Just thought you kids might be interested in knowing a bit about what's
going on with the Thickets and PAX (apart from the fact that we'll be
playing on Saturday night around 11pm, right before MC Frontalot).:


"Our Musical Guests Panel will be taking place in Serpent Theatre from
5:00pm until 6:00pm on Friday,August 29th.
The program description:Join a mix of our musical guests as they tell stories about their
experiences as geek rock icons, what it's like to have an internet
fanbase, the games and other influences they've had along the way, and
what you should and shouldn't do if you're interested in starting up a
band in this niche genre."

I have a positively disgusting amount of photos from the concert. As soon as I get them uploaded, I'll post 'em if you like.

It was great to meet you guys.

I would love to see them! And thanks for coming out!

PAX DIARY DAY ONE
by Toren Atkinson.

Because of the way Budget Rent-a-Car works we had to rent the car for four days, even though we only needed it for three. As such, I got up at 5:30am on Friday morning. This was the first day of our US "tour" as far as the American Federation of Musicians defines it, which meant we all had to go through the same border crossing at the same time to get our P2 Visa work permits settled. This might not be an issue for most bands but the five of us live in three different cities. Mario and I live in Vancouver (Mario in North Vancouver to be precise), Warren and Jordan live in Abbotsford and Merrick lives on a mountain in Chilliwack. We took two vehicles for the five of us and our gear. Jordan drove Merrick and the gear and I handled the other two band members. First I drove to North Vancouver to pick up Mario then to Abbotsford for Warren, and we met with "Mobile 2" AKA Jordan's van in the parking lot of the Home Depot on the road to the Abbotsford/Sumas border crossing.

As expected the border crossing took a few moments to process what the hell we were doing. He sent us all inside and we waited while we were 'processed.' Actually Officer Vargas was quite nice and I had spoken with him on the phone a few days previous so we had a modicum of a rapport. They stapled the work permits to our respective passports and we were off to Seattle.

I was telling Deanna recently that she has had the rare honour over the past couple of months of seeing me the most stressed I've been probably since I moved from Chilliwack to Vancouver and got shingles in 1996. Paperwork is not my strong suit and I'd been dealing with several organizations when I'd rather be in bed or drawing monsters.

Suffice to say once we all got across the border my stress levels dropped dramatically.

It rained pretty hard while we were getting lost trying to find our way to the Guide Meridian highway. I don't like driving, and that includes the highway into Seattle and the streets of Seattle proper. But we found parking underneath the convention center and checked in. We swaggered up to the VIP registration where I was given the shoes I ordered over eBay and somewhat inappropriately had sent to PAX since the shipper wouldn't send to Canada. They were really kickass plaid converse though, and I learned that there was some confusion as Robert Khoo has the same shoe size as me.

A large utilikilted Australian named Macca was our wrangler and he showed us around to the green room, the stage, and our booth in "Bandland." The green room was fully stocked all weekend and I only paid for two meals over the weekend. Our booth was on the end of one side of the hall and we luckily were set up with an extra table because of it. I say luckily because I overestimated how much merchandise we'd need for the convention and we really needed that extra space. Unfortunately it took the staff about 1 1/2 hours for them to track down the location of our merch, which we had sent down ahead of time, and bring it to our booth. So I had to sit at a table with nothing but stickers and buttons on it and try to explain what exactly The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets meant.

Speaking of buttons - what a great call to print up a new set of buttons for PAX (thanks Stewie for another in a string of genius ideas). Buttons were all the rage at PAX and we sold lots.

Sales for the Friday were pretty weak, which made my stress levels rise back up, and most of the band members were off exploring which left me and Mario to break open the boxes and organize the shirts. Nicole from Green Ronin Publishing brought boxes of Spaceship Zero the Roleplaying Game - the ENnie-award winning tabletop rpg that Warren and I wrote right after we recorded Spaceship Zero: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - which actually did reasonably well over the course of the weekend. I had toyed with the idea of running a demo of the game on Sunday but as the course of the weekend drew on and I got more groggy, it became clear that my time would be more valuable in front of a few hundred people passing the booth than for four hours in front of 6 people, even if it is a super fun game.

At 5pm there was a "Musical Guests Panel" that we were, as musical guests, invited to be on. Merrick sat at the booth while the rest of us went across the street to another theater in a different building. We didn't know what to expect, and we got exactly that. Each band had about 3 people on average and one microphone, so for most of the panel most people didn't have anything to say. The moderator had a couple questions for the panel and then he opened it up to the audience. We were situated between Anamanaguchi and Freezepop. There were some interesting discussions on how to make money as a band and copyrights. Here's how it ended:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnTottT1wgA



There was a cock up at the hotel - they were supposed to supply us with four big beds but they gave us four 'super singles' which meant that someone had to sleep on the floor. Knowing that Deanna was going to be here on Saturday for a sleepover I volunteered to take the floor that night rather than do the old straw-drawing, because there was no way I was going to not have a bed on Saturday night.

As it turns out, at about 9pm that night the rest of the guys took off to the hotel but I stayed at the booth to see if any lingering sales could be made from the Wil Wheaton line runoff. Nicole showed up and we started chatting. She was waiting for Wil to finish up as they happened to be old friends and the Green Ronin crew, which is to say Chris, Nicole and Kate, had dinner plans with Wil. She asked me if I had eaten - I had not and yes of course I'd love to go to dinner with them and Mr Wheaton.

We went to something like the Brimstone Brewery or some such where of course the place was teeming with gamers. Wil had heard of the band from John "Dork Tower/Pokethulhu/Munchkin" Kovalic and other friends who apparently had been encouraging him to listen to us but he had never actually listened to us, so that was interesting to learn.

The conversation that night went from D&D 4th edition to Chris & Nicole's adventures at a Finnish game convention (involving naked wrestling and heavy drinking) to creepy fans who invite you back to their place to meet the girlfriend. Wil was functioning on 2 hours of sleep and the staff were, shall we say, less than enthused about their choice of careers that night. Wil tried to order a vegetarian pizza and the only way the waitress could understand it was if he ordered a meat lover's pizza, hold the meat. This was the first of two non-green room meals that weekend, and it was a night to remember. Many nerd references were thrown about and mediocre but affordable food was consumed.

After dinner Nicole, Kate and Wil headed to the concerts (Freezepop, Johnathan Coulton and the Minibosses were playing that night) but Pramas and I decided to pack it in. We bartered such that I would give him a ride home in my rental car and he would let me sleep on the Green Ronin guest couch. The best part of the deal was that I also got a beautiful Freeport map out of the deal. Which is convenient because I'm running a freeport 3.75 D&D campaign.

End of Day One.

I saw you guys at PAX and you were phenomenal. I went from never having herad of you to instant fan. I am now in the process of converting my friends. :3

One of them, an Australian who does a bit of blogging at DiceofDoom.com did a write-up of 'A Shadow Out of Tim' after I sent him a copy.

At one point I remember Toren referring to Mario as some sort of portmanteau -- "Tentacario" or something... I can't remember for the life of me... Does anyone else happen to remember? haha.

Calamario of course!
Thanks and keep on converting! We rely on you...

If there's any missing images etc see http://www.thickets.net/toren/2008/09/0 ... y-day-two/

I woke up in the Green Ronin house a half hour before the alarm went off, which is something that has happened steadily for the past couple of months. I got up and got ready, and as I left I of course locked the door behind me. Immediately after I closed the door I realized that I locked my cell phone inside the house. I knocked quietly at first so that rather than wake up the whole house I'd only wake up the lightest sleeper. Minutes passed and I upgraded my knocking from light to medium and added some doorbell ringing. More time passed and I knocked loudly, repeatedly, with no response. I tried to walk around the house to find a way to B&E but nothing presented itself easily and furthermore I decided that would be a bad idea. I finally decided that I could just use someone else's mobile to call the GR house when I got to the con. I got in the car and was about to leave when I changed my mind. I knew that as stressed out as I was already, not having my phone would stress me out even more. So I went back and really banged on the door. I seriously thought that at any moment one of the neighbors would poke their head out of a window and yell "Do you have any idea what time it is? Some of us are trying to sleep!"

Finally I heard movement in the house and Nicole let me in. I apologized profusely and made my way to the hotel. I was surprised how busy the Seattle highway was even at 6 in the morning on a Saturday. I hadn't been to the hotel at all since I got to Seattle so I had to navigate downtown to find it. I had the valet park the car and that's where it stayed until we left on Sunday.

Soundcheck was moved from 8:30 to 7:30 <em>in the morning</em>. Yes, we had the earliest sound check in the history of rock & roll. Not everyone got the memo so I had to wrangle the musicians out of bed or the exercise room or whathaveyou. The stage was huge!

[caption id="attachment_2820" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="adampwsmith.com for awesome shots like this"]<a href="http://www.thickets.net/toren/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/adampwsmith-theater.jpg"><img src="http://www.thickets.net/toren/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/adampwsmith-theater-300x200.jpg" alt="adampwsmith.com for awesome shots like this" title="adampwsmith-theater" width="300" height="200" class="size-medium wp-image-2820" /></a>[/caption]

Adam PW Smith showed up and we worked out some details with the lighting guy so that we could get the best possible shots. As soon as we were done I headed out to the booth to set up so we could generate some more sweet sweet sales. We got a lot of people who knew us, and a lot of people who were simply interested in the art on the shirts & CDs, and a lot of people who had heard about us but wanted to know more and/or hear us first before they decided to buy something.

[caption id="attachment_2821" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="adampwsmith.com for awesome shots like this"]<a href="http://www.thickets.net/toren/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/adampwsmithbooth.jpg"><img src="http://www.thickets.net/toren/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/adampwsmithbooth-300x200.jpg" alt="adampwsmith.com for awesome shots like this" title="adampwsmithbooth" width="300" height="200" class="size-medium wp-image-2821" /></a>[/caption]

Sales were much better on Saturday, but I actually was wishing that we had played on the Friday night. Even though the word on the street was that the Saturday show had a bigger crowd, if we had played Friday, then all of the people milling around on Saturday would <em>know who we were</em>!

I was getting text messages from Deanna and Stewie all morning about their ETA. Deanna was held up at the border for about 3 hours but she finally arrived mid afternoon. I cannot express how thankful I was (and am) that she came. I gave her the biggest hug when I finally figured out which escalator she was waiting for me at. Finally I had someone whom I could rely on 100%, and my stress level dropped again. Shortly after that Stewie and Allen showed up (independently) and we had all our peeps hanging around the booth.

Heather from Harmonix invited the band to come by the Rock Band booth and play our song. The other band members were out shopping around town so Deanna and I decided to explore the exhibitor hall which I hadn't had the chance to do since I arrived 24 hours previous! They invited me to the Rock Band stage and I was going to play guitar - since that's the instrument I'm good at on Rock Band - but Stewie & De convinced me to sing and that was of course wise. I sang and the staff at Harmonix played all the instruments - it was fun! I told them I'd arrange a time with the band when we could all come back.

Shortly after the exhibit hall closed we packed up our booth so the enforcers could move it next to the main theater where the bands would be playing. <a href="http://www.myspace.com/anamanaguchi">Anamanaguchi </a>played about 20 minutes earlier than we thought which pretty much meant that we were going to play earlier than we thought. Again I had to scramble to wrangle the band and we all went behind stage to get in our costumes.

I am not trying to make excuses when I say that four out of five of us had health problems that night. Merrick and Mario both had back problems (Mario finagled two massages that day out of the staff), Jordan had a bad cold <em>and </em>back problems, and I had a cold, though it wasn't terrible. Though there were a few rough patches in the performance, I can say without a doubt that each of us gave it his all, and it was a really great show. Here's the set list for all who care:

The Math Song (we started with a crazy big intro)
Shoggoths Away
Burrow Your Way to My Heart
A Marine Biologist
Cultists On Board
Sleestak and Yeti
The Innsmouth Look (this one almost made it on Rock Band)
Walking on the Moon (The Police cover for the uninitiated)
Hookworm (an oldie but a goodie)
Downtown (in the Cenozoic)
Nyarlathotep
20 Minutes of Oxygen
Colour Me Green (see video)
plus....

That was the set list we prepared long and hard for. What we didn't expect was the opportunity to get an encore! The crowd was chanting "Dar-kest Dar-kest Dar-kest" which is the hallmark of new fans...our entrenched cronies would have been yelling "Thic-kets Thic-kets Thic-kets" and so Brad told us to get back on stage for an encore. We quickly decided to play "Slave Ship" as that had been on the set list for a while but we had scratched it a couple weeks before the show. As such, Warren hadn't practiced it at all (he only got in from England 2 weeks before the show) so it wasn't a solid run-through, but it didn't matter at that point. We sold them on our antics.

[youtube L-9Sl5qF3OE]

Out of respect for the following bands we didn't use our dark powers to drain the crowd of their Magic Points and summon Cthulhu, despite the fact that we had 8000 people chanting "IA IA CTHULHU FHTAGN."

After the performance Mario and I hit the booth in costume and we signed too many CDs and roleplaying games to count. Someone also brought their copy of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Best-H-P-Lovecraft-Bloodcurdling/dp/0345350804">Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre</a> (the HPL book I started out on) for us to sign.

<a href="http://www.thickets.net/toren/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/adampwsmith-line.jpg"><img src="http://www.thickets.net/toren/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/adampwsmith-line-300x200.jpg" alt="" title="adampwsmith-line" width="300" height="200" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-2822" /></a>

We hung out and posed for photos and sold merch (well Deanna and Stewie did that part, and a fine job too) and waited for the other bands to finish. The Minibosses, bless their many toes, played for so long that we were dead on our feet from fatigue, staying around for that end-of-concert "rush." Finally we hauled our remaining merch back to "Bandland" and crawled to the hotel for some much needed sleep.

END OF DAY TWO.

(thanks to Adam PW Smith for use of the photos - adampwsmith.com)
<a href="http://www.thickets.net/toren/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/adampwsmithbest.jpg"><img src="http://www.thickets.net/toren/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/adampwsmithbest-300x200.jpg" alt="" title="adampwsmithbest" width="300" height="200" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-2824" /></a>

So it took me several months to get my lazy keister in gear, but as promised here's a ton of photos

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v464/ ... thickets08

Some highlights:







DANCE, MY PUPPETS!





If you want any of these shots in hi-res just shoot me a line: knobbonk @ gmail.com

So, Are you going to play again this year? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE say yes!