Coffee will be the first order of business when Rogue Wave's Pat Spurgeon, Zach Rogue (Schwartz), Dominic East and Cameron Jasper arrive in Anchorage on Monday afternoon.
The indie rock band that had its song "California" featured on TV series including "The O.C." and "Nip/Tuck" is arriving in town a bit early. Drummer Spurgeon said it's not every day a band gets invited to Anchorage and they want to take advantage of it.
"We are going to keep it small, compact, stealth. So we can fly in and hit the ground running," Spurgeon said as he was enjoying some home life in Oakland, Calif., last week.
He heard it's going to be cold in Anchorage and probably dark.
"We won't get up at noon and then the sun's going down at 2 p.m. or anything like that," he asked, concerned.
The dark would be a sharp contrast to the band's latest album, "Permalight (released March 2010)," which is the most punchy and upbeat of its discography.
Rogue Wave is arriving in Anchorage in a semi-relaxed state. The guys are not on an extremely tight tour schedule.
For the most part, the band has thoughts of sticking around Oakland while they let their next album develop organically and working on a sound installation for the Oakland Museum of California that should debut next year. The band has been commissioned to do the project as a tribute to analog recording.
"It's something that most musicians all like and strive to do," Spurgeon said. "It almost seems like a dying art form because everything is done digitally anymore."
Other gigs include Rogue's solo acoustic show at the 2011 Noise Pop Festival in San Francisco at the end of the month. And Spurgeon, who was born with one kidney, just returned from Georgia, where he was touring with the creator of the documentary "D-Tour: A Rock 'n' Roll Film About Life, Death and Bodily Functions." The film follows Spurgeon through his struggle to get a kidney transplant and was featured on PBS "Independent Lens" in 2009.
It has been four years since Spurgeon received his new kidney.
"Everything is great. This kidney is just really good for me," he said. "Most people who follow the band know that is part of my life, part of my deal, that I have this health issue that I am dealing with constantly."
Encouraging fans to get the organ donor heart on their driver's licenses has been part of Rogue Wave's mission.
Now, with a healthy kidney, Spurgeon is free to go on the road without his dialysis gear. Touring without their drummer wasn't an option for Rogue Wave. In "D-Tour," the band members talked about how asking Spurgeon to stay home would have been like asking for someone else to sleep with his girlfriend.
Spurgeon no longer has any dietary constrictions either. Though, vegetarian food is also on the agenda for when the band arrive in town. A couple of the guys from Rogue Wave don't eat meat and Spurgeon said the band tends to eat at vegetarian spots to keep the peace.
"If we need to go chew on a cow, we'll just go find one somewhere later," he laughed.
By Rosey Robards
Daily News correspondent