Hickoids / HMT 2019 Tour Wednesday, August 14

The next day, Bilbao. Bilbao is also near the northern coast of Spain, maybe a little more inland than Santander, and to the east of that town. So, off we headed. Unfortunately, Jeff had misread an address where the vacation rental was booked for this night, and it turned out to be a bit over an hour east of Bilbao. Now, I'm a bit fuzzy as to what came first, if we went to the vacation rental and then drove back to Bilbao to do laundry and play, or if we did laundry, headed to the vacation rental, and then back to Bilbao to play, or what. One of these things happened.

At least, we had two vacation rental rooms this time, although the woman working the desk when we checked in was, I would say, "softly threatening" to us. She picked up on us a being a band right away. Flo did most of the talking with her, and she used the word "molestar" a lot, as in "they better not bother people at our quaint vacation rental." After staying at a few of these vacation rentals now, I can say that bands are generally not welcome at them, but the price is usually right. (I didn't write about the 2016 Euro-tour, and the funny goings-on at our Noordwijk vacation rental in the Netherlands. Our German tourist neighbors were not fond of us.)

So, in the midst of our Bilbaoing, we did laundry at a laundromat where the signs were in both Spanish and Basque. I'd been told Basque is similar to French, but I didn't see that at all. Good thing Spanish was around in most places. This sign might have both....I'm not sure.

While we were doing laundry, Tom found a tapas place that he really liked, but I suspect that had more to do with the cute barmaid than the food itself. (I was quickly souring on Spanish food.) Nevertheless, we had clean clothes some time later and could prepare for the night's rockin'.

The club was called Shake!, and if I remember correctly, this was another one closed for August that opened for them Hickoids. Not bad. I liked this one a lot, although the stage had a missing portion to the left of the drums that the show runner filled in crudely with a table. It worked.

Special guests at this show included some of Rice's British family - his cousin, her husband, and their two grown kids. It was nice to visit with them, and the husband was pretty humorous, and a drummer to boot! He did fall a bit on the racist end of the spectrum, interspersing comments to me about drum brands with anecdotes about what cowards the French are (I guess that stereotype will never fade away). According to Rice, he's a big Brexit fan, so I suppose the package is complete. It was rather funny to hear Rice apologize about him later; I thought he was kind of funny, and he had a wandering eye, which just added to the whole effect.

We had the long drive back to the vacation rental, and Cody was in full effect this night. By the time we got there, his inside voice was completely gone. He had to be reminded not to "molestar" people as we walked to our rooms.