Wheeler, Ore. (Photo by Sammy Ponzar)

Everyone responded so well to Silo Halo’s “Midwestern Transmissions” tour diary that we asked other local musicians with a penchant for good storytelling to send us their own tales from the road. This next set of stories comes from the West Coast, where members of America Hearts and Olivia Mancini and The Mates have condensed into one touring supergroup consisting of Mancini, Jess Matthews, Kristin Forbes and Sammy Ponzar. (Both groups have members that could not go out on this tour.) As such, the group plays one set of America Hearts songs and one set of Olivia Mancini songs per show. Since we’re impressed by their stamina and their photos of the Pacific Northwest coastline make us happy, asking them to contribute was a no-brainer. Here are their words and photos from the road. Enjoy!

Jess Matthews writes:

Sitting in Reagan Washington National Airport about 5:30 a.m., I ate a breakfast-sausage-filled panini and observed my fellow travelers. On the other side of the hot, greasy affront to my heart, I saw several dozen Mitt Romney haircuts. The domes of these towering suits had bold lines with fine details, supported with a kind of structural engineering that assures the permanence of the look.

These ‘dos seemed to mock me for being tired, having gone to sleep only a few hours earlier after leaving our show at the Black Cat. I have been looking forward to this day for months, and still nothing about my morning could be described as detailed or structured. We all stowed our tray tables and spread out over Phoenix, Miami, Minneapolis and Newark before reconvening in Oakland, Calif. with our tour mates, Super Natural, for the Northwest portion of the tour.

Jess Matthews, Kristin Forbes, Olivia Mancini and Sammy Ponzar rocking out in Bellingham, Wash.

Super Natural’s conversion van is striped in multiple colors of brown. It is filled with a large vintage Marshall amplifier, a smaller Fender guitar amp, a drum set, an eight-by-10 bass amp and four of the sweetest folks you could meet. Every time we get together there is a little party that consists of hugs, high-fives and photos. The first of these parties took place at a house show in Portland, Ore. We played in the backyard on a stage made of hay that was pleasant to play on except for when I needed to find the pick I had dropped. There was a middle-aged black woman at the party dressed all in white. The look included a fancy looking head wrap that gave her a sort of psychic look. She told me, “Sin rhymes with gin.” I’m not sure if it was a prediction, a truism, or a pun. Her look contained no judgment, but my hands contained no gin.

The following night we played in Bellingham, Wash. The cover of the Bellingham Herald the next morning showed a fisherman with an eagle attempting to steal a rainbow trout from his line. At the Bellingham food co-op, our drummer, Sammy [Ponzar], and I asked the man working the trail-mix aisle to recommend a nearby trail. Sammy tried to folksy him with his traditional greeting, “Hey Fella” but he was outdone by the man’s vivid descriptions, delivered deliberately over multiple maps and through legitimately rustic facial hair. His advice to hike the Fragrance Lake trail and eat Quick Energy Trail Mix was well-taken.

At the High Dive in Seattle, we found our performance legs and lost any remaining concerns we had about how to best play together. We stepped up onto a big stage with good sound and lights. Olivia [Mancini] and Kristin [Forbes] made spontaneous and somehow perfectly timed jumps during “Race Car Driver.” I lunged toward Kristin at the end of the song. In the corner of my eye I saw that her guitar was already above and behind her head and beginning to swing down to meet her hands for the final note. This was problematic because not only was I moving toward her, but I also noticed that she was flying toward me. We exchange slow motion looks of panic. I veer to my right into our guitar amps. Kristin veered to her right, bringing the guitar down squarely on the vocal mic, crashing it to the floor. Olivia, who had already fled to opposite corner of the stage yelled, “Good Night” into the remaining microphone stand.

A band from Seattle called Shotty came to see us that night. Since I had just played one of the best shows of my life, I’m glad that I didn’t know that this band would slay us when we shared a stage with them the following night in Olympia. Olympia, Wash. seems like the kind of place people move to if Portland is too uptight.

Olivia Mancini, Sammy Ponzar and Jess Matthews take a coffee break.

Shotty’s bass player rocks an impressive skinny-leg-to-large-hair ratio. This upside down triangle of a musical prodigy anchors the band’s meticulous sound that ranges from keyboard-driven jangly pop to a thinking man’s math rock. We nearly convinced the band to come along with us to play Wheeler, Ore., but their singer’s and Kristin’s wallets were stolen at the show, putting a damper on the urge to work out those kind of logistics.

Wheeler is a small strikingly beautiful coastal town with cliffs overlooking mountain ranges, beaches, and mythic-looking forests. The drive to Wheeler took us to the site where The Goonies was filmed. We got out of the car and took in the ocean under a sky that was not overcast for the first time. We lay on the sunny sand at Cannon Beach taking in the lighthouse and the large jagged rocks, while Kristin proclaimed, “THIS IS OUR TIME!”