Wednesday, April 30, 2008

pittsburgh

April 30th
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The Smiling Moose
w/ Sort


I expected Pittsburgh for some reason to be flat and boring, it wasn't. It had the feel of a Pacific Northwest city. There was a huge river, beautiful bridges, and lots of cool shops.

Across the street from The Smiling Moose was a guitar store. The six of us stormed in like a hurricane, picking up guitars and playing them as loud as we could, unplugged. The lady that worked there didn't know what to make of us. Allen bought a really nice blue Squire Strat at the guitar for under a bill. Squire Strats are hit or miss, but this thing plays really nice.

As was kind of typical on this tour, the local band on the bill canceled and it was us and a band from Virginia on the bill, no local support.

The sound guy was really nice, I offered to smoke him up but he pointed me in the direction of the bartender, Scooby. Scooby looked like a tough biker, but as soon as we got him downstairs he was the nicest guy in the bar. They had chips and salsa, he gave us free drinks, and when he heard we were driving through the night to get to New York he gave us some red bulls and some chips for the road.

I don't really remember our set. Luke drove through the night and we were in New York City traffic by about 9am Thursday morning.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

scrummmmmage

April 29th
Detroit, Michigan
Lager House
w/ elusive Parallelograms, Cetan Clawson, Tone and Niche

Allen showered at Jenna's and we left about noon to head towards detroit. Before we left, Luke suggested we walk to Sultan's for falafel. It was a good call.

Northern Indiana is a wasteland.

We thought we got to Detroit kind of early, but it turned out we missed a time change and we were right on time. The bar was open so we went in. The owner was one of the nicest guys ever. He and his bartender were working on a book of shots, they were making a shot named after every headlining band that played at their bar. He gave us what he was calling the "Spidermum Shot". It was kind of nasty, but it was free. It was whiskey, tequila, and hot damn, yikes.

We had another pissed off sound guy, his name was Creggers. First he wanted us to load into the back, then he wanted us to put only small stuff in the back and everything else behind the stage. Anytime we asked him a question, he got super huffy. When we were trying to find power on the right side of the stage, he got under the stage, then came out yelling "who the fuck left the fucking shop vac under the stage!" to no one in particular. He was the only person working at the venue that was even in the room. So he just tossed it on the stage and dragged it to the back behind the sound board.

Tone and Niche showed up, they're the ones that set up the show, they opened and played a cool, mellow set as a two piece; acoustic guitar/vocals and violin. We're playing with their four piece band in KC at the RecordBar in June. Extremely nice people.

The hurricane of drunkenness known as elusive Parallelograms rolled up as we were loading in. They were rolling as a four piece for this show, with a new guy named Dave playing guitar. Dave was trashed and sporting permagrin. Before the show we met one of the other guys on the bill, Cetan Lawson, pronounced "Chedda". Or as we called him, Chedda the Shredda.

Me and Allen got on stage and did background vocals on the elusive Parallelograms song "Orange". We did the woohoo's in the chorus. We shared amps with them and played a decently messy and noisy 25 minute set. Chedda went on last and played some hardcore shredda shit. I was outside smoking some of the time with elusive Parallelograms, but at one point I heard him go from 'The Star-spangled Banner' to '?' to 'Eruption'. He played with his teeth, he played left handed, but we kind of wished he was trying his hand at more original stuff, he could definitely play guitar, but he played everything exactly technically correct, to the point of draining most of the emotion out of the songs he was covering. He's only like 19 though, I'm sure he'll get into original material when he's tired of memorizing extremely technical guitar solos.

elusive Parallelograms didn't have anywhere to crash, so they followed us to Scrummage University after the show. Scrummage is a huge warehouse space in a kind of dangerous part of Detroit. The guys that live there are beyond cool. They opened up the gate for our vans, and we hid them in the corner of the lot behind the building. The only parallelogram still conscious when we got to Scrummage was Cory, the rest of the band, being professional musicians, had drunk themselves into comas on the 20 minute ride from the bar.

The next few hours included lots of smoking/drinking, a freestyle rap session, Cory riding a bicycle while playing a tuba, Cory doing the worm on concrete and James taking his shoes and socks off (i don't know why, it was freezing in there) as he passed out in a chair. Baby Birds slept in the room where, at one point, a dog had lived and marked every mattress. There was a huge heater in the corner of the warehouse that I was unaware of somehow. I slept on a couch freezing my nuts off, but didn't get any sleep really.

Around noon, we said our goodbyes to the Scrummage guys and started a long drive to Pittsburgh.

Monday, April 28, 2008

martyrs'

Monday, April 28th
Chicago, Illinois
Martyrs’
w/ so long charlie, jack callahan


The drive to Chicago was short, but we hit rush hour and it took about an hour and a half to go the last ten miles.

Martyrs' is a classy joint. By that I mean that they have candles on the table, the sound guy is always telling everybody to turn their amps down, and beers cost at least twice as much as they should. Jenna came out towards the end, I'm not sure if she saw our set or not, but it was pretty tame. We had our amps at about half what they normally are but the sound guy wanted us to turn down even more.

After the show, we went and grabbed some cheap beer and went back to Jenna's place. Her roommates had to get up early and she had wood floors, so all of us but Allen and Luke split after hanging out for an hour or two. First we tried to sneak into some club, but that wasn't happening with four people. Me and Trevis went off in search of the kind of food that tastes good at three in the morning and found some place where everything came with "Fries and Can Pop." Everything. Even if you ordered fries, it came with "Fries and Can Pop." We got some cheese sticks, mushrooms, and of course "Fries and Can pop." The burning oil from the mushrooms burned a good size hole into the roof of my mouth that didn't heal for the rest of the tour. It was pretty easy to ignore though, I only noticed it when I was eating, which wasn't that often.

James and Drew went back to the club we tried sneaking into earlier and were successful, me and Trevis went back to the van, smoked, and went to sleep. I was in the back row of seats, where Drew and Luke usually hang out, and I saw a huge bag on the floor with what looked like a little bit of schwag shake and some stems and seeds in the bottom. It made no sense at all, I didn't think anyone brought anything that looked this ditchy and even if they did, why did they have it in such a huge bag?

But in my paranoia, not wanting any loose bags floating around in case a cop knocked on our window in the night, I tore the top part of the bag off, tied it up, and put it with the rest of the stash.

The next morning, I got into the stash and everything made a lot more sense. In the morning light, it was pretty obvious what was going on. The bag I'd found the night before didn't have anything illegal in it, what I thought was nasty schwag was bread crumbs, nuts, and a twisty tie.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

magic racket

April 27th
Madison, Wisconsin
6pm

The Klinic (all ages early show)
w/ elusive Parallelograms

11pm
The Annex
w/ elusive Parallelograms, the Bismarck, Atlatl


We played two shows in Madison, the first was a blur. We were late, but the sound guy was cool and no one cared too much that it took forever for us to get our shit together. After we got done, someone said, "that was a long set change", and I had no idea what they were talking about. It turns out we weren't the first band to play and we'd made everyone wait for almost an hour while we got there, unloaded, smoked, and sound checked. oh well, the venue (The Klinic) wouldn't even give us free water, so I didn't feel too bad about anything. The sound guy was nice though, we ended up seeing him at the end of the night as we were trying to get paid at The Annex. He was wanting to party, but we were on our way to spend the night in Milwaukee at Cory's house.

But before all that, we had another show booked. A sparsely populated show at the Annex. Four out-of-town bands on a Sunday (who books four out-of-town bands on a Sunday?). When we walked in I saw a guy at the sound board and gave him a little nod; he looked up at me, shook his head "No", and looked back down at the board. He wasn't in a good mood, turns out he was just pissed that there were four out-of-town bands, but I'm not sure why that upset him so much, he was getting paid either way, unlike the bands.

Elusive parallelograms are always a good time; we played with them in Detroit a few days later. Atlatl was pretty good too. One good thing about this show though was that we got free PBR all night and the bar tender was a nice guy.

The Bismark are a professional band, and by that I mean, while the other bands were fucking around drinking, smoking, and banging on the wall with sticks crowded around a tape recorder, they took the little door money that was made and jetted.

We coined a new phrase, "Pulling a Bismark", which means, as I'm sure you can guess, grabbing the door money and diving into a moving van on your way out of town.

After a ton of free PBR, we drove from Madison to Milwaukee to crash at Cory from elusive Parallelograms' house. Baby Birds Slept in a Pile next to a drum set. I scored a bed with two blankets, it was amazing.

The next morning in Milwaukee, we went a radio shack for a power supply for my laptop. Then we hit the post office so Allen could mail something. Then I ate possibly the best sandwich of my life...

bremen cafe
milwaukee, wisconsin

the vorgie

tomato, bell pepper, onion, mixed greens, feta, provolone, creamy red pepper pesto, vinaigrette on an italian hoagie.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

hey, it's the guy from heroine sheiks

Saturday, April 26th
The Uptown
Minneapolis, Minnesota
w/ Heroine Sheiks (ex-cows,oujia radio) & Economy Team


A few days before we were going to leave, Piatt got pulled over in Westport, driving without a license. For most people, this is a minor offense. But for Piatt, even minor offenses are a big deal. He's been to jail a few times and has been on probation forever, this minor offense violated his probation, so he won't be able to leave the state for a while.

So we had a few days to figure out if we were going to play the shows without a drummer or if we could find someone that was available and capable of playing drums with us. Luckily, baby birds don't drink milk had just gotten back from a tour and Oscar Allen was able to fill in on drums. He's one of the best songwriter/musicians we know, I burned him a cd of all the songs we were going to play live and within a few listens and a few hours of practicing, he had everything figured out. His ability to memorize complicated song structures is mind blowing. I wouldn't be surprised to see him smoke some fools on jeopardy someday.

Noonish on Saturday, i went and picked up the van, we met up at my house, played a few songs one last time and drove seven hours to Minneapolis.

Brian hooked it up fat in Minneapolis. when we got there and saw the venue was mostly empty and it was $10 to get in, we weren't sure it was going to be as big of a show as it was supposed to be, but as the evening rolled on, people started coming out and it got pretty packed by the end of the night.

After our set, Drew and Luke were downstairs at the venue eating some sandwiches and this guy comes up to them saying he's from Capital Records. It went something like this:

Guy: "Hey, are you guys in a band?"

Drew/Luke: "Spidermums"

Guy: "Oh yeah, I've seen you guys before, who's playing drums for you now? (Without waiting for a response) I know this guy that would be perfect for you guys..."

And on and on, then he gives them a business card, but it doesn't say anything about Capital Records or wherever he said he was from, it's a business card for some health care company.

The guy from Heroine Sheiks was downstairs being twenty kinds of freaky, Drew thought he might be on crack, but when I was talking to him after their set, he just seemed permanently spun, nice guy, he radiated an aura of insanity, good people.

Even though the place was really full, we only sold two CDs, and one of the guys who bought a CD was obviously confused about what band's CD he was buying. I wasn't around, but Trevis said he bought it, walked away, then looked at it like it didn't make any sense. When the guy left the venue, he laid the disc down at the table next to ours, but he didn't ask for any money back. So we sold two CDs and got one back, that's the way to do it. From now on, maybe we'll hang a banner with the name of the headlining band above our merch table and sell all kinds of shit, then as they leave they can put it back in our merch tub.

Heroine Sheiks were cool, they have members of STNNNG and Ouija Radio and the singer dude was in Cows. They had one song where the only lyrics I remember hearing were, "you want me....fuck you".

People were really nice, Brian bought us all shots. We got paid handsomely and stayed at Brian's apartment, nice start, no arrests.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

a new plan

we're having our first practice with oscar/allen tonight,
the first show of the tour is four days from now.

allen's going to be playing drums with us for the first 13 shows of the tour,
all of them except the st. louis show.

since he wouldn't have to leave the state to play in st. louis,
piatt can play that show.

you never now what's going to happen,
but so far this whole thing is working out
better than any of us thought it would
after we heard piatt got arrested.

it's not going to be the same without him,
but at least the tour is still going to happen.

wayward blog entry

Saturday, April 19, 2008

piatt + the law = piatt not going on tour

super sad news.

our drummer and good friend piatt will be going to jail for driving without a license, which broke his probation.

this is more than super sad though, it's super untimely, we're leaving for a two week tour one week from today and now he won't be allowed to leave the state.

we have some friends coming with us to help fill the hole though, so we will have a drummer, and maybe even another guitar player or two.

without name dropping, i'll just say that the replacement drummer who is saving our ass is someone most of you know, and what could have been a horrible situation isn't going to be as bad as it could have been.

if you're friends with piatt, you might send him a note, this has been tough for all of us, but toughest for him. he was almost off probation.

love/josh

Monday, April 14, 2008

tourrr time

it's getting close.
all the shows are booked.
all the flyers are sent.
the van situation is good.
see you soon.

April 26th
The Uptown
Minneapolis, Minnesota
w/ Heroine Sheiks (ex-cows,oujia radio) & Economy Team

April 27th
Madison, Wisconsin
The Klinic (all ages early show)
w/ elusive Parallelograms

April 27th
Madison, Wisconsin
The Annex
w/ elusive Parallelograms, the bismarck, Atlatl

April 28th
Chicago, Illinois
Martyrs’
w/ so long charlie, jack callahan

April 29th
Detroit, Michigan
Lager House
w/ elusive Parallelograms, Cetan Clawson, Tone and Niche

April 30th
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The Smiling Moose
w/ Sort & School of Athens

May 1st
New york, New york
Lit Lounge
w/ kampion, algorythm & blues, Gringo Stars

May 3rd
Brooklyn, New york
Goodbye Blue Monday (free show)

May 4th
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The Dock (all ages warehouse venue )
w/ mourning electra

May 5th
Greenville, North Carolina
The Spazzatorium Galleria!(all ages)

May 6th
Queen City (Charlotte), North Carolina
Jeff's Bucket Shop w/ silent weapons

May 7th
Murfreesboro, Tennessee
Temptation Club
w/ Goodmorning Powerheart, Violence & Valentines, The Wickersham Bros.

May 8th
Memphis, Tennessee
Murphy's

May 9th
St.
Louis, Missouri
LEMP (all ages)
w/ .e, the word association (reunion show) and the top grossing films of 1984