Besides some noodling around on the pianos and guitars in the house, the band didn't get to play real music for about four or five days. We'd originally planned on getting some bonafide rehearsal time in a studio, but thanks to certain extenuating medical circumstances we had to can that idea and resorted to converting my living room into a practice space.

Did I mention what a crappy photographer I am? I have basically no capacity to take low-light photographs, so this shot of the band doing soundcheck at Safari Sam's is literally the best I can offer as far as performance photography is concerned. I watched most of the show from off stage-right, but from what I could tell, the band were mostly well-received. The LA shows were a little odd because the band had been inserted sort of randomly into lineups featuring bands that sounded basically nothing like them, which can be cool, although it means that the audience might or might not have biases regarding the style of music. It seems only fair that good music would be appreciated in any context, but then what counts as "good" is more or less a totally contextual and subjective thing in itself, and so you're never quite sure what to expect out of the crowd.