Tori and Mike Morley were super excited to score VIP tickets to the Dweezil Zappa Rockspostrophy tour at the fabulous Moore theater in Seattle. Not just because Dweezil and the band are AWESOME, but also because Kurt Morgan Tori's bass mentor and producer is touring with Zappa!
We scored a cool hotel room using points, had flights booked and Kurt had generously made time in his busy tour schedule to meet with Tori before the gig - but fate was destined to throw a major spanner in the trip: a massive hailstorm that took out a number of Westjet's planes hit Monday.
This resulted in the cancellation of our flight to Seattle late Tuesday evening. After waiting on hold for 4+ hours, and with no flights available to Seattle, it was clear that radical action was needed. There was no way a cancelled flight was going to derail the planned awesomeness - so the intrepid duo got up at 3am on Wednesday morning, and hit the road to Seattle in their trusty 2003 Toyota 4 Runner named Wayne after the character on Letterkenny - known for being tough, reliable and ready to provide help in tough situations.
Fifteen hours later, we successfully arrived at the hotel in Seattle, got a celebratory drink, oysters and a bit of a tour around some of the local sights.
Thursday was Zappa day!
We headed over to the venue, where we had the opportunity to meet Mia Mariscano and her associate who are running the VIP program for the Zappa tour in the super cool Moore Theater coffee shop, where we were meeting up with Kurt Morgan. They were super nice, and chatted with us about how the tour was going, what the experience was like on the tour bus and the show.
The meeting with Kurt was awesome - Tori and Kurt discussing all the shows she has been playing, plans for the next album (the Celery Project), music philosophy and of course, Kurt's work with the Zappa tour.
Kurt then headed over to the venue to get ready for soundcheck, and we went to meet up with Mia for the VIP program.
The VIP program was fantastic, well organized and super interesting. It featured access to the soundcheck, where the band ran through several songs while checking levels and testing out different elements of the music they were scheduled to perform that evening.
Dweezil then did a Question and Answer session - but the coolest part was having the opportunity to tour the stage with Dweezil and members of the band.
Dweezil posed for photos with people, and also went through his equipment answering questions about pedal chain modelling, guitar techniques and other questions relating to performing Frank's music. Ryan the Drummer was also there and gave us a tour of his setup.
Kurt then came on stage and met up with Tori, where he took her through his whole setup, demonstrating the pedals, various techniques that were unique to the show and also some pointers on aspects of playing some of the more complex elements of Zappa's songs.
Needless to say, this was a pretty incredible, once in a lifetime experience - and we really appreciated the band for taking the time to open the stage to us, answer questions and sharing their knowledge, and to Mia's team for the great organization of the event!
The show as you can imagine, was phenomenal. Impressive performances across the board, with flawless playing of Frank's compositions interleaved with the irreverence and improvisation that Zappa's shows were famous for.
We spent the last day in Seattle touring around the cool music sites like Sub Pop, KEXP, the Space Needle. We then packed up Wayne and hit the road.
After another 15 hours, and a total 2249 km we made er back to Calgary!
We are very grateful to Dweezil, the band and Mia and her team for putting in all the hard work and investment that is needed to keep Frank's music alive to inspire the next generation of musicians like Tori!
And a big thanks to Kurt Morgan for taking time out of your busy schedule to meet with us, and for the awesome stage tour...
And - in a last bit of good news, Wesjet refunded our flights - !
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