San Francisco RECAP! US premiere of The Storyville Mosquito!

Hello Everyone! 

Thought I'd share some photos from our USA premiere of The Storyville Mosquito in San Francisco last week! We arrived in SF airport on Tuesday morning and drove straight to the venue to do the set up! It takes us about 6-8 hours to set up the show! We had to reconfigure our set up to fit on this stage but it worked out. I like this venue a lot because the sight lines and it's instant cozy vibe! 

Here's our first violinist Valerie Li giving her daughter a tour of the stage! Looks like we have a contender for a future vibraphone/percussionist! 

There were blueberries in the cafeteria which resembled the heads on the miniature vibraphone mallets. Now we know what we could use if one of the mallet heads falls off and we're in a pinch to find a replacement.

It takes us about 6 hours to set up the stage! Just in time for the Listening Party that SFJAZZ had planned as a preview to the show. Here I am speaking to SFJAZZ founder and Executive Artistic Director Randall Kline. It was his idea to host these Listening Parties to give the SFJAZZ audience a chance to get to know the artists before the run of shows. I think it's a great thing that they've got going here.

During the Listening Party I also got to do a Q&A with the audience and even do a couple of turntable demonstrations.

After the Q&A, as is often the case on tour, there comes the quest to find somewhere to eat kind of late at night. A few of us decided to go to Mel's drive-in which is a classic late night diner. But the door was locked and they had just closed. Here's our sound engineer Rena Kozak looking very disappointed about the locked diner door.

We decided to go across the street to Dennys which is usually (as the sign says) Open 24 Hrs. However, at this very moment (11pm) they were closed for maintenance and would reopen at 2:30 am. What are the odds! We laughed that we had discovered the first closed Dennys in our 40 combined years of touring! LOL!

We ended up going finding a Noodle Bar called Hinodeya which was walking distance from the Dennys. It was delicious. You can always count on late night noodles.

The whole next day we spent doing rehearsals and sound and light checks. Here's the stage all set up. The SFJAZZ stage is slightly smaller than the one's we usually play. We had to reconfigure some things but we were still able to fit all the sets needed for the show!

There was a DAISO (Japanese dollar store) in Japantown where I found some art supplies where I could make some localized set pieces and signs for the set. My desk was covered in tiny bits of cut cardboard.

Here are the signs I made for the sets. One of them goes above the record store set. So I decided to build the marquee from my fav record shop in SF, Amoeba Music!

The next day I asked Alizee to add some paint to the signs to make them look a little more weathered and vintage. That way they would match the designs of the Main Street sets better. Alizee built a lot of the props and sets in the show, including the miniature vibraphone.

Here she is placing the marquee on the Main Street set.

The next morning, I decided to actually go to Amoeba, which if you've never been, is a record and movie nerds paradise! I could easily spend a whole weekend in this place and not be finished going through the stacks. I mean, look at this place! 

I found the 7" vinyl section...

and this 7"

and also found the section where my records would live if they were in stock. Behold the K section! Incidentally, I once got a call to do a last minute set at Festival. They said, "Kid Cudi can't make the show, so do you want to come to do and DJ set during his time slot on the main stage?" I did the gig and it was super fun. But I also found it a bit humorous that they asked me... were they just going through the phone book of artists alphabetically or something? LOL!

That night was our opening night and there was a wonderful energetic audience! In fact all 5 performances were super vibe-y and sold out!

After the show my friend DJ Z-Trip, who just got into town with his wife Yulia to see the show for her birthday, wanted to meet for some food, again late night eats. We found a 24 hour diner called the Pinecrest!

It was great to catch up and hear about all the fun things he's been working on, and hearing stories about what it was like to share the stage with LL Cool J! 

Saturday's schedule was pretty packed but super fun. First up was a Music to Draw to session at my fav comic book shop in SF, Isotope Comics. It was nice to start the day with a couple hours of chill drawing time. I played some of my favorite drawing records and also worked on some animation on my tablet. 

Here's a pic of me and the proprietor of Isotope Comics, James Sime. Go say hi to him if you're ever in the area! Rad dude who has introduced me to all kinds of great comics over the years! I just noticed the Dr. Strange cape on the mezzanine! LOL! 

After that we did 2 performances of The Storyville Mosquito, a matinee and an evening show! Following the late show a few of us met for up for the aftershow patron Pizza Break was at Benihana! In attendance were my wonderful patrons Ravi and Eli! Here the chef was showing off his knife/spatula juggling skills.

The chef made a giant heart out of rice, and then made the heart "beat" by pressing down on the spatula handle. Rice puppetry! It was my favorite combination of dumb and clever! He also made a train engine out of onion rings that actually blew puffs of smoke/steam then proceeded to push it around the hibachi grill whilst making choo choo train noises on a train whistle. Just so perfectly random!

Super fun night with lots of laughs, good food, and cooking charisma! Topics of conversation ranged from house batteries, best strategies for deejaying a wedding party, studio production, and even the benefit of using a herd of goats to help graze and trim shrubbery in public parks and prevent brush fires! So fun to have some actual IRL hang time with patrons! Here's Japantown at night, just outside the Japan Center Mall where Benihana is located.

The next morning we had our patron pizza break/brunch! Got to hang with Walter, Matthew, Amee, Lark, Doctor Pop and James. It was fun and dynamic brunch conversation about "california-style" pizza, records, skateboarding, cartooning, tai-chi, custom turntables modifications, and yo-yos! hilarious and scintillating conversation. This patreon community is the best. DocPop even gave us a demonstration of pro yo-yo tricks and said there was a lot of inspiration for the naming of yo-yo tricks from the turntable/scratch scene!  

Sunday we had our final 2 performances of The Storyville Mosquito. The crowds rocked! We recorded all of the performances (audio) and I will will go through the recordings after the next few cities to put together some sort of live soundtrack recording. 

We look forward to our return to San Francisco! It's always such a fun time at SFJAZZ! And it was so great to meet so many of you at the shows and at the Pizza Breaks! Thank you for joining us! E