Road to Real

To be with you Tonight (Andy Frost)

2008-08-18T14:17:00.001-07:00

I know this is just me.. but I thought I would post this on the Road to Real Blog.. since I just learned how to do this

Andy

Wow!!! been too long

2008-07-25T12:12:00.000-07:00

We haven't blogged in like forever, and have gone through so much.
Stephanie, was gone, Laura came on the scene, Laura left the scene- although I still see her cause she comes in my work to say hi, and now Stephanie is back
We have played at the Farmer's market at Parkrose High School, one time already. Tomorrow the 26th of July we are playing again. On Aug. 9th we are playing at the "Relay for Life" Cancer research Walk.
We have quite the run at Tresca's in Hillsboro, but that gig ended rather quickly. It was good for us, gave us a substantial amount of funds to play with.
It is great to have Stephanie back with us!

Hopefully I will get back into writing mode and come up with some new tunes. I just wrote a new song and put it on my myspace. Once we get this on our gig set I think it will be a lot of fun.

This is a short one for now

Not many gigs..

2007-09-16T11:59:00.000-07:00

but we have been busy.
We have joined forces with 6 other local musicians and have become "Eclipse". The future of which is yet to be determined but we do know that we have had a real good time with this and look forward to hooking up, more often, with these very talented musicians.
On Sept 8th we played at "Clackamas Live" this was a ton of fun. The day was beautiful, the sun was shining strong, there was a cool breeze and the music was pouring out of us. The highlight was the fact that we were finally all together, we knew the music and we jelled. For those of you who were able to attend it was great seeing you there and thank you for your support!

Road to Real has an October 13th gig at Border's Books in Tigard, at Bridgeport Village from 7 9pm.
This is a very busy Borders we had a great time there the first time we played. We will have special guests visiting us for that performance because Mom and Ray will be in Oregon for the week. We are looking forward to this event.

We have also made a connection in Hillsboro and look forward to playing at their "Street Walk" event that happens monthly.

Thanks for checking in!

What's up with Road to Real

2007-06-10T12:43:00.000-07:00

We haven't Blogged in awhile....
We have gone through a lot in the last few months.
Stephanie was in a play and had a great time.
Mike and Linda spent a couple of weeks vacationing.

We have had about 4 encounters with Fiddle players but none of them have signed on. We are trying to expand our sound but when it comes down to it we have such a good time with just the 3 of us...

I have never really considered myself a "musician" and when I say that "musicians are a flakey bunch" I mean that as an observation more than an insult. Is it that difficult to make a commitment to something? I guess if you think you don't have enough time for something? but what else do we have but time, I guess it's just a matter of what you chose to do with that time. That is the question.

Ok I will get off that...

We have a couple of Border's Books engagements coming.
We played friday June 8th at Artichoke music and had a very good time doing that, small turn out but very supportive audience, it is a great place to play for sure.. look forward to going back there. Very good reaction from the owners, they invited us to participate in their "Folk Festival", we will see how that goes.

We also have become involved in a musical project with a great bunch of musicians with a lot of diverse backgrounds and loads of talent. There are about 8-10 of us. 3 guitars, bass, sax, vocalist, blues harp, drummer, percussionist.
This is personally very exciting for me, because we are playing quite a few of my tunes and talk about a great compliment. I have never heard my stuff played by such great musicians. I spend so much of my time smiling when we are playing. We are working towards a gig in Sept. A lot of practices for a lot of hours, but that time just flies by.
I will keep you posted on this.

Have a good one

Great Gigs at Border's Books

2007-03-11T13:04:00.000-07:00

We have had 3 great shows at Borders:

Vancouver
Beaverton
Tigard

all were great, we had great support from our friends and we met a lot of new people that really liked us.
Plus we had some friends show up that hadn't seen us before.
It was a great run of shows.
We have had a lot of requests for CD's, so we are going to have to get something finished soon.

Short blog
Thanks to all who have come to see us, we appreciate it.

Mike, Andy and Stephanie

Some new dates

2007-02-04T21:36:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,
January was a little quiet for us, which was good for recovery from
the holidays.
Some important bookings for us have been, and you might want to write
them down,

Feb 23rd Border's Books in Vancouver
Feb 24th Border's Books in Gresham
March 9th Border's Books in Beaverton (1st time with the full trio)
March 10th Border's Books in Tigard (1st time at Bridge Port Village)
March 30th back at Bekah's

To find all of the Border's Locations follow this link

http://www.bordersstores.com/locator/sl_results.jsp

We have played at Gresham and had a good experience there, great staff
Vancouver has been one of the best places to pick up new fans.
Beaverton we played with just Mike and myself and it was our Debut of
getting out and doing 2 full sets. That is a fun place!
We are very much looking forward to Bridgeport Village since it is
such a cool place to shop
Bekah's has to be my favorite place to play because of the feel the
place and the owners are extremely accomodating.

We will also be having an appearance at Cooper's coffee house this is> yet to be announced but will be somewhere between
all of these other
gigs.

We have also been in touch with Lake Oswego's Art's foundation and are
arranging for an appearance at the "Sunday in the Park" event that
will happen starting in July. We played there last year and had a
great time.

I am sure that I will be sending out reminders as each event draws near.

If you go to http://www.roadtoreal.com you can click on our Calendar
to keep track of all of these dates.

Hope to see you soon, and thanks for your support.

Andy, Mike and Stephanie

Cooper's Coffee House

2006-12-10T12:13:00.000-08:00

On Saturday Dec. 9th we played at Cooper's coffee house.
This was sort of a "Grand Opening" because Michael received his
Beer and wine license.
This was a great crowd, every seat was taken, and we had 2
different crowds, one for the first set and a different one for
the second set.
It was an upbeat crowd, probably because of the coffee and
wine consumption, but it was very fun. I think we sounded
better than we have sounded in a while, we were very tight.
I think we went through the first set at about 100 miles per
hour, due to the Latte I had while setting up..
Anyway.. we had a fun evening.

Andy, MIke and Stephanie

Bekah's Coffee House

2006-11-26T11:28:00.000-08:00

Bekah's Coffee House

We were really looking forward to playing here, all of us were very excited about it and then Stephanie got very sick. She was trying all week to get better but it was a bad week and it just wasn't meant to be. Mike and I ended up playing there, we did the best that we could, it just wasn't the same but all in all it came out pretty good.
We had a nice showing of people all of our favorite people were there , and the regular patrons there were a great audience.
Roger and Wendy, the owners, were great hosts and very appreciative of our music.
A kind of treat for me was having Mr. Royster, Stephanie and my boss, show up. He stayed till the end, I was impressed that he took time out of his day for this event, it was nice to have him there.
We had a little surprise birthday party for Kim G, which she told me she was very touched by.
We were a bit handicapped but the show must go on. I enjoyed the evening.
Roger was nice enough to invite us back, so we will be making another appearance on Jan. 19th. 7 till 9 pm.

Andy, Mike and Stephanie

Been Busy...

2006-11-11T16:52:00.000-08:00

We have been busy, playing at Border's Books, Bethany Village Grill, and at Cooper's Coffee House.
We are enjoying playing, we haven't missed a gig yet despite my being sick at Bethany and Gresham, and Stephanie being very sick at Borders in Vancouver
Last night we played at Border's in Vancouver.
That is one of my favorite places to play because the audience is very receptive, appreciative, and they talk to us either during the set or on breaks.
Thanks to Tina, Heather, and Charity for showing up at Vancouver.
Good night, great second set for us.

Andy, Mike, and Stephanie

Update

2006-10-02T20:03:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a while.
Since the last post we have:
Played at Dreamland Project 2, hoping to post the link to this soon, as soon as that web page is up I will post that link.
Then we played at Borders in Gresham and after that we played at Bethany Village Grill.
There will come a time when we play out so much that I won't be posting them anymore because I won't be able to keep up with it all.

Dreamland Project was fun, it was a long day, and a little nerve racking because we were playing in the middle of a bunch of very good musicians with a very big sound. Electric guitars, drums many vocalists, and then our little trio that doesn't have a real big sound. But we held our own. Got a lot of very nice compliments from very good musicians, that meant a lot.

Gresham Borders, not quite as fun as Vancouver. Big audience but maybe too young?? Didn't capture a lot of peoples attention.
We had some good moments there though. Once we got through the first set, that was kind of rough.

Bethany village Grill Oct. 1st, did not pack the place! In fact the Franco family were our only guests, very small audience just some incidental "stop ins". The Hosts were great, they really took care of us. I hope we can do better at drawing a larger crowd next time.

Lake Oswego's Millenium Park

2006-08-15T19:00:00.000-07:00

Hi all!

After Borders in Vancouver we traveled, on Sunday, to Lake Oswego's Millenium park, and performed at the Lake Oswego's Art foundation's Art show.
It was a beautiful day out, it got up into the 90's but we were under a canopy and there was a nice breeze off of the lake. What a beautiful setting. It wasn't extremely busy there but the audiences that we had we very appreciative and enjoyed our music.
Elaine, the person in charge, said she got a lot of compliments regarding "Road to Real" and that our music really fit their venue well. We are invited to come back next year. They are booked up for the rest of the year.
All of us at Road to Real really enjoyed this venue.
Michael G's Mom, Rusty, was there, it was real nice to have her in the audience. Rusty and her friend (name escapes me... darn it) were great fans!
Susan showed up with a friend, Annie and Damien were there. Oh yeah can't forget to mention that Mark showed up, from Centerline, with his wife Tammy. Mark was very kind to help us with our sound checks which is a bigger thing than it sounds. Jon from Centerline tried desperately to get us some wind screens from guitar center but they were out! It was great to have Jon there in the audience, it's nice to have fellow musicians there to show support.

Thanks for the support, we appreciate it.

Andy

Borders in Vancouver, Washington

2006-08-15T18:42:00.000-07:00

Hi all!

Friday night after we played at the Borders in Salem, we ventured up to Vancouver to play at the Borders Books there. Wow! that was fun, what a great crowd. The staff was great, very helpful and accomodating. The audience was very receptive. A lot of people stopped by to listen, some sat down but quite a few people kind of stopped in their tracks and stood there listening to us. Our favorite crew of fellow workers were there: Kim, Tina, Jeanette, Sheri, and of course our favorite sound person, Linda was there.
This was a very fun evening for us, we were also in great humor that night and when we weren't singing we were joking and laughing a lot.

Thanks for the support, we appreciate it.

Andy

Border's Books Tour

2006-08-06T11:16:00.000-07:00

Well, we started our Border's Books tour (if you can call it a tour) last night in Salem, Oregon.
We had a good time, it's about an hour drive for us to get to Salem, but Stephanie and I gabbed all the way down
so it didn't take very long. The staff was great, they took care of us. One of the benefits of playing there is that they
give us complimentary beverages.
Our sets were put together pretty well. It's a little tough playing cold like that. Meanining, we hadn't practiced since the previous Sunday, we typically practice on Wed. nights.
We had a good time, not much banter with the audience. We pretty much got down to business and played.
We look forward to Vancouver this coming Friday night, and then on to Lake Oswego Sunday.
We'll keep you posted!

RTR

A couple of Gigs

2006-07-18T18:29:00.000-07:00

Thought I would throw out a quick blog about up coming gigs.

Border's Book in Salem Aug 5th, 7pm till 9pm
Lake Oswego at Millenium Park. "Art in the Park" Aug 13th 11:00am till 2:00pm.

We are practicing getting ready for Border's and then I get a great email from Angela (Centerline) letting us know about
The Lake Oswego Foundation for the Arts. They were looking for groups to perform on a few Sunday's, one being Aug 13th from 11 to 2pm. I contacted the person in charge and she signed us up. Mostly because of the recommendation from Angela!
This was a great thing for Centerline to do for us and we appreciate it. They also are the ones responsible for our Borders Gig!

Way to go Centerline!

Coopers Coffee

2006-06-29T21:24:00.000-07:00

We played at Cooper's Coffee Thurs night 6/29/06.
It was very sparse on audience, but boy did we have a good time.
Sometimes you can play for hundreds of people but get no response, which makes it tough, but then there are times when you play for a handful of people and you make a great connection! This is far more rewarding. This was the kind of night that we had.
For the most part, we performed without too many mistakes, but the ones we did make were funny and we laughed it off.
I really enjoyed the night. We are going to do a little more advertising the next time we go so we can bring in some business for Michael, the owner. It is very nice of him to let us come anytime we want, we owe him a great debt of thanks!

If you are local to Portland, please check out this great coffee house on 61st and Stark! Great people working there, great people frequent this place, it's in a beautiful building with a great history. You will not find a better person than Michael the owner, always has a smile on his face and his laughter fills the room!

That's it for now!

Thanks,

Andy, Stephanie and Mike!

Our First blog

2006-06-15T10:08:00.000-07:00

This is our first official blog, I have a tendency to spend more time online and since I am on vacation this week, I am doing this first blog.
Stephanie and Mike will also be putting some stuff on here in the future.
I guess blogs for music groups are supposed to be about what is happening with us and where we are going to be performing next..
So I will do just that.
As you know we played at Bethany Village Grill on June 11th.. went pretty well.
I think we learned a lot that night. I was most critical, as I always am. Stephanie and Mike Calmed me down on that.
We liked playing there it's a great place with great Food!!
Les the owner was gracious enough to let us take up the better part of an hour. We kind of pushed the open mic night back a bit, but Danny Oaks was also kind enough to move his toes back a bit so we wouldn't step on them.
All and all it was a good evening.
Thanks for everyone's support!! We had a great showing.
Our performance , and the turn out , lead to Les asking us to come back. We will be arranging that for sure.
Another promising note of interest is that since Mike and I winged it at "Borders" books in beaverton, we have been invited to go back there and also do a "tour" so to speak of many of the other local stores. This will include Salem, Gresham, and Vancouver.
This is very cool. Borders is a great place to play cause families can bring their kids. It's amazing how many people go to Borders on a Friday night just to hang out!
Our next spot is going to be at Greg's Barbecue, on July 1st!
That will be very relaxed and informal
We will keep you posted on more events as they come up
PS) don't forget to check out our new website, thanks to my DAD!!

www.experienceor.com and
www.roadtoreal.com

Experienceor.com is a great page with links to our friends
Dreamland Cafe
Centerline
Rock Residue
Bethany Village Grill
and more