to love?!

Thom and Matt, of course, are very critical of themselves when they "screw up," especially in front of a big crowd. Thom told me later, it was probably because it was a big crowd the band had the performance issues they had. I pointed out to him it's far better to have some performance issues because there was a boatload of people there as opposed to having performance issues because nobody came to the show. The problem was a good problem to have. It's like a restaurant manager having trouble keeping food on the table for customers because the customer demand is so high.

This problem of performance issues is one that can be corrected and learned from, I guess.

From what I could tell, though, nobody in the audience noticed any issues. They were loving every minute of it.

The band played Visiting Mussolini live in Silverthorne as well and received tremendous audience response for it. That was a high point for me and was yet-another item that shook me out of that bad mood I was in driving home.

Alright. Back to the grind in the morning. I should get to bed.

Me, running the show

The Silverthorne show.