Thursday, 6.05.03 : San Francisco - The Voodoo Lounge
Today we woke up really early to get on the road to San Francisco. Our show was at 8:15 pm, and we wanted to allow time to stop and eat junk food off highway 5 and get to the city early enough to sit in Chaska's sister's hot tub for a while. Alas, we left late due to a problem at the van rental place, the hot tub was broken and the junk food on the way made Becky sick, but we got to the club ontime and in good spirits anyway. The Voodoo Lounge is on Mission and is marked by a neon sign depicting a skull in a top hat. Interior decor included a checkered floor, flames painted on walls and a pool table. Everything smelled of good old rock and roll, and we really mean smelled (beer, urine). We ended up drawing a good crowd there, playing a pretty decent show with the other bands that night: The Willows (from L.A., check em out), Rubberside Down and Pirate Radio.

Friday, 6.06.03 : San Jose - Leland High School
Day two of this little tour included three, yes three shows. The first was at Leland High School in San Jose, Mona's alma mater. Mona still goes back to the school to coach speech and debate, a field in which the school excells and is nationally recognized. We played a rockin' half-hour set outside in the quad, and a couple hundred of the kids actually decided that showing interest and enthusiasm about a band playing on campus wouldn't make them uncool, so they watched and seemed to really like us. Our performance was part of "Leland-palooza" - they had school bands playing all week. The highlight of our performance was when Mona's little sister, Leland senior Natasha Tavakoli, came up to play the bass on our cover of Aaliyah's "Are You That Somebody." She rocked!! It was a really fun show and the youthful energy of those high school students gave us great momentum for the rest of the weekend. Go Chargers!

Setlist: Fashionable, Baby Bird, Big Girl, IM Love, Are You That Somebody?

Friday, 6.06.03 : Santa Cruz - The Cayuga Vault
After the show at Leland we ate a fantastic homecooked meal at Mona's house and then headed to Santa Cruz for our double-show at the Cayuga Vault. The Vault is a relatively new performance space in Santa Cruz, that used to be a bank. We shared the night with Alysha, a local 15-year-old singer with very impressive vocal ability, and played two 50-minute sets. Most of the audience had had never seen or heard of us before. Both shows felt great to us, probably two of the best shows we've played in a while, and the crowd seemed to think so too. We did really well with our new muscle shirts, panties and "In the Meantime" EP (as well as the older merch). Everyone at the Vault was very supportive and positive -- oh Santa Cruz, if only the whole world could be as open and loving as you. The shows were recorded on video and audio -- we hope to get it out to our fans through another live cd, and maybe some streaming video online (we're working on it!) After the shows we headed to our favorite post-performance grubbing venue, the ever quirky Saturn Cafe in downtown Santa Cruz. There's nothing like apple pie and french fries at 1:00am when your legs are about to give out.

Saturday, 6.07.03 : Santa Cruz - The Ugly Mug Cafe
For our last show of the tour, we played at The Ugly Mug, a coffee shop in Santa Cruz. The set lasted three hours with a short break, we were definitely on fire for the whole performance. It felt really great to be able to play an "acoustic" show -- we get to mellow out a little bit, do more hand drumming, and the vocals really stand out. Chaska's dad joined us for a song written by several Potters, "Lullabye," and a rendition of Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds," and to close the set he recited a poem by the great Persian poet Hafiz, while we provided background music. Our new pink Raining Jane panties sold out after the show (don't worry there will be more). Exhausted from all the shows, we packed up the Dodge Caravan for the fillionth time and headed back to the Raining Jane NorCal Headquarters in the beautiful hills of Corralitos where we rested, recouperated and finally found a working hot tub.