Monday, May 12, 2008

hardcore bromance

Monday May 12th

Right before we left for Minneapolis, Justin (Sleeper Cellar) asked us to play a show with a few touring bands at a new-ish venue called The Point. We’re not going to be around much longer so we said we’d do it. It started out okay….

spidermums



May 11 2008 7:04 AM

hardcore bromance at the point tomorrow?

52 minute, 87 guitar drone fest?

no set list, no school, get fucked up.


Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk



May 12 2008 4:17 AM

BE MANY HAND-JAMMERS TONIGHT!! SEE YOU SOON.

__________________

sounded promising, hand jammers == good times.

But the good times ended not too long after we got to The Point. Some guy that worked at The Point was letting Justin put on shows there and that guy got there late…. and was super trashed. I didn’t see it happen, but apparently this guy punched Justin a few times in the neck and face. Lame.

So all the bands loaded out and we started calling other venues to find the touring bands somewhere to set up and possibly make a little money. Me and Allen called a bunch of places, but the only place we could get in three bands at 11pm on a Monday was the Newsroom.

All three bands shared equipment to make set changes faster, but we still didn't go on until about two in the morning. There was a one song Baby Birds reunion with Jameson on bass and vocals, Drew on guitar and Allen on drums. Then we played for the first time as a seven piece with Allen and Piatt both playing full drum sets. Luke, Drew, James and I played guitar and Trevis played bass. It was chaos.

During 'To My Surprise', our third song, someone grabbed James' microphone. This somehow led to a fight that pretty much stopped the show. Kind of. Drew's pedals got fucked up on the fight and he was already fed up with the KC violence before round two, he walked out during the song. Trevis' bass cut out at some point during the fight song. The rest of us kept on playing noise while Piatt and Allen beat up on their drums. Allen destroyed his drum set and started beating on the pieces while we were a loud mess.

A few days later, I plugged in and tried to use my amp, it's all kinds of fucked up.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

places drew slept on tour

minn - under kitchen table
milwaukee - on egg shell, baby birds sleep in piles
chicago - jenna's wood floor sans blanket or pillow
detroit - urine stained mattress at scrummage
pittsburgh - drove all night
nyc - inside lit lounge
nj - under living room table
nj day two - couch in studio
philly - hallway by the bathroom at pat's
greenville - in the van
charlotte - guest bedroom floor
charlotte thru kc - drank too much blue stuff - RIP diplodocus

Friday, May 9, 2008

Sweet Baby James

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


The four original Spidermums left for St. Louis about three, Dottie said there was some food being cooked for us at LEMP and to be there about seven. Piatt and me, but mostly Piatt, went through a whole bottle of vodka on the way to St. Louis. I-40 East was closed so we had to take some backwards, messed up way to get to the venue, but we finally got there around eight.

We were fed some really awesome toasted veggie subs and spaghetti. Usually I don't care too much how our set goes, but after eating that food it hit me that I'd feel kind of guilty if we sucked. We ended up sucking, but I didn't feel guilty. It's not like it was our intent to suck.

After .e's set, we set up all our shit and realized how broken the drums were. We didn't use them much at all on tour and we were really careful with them. But the kick head was broken, the toms were loose, the snare head was warped, and the snare stand was kind of fucked up. My guitar amp was cutting out. James broke a string during the first song. Trevis had so stand in front of Piatt's kick the whole set with his foot on it so it didn't scoot all over the room. Almost everyone that was there came up to us after the show and told us that they liked us, but I felt like it wasn't our best. It was kind of chaotic and dangerous, but Piatt didn't have a kick the second half of the set and we had all kinds of technical difficulties. Oh well. We sold some merch and got paid well.

We got a retarded amount of cheap beer at a grocery store and went back to Ryan's house. Nothing much happened after that, we played some racing game where you had a real wheel and gas and brake pedals, I never used the brake. We drank a bunch of shitty beer, Piatt wasn’t too happy about how his drums were fucked up, but I bought him a new head for the kick and we’re going to get some nuts for the bolts holding his toms on his kick. No big deal.

Sweet baby James fell asleep first and Piatt filled his ears with pretzels.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

lemp friday, the point on monday

hello.

thanks for letting us shower at your houses and eat your food.

we still smell pretty awful.

the last show of the tour is
friday at LEMP
w/.e (dottie),
the word association,
and tgfo1984.

it should be a really, really good show.

a couple days after that,
we're playing a local show
at a new-ish venue called The Point
with some cool out of town bands,
Sump Pumps and Prizzy Prizzy Please.

Monday May 12th
the point w/ sump pumps || prizzy prizzy please
917 W 44th St
(44th St and Southwest Trafficway)
kansas city, Missouri 64111

this will be the last show for a while
and having just been on tour for a few weeks,
and knowing how impossible it is
to make enough money for gas,
it would be cool to bring in some money
for the touring bands.

if you're not busy,
this will be a good show.
promise.

we're working on remembering what happened on tour
and writing a blog. it'll probably be up within a few days.

josh

Home

Thursday, May 8th

When we got home, Allen, Drew, and Luke headed out to Lawrence. The rest of us vacuumed the inside of the van and washed the outside. My thinking was that if the outside looked nice and the carpet looked clean, they wouldn't notice how we'd totally scarred the inside of the van with cymbal stands. There was broken plastic, the inside of the back doors had at least 20 chunks missing.

Trevis dropped off James on his way back to Lawrence. I took the van back. I slept and had some really freaky dreams about being in weird places, drinking with people I didn't know in cities I'd never been to.

When I woke up, I thought it was time to get up and get in the van. I started walking around the house looking for everybody. I even went downstairs looking before I realized I was at my house, I was alone, and we didn't have a show to go to. It was pretty interesting.

tour blog

coming shortly.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

stone bitches, cut a rug lisa

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

A few days before the show, Drew had looked up the Temptation Club and found a ghetto-nascar-and-miller myspace page. The pictures were pretty awesome though.

Cut a rug lisa.


The ride towards the Temptation Club was maybe the most fun I had on the whole trip, we were making endless jokes about the situation. "Now which one of you is the "The Spiderman"?" Maybe to hide our fear that the bar would be just like we thought it would be. This was a Wednesday show, and it was one of the last ones we were booking. James found this venue in the indie bible and called them up. He said he heard nascar in the background and talked to an older sounding hillbilly lady. When he asked about setting up a show, the lady said sure, no problem. We should've probably known that a venue without a website that had NASCAR on the tele wasn't going to be a good place to play, but we were tired of booking so we just went with it.

It was all we could have hoped for and nothing more. It was the shadiest place I'd been in a long time. Some guy saw us hanging out at our van and started talking at us.

"What kind of music do y'all play?"

"rock."

"Do you know any Skynyrd covers?"

"no."

They had clean bathrooms though; a few of us emptied out our rotten guts and stunk up the place. Two of the three other bands showed up and kind of felt the same way we did. They were all from Nashville and hadn't been to the venue before. When they saw the place and saw there was no PA, we all decided it wasn't even worth setting up for. If it'd been the second show of the tour, we might have played anyway just to tighten ourselves up. But being the thirteenth or fourteenth show, we had no desire to unload all of our shit and play in front of five people yelling 'skynyrd!' at us.

One of the bands we were supposed to play with, Violence and Valentines, started calling up friends about putting on a house party for us. It didn't end up working out, but they were really nice. They were on the phone with venues in Nashville and house party people for quite a while. They bought a few CDs from us too. I tried to just give them to them, but they gave us money anyway. I would have liked to grab some drinks and go somewhere to hang out with them, but it was time to jet. We were sure we weren't going to play, and we had another long drive to start on.

On the night drive to St. Louis, it hit me that if we drove the van all the way back to KC and took a trailer to the LEMP show, we could save two days on the van rental and we could also get some of the guys back for a Boo and Boo Too show. So we drove through the night, Charlotte to Kansas City, we got back about 9 o'clock. We had the windows cracked in an attempt to dissipate some of the smell that's created when six people live in a van for two weeks.

HAND JAMMERS ALL AROUND!!!

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

the legend of the hand jammer

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

The Milestone was closed during the few days we were coming through North Carolina, but Eston from Silent Weapons was able to set this one up for us. He usually hosts an open mic night at the Bucket Shop on Tuesdays, but he canceled it so we could play there.

We were introduced to the phrase "hand jammer" by Henry Killian. He played a really cool acoustic set to open the Bucket Shop show. His right hand killed. I'd imagine he's on a workout schedule that includes lots of hand jammers to keep his wrist in shape.

Definition: hand jammer - noun - to perform a hand job on one's band mate.

Silent Weapons was pretty cool. They played as a three piece, two guitars and vocals with programmed drums and bass playing through the PA. I'm probably the only one in the bar that thought so (since everyone told us how loud we were after our set), but I thought they could have turned up a bit.

After the show, we all went back to Eston's house. He hooked us up with waters, snack cakes, and some fire. Trevis drove James and Allen to Wac Arnold's. From what I heard, Trevis got kind of lost on the way back and James got really excited. He opened a bag to get his fix and was like, "fuck yeah, they gave me double cheeseburgers instead of regular cheeseburgers." So he chomped them up on the drive back to Eston's.

When they got back though, everything seemed clearer. They didn't give James doubles, he ate Trevis' food. After the long drive back to Eston's, Trevis was a bit let down that he didn't really have any food left to eat. But it just reaffirmed what I've known for a while; don't trust James with yr Wac Arnold's. He'd run over his mom's dog for a cheeseburger (with ketchup only).

Henry was super trashed and at some point disappeared. We looked outside and his car was gone. He showed up before we left the next day, so we're sure he's alive. He was saying all kinds of hilarious shit that I wished I'd written down.

Eston had some kind of crazy ESP thing going on, or maybe our taste is just predictable. Before the show, he played Loveless over the PA, we'd just been talking about that album on the ride to the show. That one's not so crazy since Loveless is pretty popular, but at this house after the show he stuck in some Pale Saints. We'd been listening to them in the van earlier in the day.

The next morning, we got a nice fat slice of the internerd. Gaurav posted the original Albini mixes of In Utero so we downloaded and burned that before we left. I was kind of let down that it wasn't that much different. I'd always heard how different the original mixes were. The vocals were a little lower on some songs, on Scentless Apprentice the vocals were really loud and distorted, but overall, it wasn't much different than the version that got released.

Monday, May 5, 2008

the spazzz

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

It was a long drive to Greenville, but we were excited about the Spazzz. We'd heard there had been attendance problems and Jeff didn't even want to do a show on a Monday, but I was able to convince him.

When we first got there we thought it was a cool place, but we were doubtful if anyone was going to show up. We went out and grabbed some pizza at a gas station and killed some time. Back at the Spazzz, Jeff was on the phone and people were starting to show up. By the time we played there were probably thirty people in and out of the venue.

This was probably our best show of the tour. Everything felt right. We were all spread out across the room, with people standing in between the three of us on stage and the rest of the band. There was some crazy energy happening, there was a guy on acid standing right in front of me, staring straight at me during part of the set, after the set he grabbed me and gave me a head rub. He had molly, but was too fucked up to deal with hooking anybody up with any. I could have pushed for it, but I didn't want to encroach on his trip. After we loaded out, we played an acoustic version of 'Paranoid Android' and 'Karma Police' before going to the after party.

The after party was sick. There were bottles and bongs everywhere; Greenville is a really fun place on a Monday. After a few hours of that, Jeff and a few of his friends took me and James to a diner. Sweet Baby James ate a double order of French toast, half of another guy's sandwich and passed out before the bill came, high style.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

the warehouse

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

Pat (Mourning Electra) set us up with a really sweet warehouse show in Philly. We'd had a show booked at the Khyber but it fell through, Pat was able to set this show up kind of last minute style. The warehouse was huge and creepy, and full of all kinds of stuff.

We went downstairs to Pat and Tim's practice space and saw the "energy drinks" for the first time. We split a couple and started speeding. The drinks were in blue viles and full of sugar and caffeine. They made my teeth hurt on contact.

We made a bunch more merch at the venue. Luke and Trevis made some really cool shirts while I burned more CDs. We ended up getting stuck playing last and most of the people were leaving as we were loading in, but it worked out okay. It was a fun show, we played on the loading dock and there were crazy flood lights on us that created huge shadows on the warehouse wall.

After the show, we rolled back to Pat's apartment. He hooked us up with everything. We were smoking, just glad to have somewhere to stay, and all of a sudden two pizzas show up. The next morning Pat hooked us up with coffee and doughnuts. Meeting people like Pat restore your faith in the human race, if you were having doubts. He gave us pretty much all the door money for gas.

We listened to Bleach on vinyl and decided to play 'Floyd the Barber' at our next show even though none of us really knew it. At a few of the shows, we played the Breeder's song 'New Year' with the same, "we kind of know it" attitude. We'd never practiced it; just listened to it in the car a few times to make sure we kind of knew where the changes were. Sometimes it was awesome, sometimes it was just a mess, but it was always fairly interesting.

Pat gave us a box of speed viles and a hug for the road, good people.

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Saturday, May 3rd

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

Today was the day for showering, we all did it.

It was me, Trevis and Luke's first shower of trip. Before my shower, Gabby gave me a haircut, the mane was getting ridiculously out of control and she hooked me up with a very tasteful trim.

In the afternoon, we watched Return of the Jedi and walked around for food in North Bergen, but didn't get anything. It was a day of re-upping. I burned and labeled more CDs to sell, Trevis spray painted more shirts and CD cases.

Around Nine, we headed toward the show in Brooklyn, picking up Stella, a friend of Gabby's, on the way. We were able to park for free right next to the venue and the show was pretty fun. It turned out there was a writer from New York Magazine in the small crowd. Here's the piece she wrote about the show.

http://nymag.com/arts/popmusic/features/46822/index3.html

SPIDERMUMS
Goodbye Blue Monday
1087 Broadway, Bushwick
Though Spidermums are from Kansas City and definitely sound-check the early-nineties “shoegazer” scene of alt-British rock, they still looked something like a young band from Bushwick, albeit with baggier jeans. The band crammed six musicians and an ungodly number of pedals onstage, filling the room with feedback that was sometimes discordant, often delightful—much like the teeming towers of kitschy trash and treasure that lined the venue.
Up for debate: clueless bumpkins or refreshing outsiders?

We dropped off Stella and went back to Gabby's place to spend the night again.

We wrote on the walls some more.

Friday, May 2, 2008

Over-explaining the Obvious

Friday, May 2nd
Day Off

I drove around Brooklyn for a bit since I'd never been there before. After an hour or two of checking out what goes on in Brooklyn at nine in the morning, I came across a parking lot I thought was safe to leave the van in.

We all piled out and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan.

The Republic Tigers called Trevis sometime Thursday evening and were looking to borrow an amp for Letterman or some other New York show. We were talking about spray painting our band's names and Chomp Womp on my amp if they were actually going to use it on a tv show. I don't remember what happened, but they ended up not needing the amp, which was a good thing, I forgot all about it and left all of our amps in Brooklyn with the van.

We got some Indian food for lunch and then we split up. Drew, Luke, and Allen decided to walk; the rest of us got Metro Passes and headed uptown. After smoking in Central Park, we jumped back on the subway. Well... two of us did. James didn't make it on. I turned around as the door was closing. Just in time to see James go "oh" and pull his foot back out of the doorway. We got off at the next stop and went back to the stop we separated at, but he was gone. He didn't have a phone, but we figured we'd hear from him eventually. All six of us were planning on meeting at the Momo sometime between 4 and 7. The Momo has free admission after 4 on Fridays.

I ate a mystical altoid about 4. Me and Trevis started walking toward a subway entrance so we could make it to the Momo to meet everybody. When we got there, James was already there. We walked into the museum thinking it was free and were escorted back to the front desk where we were asked for a $20/person donation. Thinking this was the free museum and it wasn't a mandatory donation type thing, we gave a total of $9.73 between the three of us and went back in.

My phone was dead and I saw an outlet next to a three thousand year old statue. Lack of sleep and entheogens were making me feel daring, so I took advantage of the situation and started sucking power off the grid. I got away with it for about thirty seconds, then a security guard came and told me to unplug. I bullshitted with him for a minute and he let me keep it plugged in for another few minutes. Then I started returning missed calls while it was charging and the guy came over again and told me the party was over. Gabby had called while my phone was dead, so I went outside and called her back. I don't remember but I don't think she answered.

So back inside the museum I went off by myself. After bumping into a few tourists, I realized I hadn't showered in a week and was really stinky. I think I scared a few people, but I wasn't too worried about it. The museum was, as could be expected, really amazing, I liked the 20th century section the best, it was mind melting. I thought I'd come up with a really cool album name, "Over-explaining the Obvious". But in the soberness of the next morning, it wasn't a keeper.

We met back at the front steps around eight and called the other guys. It turns out we weren't at the Momo, we were at the Met. So we took the subway back down towards the other guys, I was still feeling like a surrealist painting. We stopped at a book store, I found a Robert Anton Wilson book for my brother, and I called my dad to say, "Happy Birthday." Whitney called and I was talking to her about what was going on, in a moment of brilliance she reminded me that if we had to pick up the van by midnight and we were still dicking around in a bookstore in midtown Manhattan at eleven, we needed to start moving south. That was a good call; we started toward the subway, hiked across the Brooklyn Bridge and made it back to van ten minutes before close. If we hadn't made it back to the van, we would've been fucked.

James called Allen and we picked up baby birds in Manhattan. We took James and Allen to Nick's house in Williamsburg, the rest of us went and picked up Gabby. She led us back to her place in North Bergen and we got hooked up with our first free parking spot in a few days. It's amazing how the simple things like access to electricity and parking spots can make you feel so happy. When we got out of the van, I took in every electronic device I had and plugged them all in at once, just because I could.

Gabby's place was sweet, graffiti all over the walls, futons, couches, blankets, a shower, a studio upstairs. After living in the van for the last week, it was a mansion of wild excess. I was upstairs brushing my teeth when I heard what sounded like a Beatles vocal melody, but it was isolated. I walked into the studio and heard something crazy; it was the four tracks that were used in the final mix of 'A Day in the Life'. There was also a 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' four track sitting around too. I grabbed a copy to take with me.

Then it was back downstairs where everyone was starting to pass out. Even though I hadn't slept more than a few hours in the last four days, I stayed up until almost sunrise before passing out. As I was passing out, I heard Drew and Gabby talking about dinosaurs.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Thursday May 1st

Thursday May 1st
New york, New york

2nd Ave and 2nd St.
Lit Lounge
w/ kampion, algorythm & blues, Gringo Star

We put the venue's address into the GPS even though we were about 12 hours early for the show. We were able to find street parking pretty quick and we walked around the area of the venue for an hour or two, grabbed some pizza, I grabbed a glass piece.

After hanging out in that part of town for a minute, we decided to try to find somewhere to dump the van; this is where the trouble began. Couldn't really find anywhere to park; most places charge retarded money for parking vans in Manhattan. So we did some more street parking, thinking we could move the car a few times and avoid being ticketed. We were wrong. We dumped the van around 30th street, had a quick smoke, and started walking around. After walking around a bit and checking out some parks, we went back to the car, ticket number one ($65) was stuck to the window of the van.

This was pretty depressing to me since we were already losing crazy money on gas. 14 miles a gallon combined with >$3.50/gallon petrol prices is a fucking tragedy when you're averaging about $50/show. So I called Whitney and she transferred some more money into the band account.

If it was my car, I wouldn't even pay the tickets. But we weren't supposed to take the van to Mexico, Canada, or the state of New York. So, just so the van people wouldn't know we were in New York, we're probably going to have to pay the tickets, probably.

We moved the van up the street to a more legal parking spot, stuck some money in the meter and walked around some more. I have no idea what happened between then and the show. The next thing I remember is driving over to the venue, driving around for 45 minutes, and finally giving up on a legal parking spot. We parked in a spot that looked legit, but had a no parking sign next to it.

I saw a Chomp, but it was too high to Womp.

Lit Lounge has two levels, there's a regular bar type area with a DJ on the main floor and the venue was downstairs. It had a nice dungeon feel to it, everything was kind of sticky. The sound guy here was really nice and chill, especially when compared to what we'd been dealing with up to this point. Just to get it over with, we loaded all of our shit down the stairs and into the back room. Then we sat around for an hour or so while these two guys from Mexico - Kampion and Algorythm & Blues - tore it up in front of nobody. They had some really interesting music, lots of weird moans and ambient noise mixed with oddly timed beats. It was legit. I'm supposed to contact Kampion "via the myspace". He wants to do a remix of a few of our songs.

Sometime during their set, we got another fucking parking ticket. I went out to the van for a second to test the new piece and saw the proof on the windshield. This was depressing for a few reasons, on top of cost of the ticket, now I was worried that we were going to get our van towed during our set, and I didn't have time to move the van, we were supposed to already be on stage playing and my pedals weren't even plugged in yet.

We played a 20 minute set in front of maybe ten people, it was fun and noisy and a nice release from the stress of having to deal with a van in the city. as soon as we got into the noise part of the last song, i tossed my guitar down and ran out of the venue, imagining i'd be getting to the van just as the tow truck was pulling away. But the van was still where it was left, I pulled it around into the bus lane in front of the venue, put on the flashers, and went back downstairs to start loading our shit out.

After we loaded out, I drove around and smoked for about half an hour looking for a spot. I finally found a non metered legal parking spot only a few blocks from the venue, i can't even being to explain how excited I was about that, seriously, parking a van in Manhattan is impossible. I got back to the venue as the next band, Gringo Star, was starting. They were pretty cool; people were starting to show up and things were feeling better. We'd played a fun noisy set and our van wasn't in an impound lot, I'd already forgotten all the tolls and tickets from earlier.

Trevis found a sweet deal on pizza, there was a grand opening of some pizza place right around the corner from the venue and they had huge slices of pizza for $1. Deal of the century.

During the last few bands' sets, we were all in and out, and James was trying to see if we could get some money. The door girl said there was no door money, but James talked to the owner and they gave us fifty bucks. Some guy hanging out with the owner gave James another hundred, nice.

James told me how much money we made, then about an hour later he came and talked to me again. It turns out the guy that gave James a bill wasn't a gift; he was expecting at least a blow job. So James gave him back $80. I told him he should think about taking a shot in the mouth for the team, he could pay for the whole tour in a few hours.

The highlight of the tour for James goes as follows. While he was talking with the owner about the money situation, he met Matt Sweeney (Chavez, Skunk, Zwan), Matt was looking to smoke, so I went to the car and grabbed what we had left. The bar closed about five, but because Matt was in with the owner pretty tight, me, Allen, and James were able to stay in the bar talking/smoking with Matt until about 8 in the morning. James smoked about five of his cigarettes. He was full of sagely advice.

By the time we left, it was light out and we had to move the car so the street sweepers could come through. While everyone slept, I drove around Brooklyn looking for a safe, but cheap, place to park the van while we walked around the city on our day off.