Storytellers takes a glimpse into an artist’s inner psyche through a story of their choice.
It’s no secret, we’re huge fans of Denver psych-rock outfit Tjutjuna. They’ve played a number of our showcases, they’ve rocked Denver—one of our favorite cities—for years, and ultimately, they continue to rock our personal socks off time and time again. On April 30th, they will rock us once more with the release of their sophomore LP, Westerner, which can be pre-ordered on limited edition vinyl through Fire Talk Recs.
In the meantime, read a NSFW story about AK47′s, video games, heavy drinking, and touring via Tjutjuna’s Brian Marcus.
On our last tour in October, on the way to the PORTALS CMJ showcase in NYC, our first show fell apart in a pretty spectacular way. We left Denver on time and drove ten hours to Kansas City, Kansas. On tour, when you play DIY venues, you never know what to expect. Sometimes you get awesome places like Rhinoceropolis in Denver or Ball Hall in Chicago and sometimes you get a small clothing store that is closed. We got the latter.
Finally, after an hour at a bar that was aptly named “Timewarp,” we got in touch with the owner of the venue. 20 minutes later she lets us in the store and we head downstairs to where the “venue” is. I use quotations because it wasn’t really a venue—it was more of an unfinished basement with half a PA, and it looked like a place spiders and house centipedes would rent out on the weekends to have orgies. Then our opener showed up, introduced himself as John, looked around the arachnid sex den and said, “no fucking way.”
He then suggested we forget the show, go back to his place, we could drink and crash there for the night. He had arcade games and beer. Cool. We’re down, we’re tired, we’re thirsty, we like video games. Perfect. We told the owner of the shop, who, at this point was still trying to invite people to the show that was no longer happening. We told her that we were cutting our losses. She apologized profusely and we got to talking and realized we had met about 5 years back when she was visiting Denver. We had mutual friends; members of Tjutjuna had even worked in her family store. It was one of those weird things that happens when you travel that makes you realize the world is in fact a small place.
So we head across the border into Kansas City, Missouri and arrive at John’s house. We get drunker than Joaquin Phoenix in The Master (probably not, but embellishment is the key to good story telling) and played video games. After a lot of beer and a lot of games I see a hand gun out of the corner of my eye. I’m entirely apathetic when it comes to guns, but seeing one unexpectedly is pretty startling. Turns out the neighborhood we were in was really bad a few years ago and when our new friend (John) bought the house he decided to invest in some protection. One of which was an AK47, famously immortalized by both Ice Cube and the patriot John Rambo.
Offhandedly, our hosts mention that they keep the AK47 above their door at night in case of intruders. As we left the next day it dawned on me that, that could have ended very badly. As awesome as our hosts were, we really didn’t know them. Their version of arcade games involved slapping each other in the face. What if they were light sleepers? What if they were sleepwalkers, what if they suffered from night terrors? What if one of us drunkenly got up in the middle of the night use the bathroom and they drunkenly forgot we were staying over? They could have killed Rob or Fernando or worse, me. It was a weird and completely unexpected beginning to a tour that was a lot of fun. John, if you’re reading this, thank you very much for the hospitality, that was a fun way to spend a night that could have been really disappointing. This song’s called “Mousetrap,” we would have played this song that night.
And here’s the official video for “Desert Song,” another standout from the new album: