9/8/06 Bandito's (Virginia City MT)

VirginiaCity
Originally uploaded by awall.

Wow...where to start. First of all I challenge any one to find Virginia City on the Montana map, its like where's Waldo. I guess I'll start from the beginning. We follow the map to Virginia City. When you roll into town it looks like the backlot of a western at Universal Studios....its a ghost town...straight up. We parked the van infront of the venue and stepped onto the wooden sidewalks where we saw stalls for horses to be tied to. We stepped into the place and were greated by a man with a dirty apron wiping off his hands. Think Dust til Dawn meets Blair Witch. The man made us some bomb fajitas with homemade salsa(which was suprisingly good) as the sound crew set up the stage and sound. We checked into our rooms (which turns out to be the bookers mother-in-laws house). When we got back to Bandito's we took a tour of the place(Art Bell heaven, very creepy). In the basement below the stage is where they would keep the dead bodies(goldrush era) in the winter because the ground was too hard to bury them. It was heavy, not to mention one of the patrons there told us she saw a ghost in the main room a while back. It was a woman in a victorian dress, she started singing too. We didn't know what to expect, but when the sun went down and the stage lights came up, the people came out of the woodwork. It ended up being a great night(eventhough Sean got a migrain half way through and somehow managed to pull it out). After the set we got the stories from the staff of hangings shootings etc that went on there, talk about the real wild west. The cool thing about the town was that there were no rules. No cops, no grocery store, no bank, no cell phone reception, no wi fi hotspots. We played as late as we wanted as loud as we wanted, you can drink outside. Nobody was on there cell phone which was refreshing, its defenitely a lifestyle to say the least. When we woke up in the morning there were horses wondering around in front of the porch, we had to watch for them as we backed out. It was by far the most.....interesting show of the trip.