Surrogate in Jacksonville, FL, July 4th 2007. From left: Jordan, Me, Chris A., Chris K, Daniel M.
As you can probably tell, I’ve been in more bands than a reasonable person ever should be (and the ones detailed herein are just the good ones, mind you). And out of all those bands, my favorite, far and away, has been Surrogate.
Surrogate at Cafe Coda, Chico 2008. Photo by Harland
I joined Surrogate in the spring of 2007, replacing my esteemed colleague Trevor Sellers on the bass guitar when he returned to the touring circuit. Surrogate had already been a band in one form another for about a year, and at the time Chris and Jordan, the principals of the band were already readying their debut full length for Tooth and Nail records, Love is For the Rich, from which the above track, “Talk of the Weather” is taken.
Me and Chris K. sleeping in a fireworks tent. Salt Lake City. 2007. Photo by Chris A.
In anticipation of the release of the aforementioned album, Surrogate went on tour with our friends Emery and Ruth in the summer of 2007 as part of the first and probably only ever Tooth and Nail Acoustic Tour. We never actually played acoustic either, though Chris did play an acoustic guitar on a couple of the songs so I guess that counts. Anyways, I guess it just sounded good.
The tour was something like 28 shows over 30 days, including a show we had booked in Salt Lake City on the way out to meet the tour in Indiana, which ended up being two shows over a couple of nights at the Solid Ground Cafe (RIP). Anyways, I documented the tour with a fair amount of detail over the course of a few tour blogs, which you can find here. The first couple are shit, but the last few aren’t bad:
For the year and a half since then, we’ve mainly just stuck to playing shows around Chico, mainly because people have been busy as F. Chris K. and other Daniel both got married. Jordan took a couple months off of playing to go to the fire academy, and our homie Cayle from the band Armed For Apocalypse filled in on drums and then he got married too. He actually proposed to his wife onstage at a Surrogate show. He had written and recorded a song with Chris for his girlfriend, but when she came to town one weekend when we had a show, he decided he was gonna play it for her live, then propose to her at the end. So we learned the song with me on drums and Chris on bass, and now Cayle is a happily married man despite the fact that he has never fully achieved an erection.
True Romance 2008. Photos by Harland
Surrogate are currently in the studio, working on the follow up to Love is For the Rich, and hopefully we get our act together and get that shit out by this spring or summer. In the meantime it’s looking like we might do a little West Coast jaunt with Ruth this April, which would mark a reunion of sorts with our now dearly departed guitARTist Chris A., who packed his bags for Seattle in late 2008 and hasn’t been heard from since. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, you should go buy the Surrogate record at Best Buy or on iTunes, and if you live on the West Coast you should get your couch ready for me. I’ll need a clean towel too, thanks.
Duffy’s, Chico, CA. Photo by Dain Sandoval.
3 years ago | Tags: surrogate chris talk of the weather cayle armed for apocalypse solid ground cafe salt lake city ruth emery trevor sellers love is for the rich jacksonville tour west coast cafe coda duffys harland
