FRI FEB 4 in Houston

We were all excited for our first show of 2011, which was to be held at Last Concert Cafe in Houston, TX. We were going to be playing with our friends in Strawberry Jam. PLUMP was also quite pleased to be playing early (i.e. playing at 10 pm) in experiment and response to our Houston friends and fans who like to see us start prior to midnight when we play in Houston.
Of course, then mother nature took over.

I have lived here in Houston for about 12 years, and I can count on 3 fingers the number of times that it has snowed or sleeted in an ice storm-like fashion. (in a random sidenote/digression, if you have never seen Ang Lee's movie, "The Ice Storm" you should really really really check it out. Now that is a great movie. And, it really does feature an ice storm. You should also know that I pressed "pause", just prior to sitting down in front of the computer, on another of Ang Lee's many movies, "Lust, Caution", which half-way through has proved excellent--so I was dying to make some sort of Ang Lee-based reference. Mission accomplished.) As any resident of the greater Houston area will tell you, one of those 3 times happened on the evening of Thursday February 3, which flowed over to the Friday of February 4. The roads were deemed "not recommended" for travel. Josh was required to drive to work, and said drive took him 3 hours, and then of course hardly any of his co-workers had made the similar periolous journey, and he soon left to take a similarly long drive back to his house. 80% of Houston (including everyone else in the band) did not go into work, and stayed home--off the roads relative in safety. I had called the LCC to verify their thoughts for postponing of the evening's entertainment. They were hoping to be open and were also hoping that the roads would be improved by evening (though the temperatures were still in the upper 20's.) PLUMP was really thinking this would be a good evening to postpone. LCC is known as an outdoor venue, so any people showing up would be accurately labeled as EXTREMELY HARDCORE. Also, we would be required to pull a trailer on iced roads in order to transport equipment, PA, etc. Also, any load-in and load-out would require about an hour/hour and a half outside in sub-arctic temperatures. That's cold, man. (OK, I will grant that upper 20's is hardly sub-arctic, but please know the "upper 20's" is extremely cold for anyone who lives full-time in southern Texas). So, we called Strawberry Jam at 1 pm and reported that we were out for the evening. Strawberry Jam, bless them, were still (as of 1 pm) willing to drive from College Station/Austin, with a trailer to pull their PA, across ice-strewn highways and roads, to play the gig. So, we said, "Good luck and be safe." We told the Cafe that we were out, but that SJ was still thinking of coming. We hated cancelling the gig, but it was just dangerous enough to make us not want to risk it. We were actually jonesing to play, as we hadn't had a gig in about 2 months--which for PLUMP is about 1.7 light years. Al literally had the shakes.

I contacted Strawberry Jam the next day to see how it went, and they told me they aborted trying to come to Houston just a little bit into their journey. I think that was the right move.