Tour diary  2

I tried to post a diary blog a few days ago and after writing for about 20 minutes I hit post and preview and it all just disappeared. Damn myspace to hell. It was funny too. So I am going to try again today. I think we left off with the van smoldering on the side of the highway. The people at the transmission shop ended up being very helpful and good people. They worked really hard to get us out of there in one day so we could make it to our atlanta show. They finished our van around 5 and we hopped in and started driving. We had a bad scare at the first food stop about 5 hours later. When we came back outside there was a huge puddle of transmission fluid under the van. I’m glad the transmission guy wasn’t within arms reach of johnny at that moment. But it was not a big deal. We kept going and just kept an eye on it.  we did the math on how long the drive was to atlanta going 65 mph. that’s how fast we were told to drive with the brand new transmission to break it in. 39 hours. Plus stops to eat and pee and poop. We drove in shifts of 5-6 hours. Brent heroically took a 7 hour over night shift while I slept in the back. When he started yelling at the shadow people in the highway I thought maybe I should take over. Carlton and I headed up the the front seats and witnessed the sun rising over the hills of oklahoma. It was really beautiful. Until the sun turned into a blazing white ball of fire determined to burn out my retinas for the next 2 hours. until it got high enough to be blocked by the sun visor I was in hell . So we drove. And we drove. We made every one hold their pee until we were out of gas and then we we stop fill up the gas tank, empty our bladders and grab coffee. 42 hours later we pulled into atlanta rush hour traffic. Haha. Good times. We ended up being only an hour late. Smiths old bar has an endless flight of metal stairs that you have to load up. Welcome to tour boys. The opening band was really cool and let us use some of their gear. The club wouldn’t feed us. We didn’t have any money yet because we hadn’t played a show and I had spent all my money on the new transmission and gas to get to atlanta so we starved. It sucked. It was a small crowd. Small crowds can still be a lot of fun if they are excited and recognize how cool it is to see a band up close like that and get into it. Unfortunately this was not that crowd. Unenthused would be an understatement.  It’s the first time we have headlined and been waiting backstage to play an encore and not had anyone clap.all we heard were crickets and the hoot of a distant owl. I thought maybe the whole crowd had been beamed up into an alien spaceship or evaporated by a ray gun.  It was weird and kind of pissed us off. We had just driven nonstop for 42 hours and drained our bank account to get to this show and then get up and play our asses off even though we are exhausted and starving and that’s the thanks we get. Awesome. There was a bonus to the night though. As we were loading out (down the giant fire escape stairs ) a huge and gorgeous owl was perched on a branch 10 feet from our van. We just stood there and watched it while we loaded out. So cool. We stayed with our new friends colin and jes that night in their apartment. Colin cooked the best meal I have ever had (we were liiterally starving haha) chicken black beans and rice and spicy tomato soup. Yum. For the record beans and bands in vans are not such a good mix. We watched death race 2000. Good times. Thanks for having us over. We are leaving for fayetteville now.  Yay.

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Fayetteville NC.

What are boiled peanuts? I really want to try them but I’m terrified. I’m not afraid of flaming vans. Or giant rednecks but those boiled peanuts scare the shit out of me. Maybe someday with the guidance of a local I will try one. But not today. Jesters pub. The people who run this place are great people. They take such good care of their bands. It is the smokiest bar south of michigan but that can be forgiven because they are so cool. This is carlton country. Whenever we play here all his high school  friends come out. Makes it fun. I get a little twang back in my voice after talking to them for a few hours. Haha. The only memorable thing about the jesters was the oddness of some fat guy throwing a drink on me and then running away. I didn’t see it happen. Just felt it hit me and then looked up and saw this fat guy and his friend waddling away like a drunk obese penguin. I yelled at him trying to get to get him to come back and explain why he just threw his drink on me. Did you boyfriend have my picture on his wall in high school? Did I not gaze into your eyes while singing dead to me and break your heart with my rejection? Or are you just a fat dumbass redneck who hates me because I am skinnier than you and the girls like me. No wait let me guess. I’m an emo fag. Haha. Well if you had come back in you would have gotten your fat ass handed to you by this emo fag. You made the right decision running to your car. A mic stand in the side of the face hurts. Stay home and watch wrestling next time. You will never get laid so stop wasting your money going out. We did get to play an encore that night. That made us feel better. Jinxx got wasted that night. He was stumbling around talking to himself after the show. That’s always entertaining. Our friends from new york lynnie and her family got us a hotel room next door to theirs and it was a non stop party all night. I went to sleep. Or should I say I tried to go to sleep. Brent and jinxx were wrestling half the night. Lynnies son was explaining to carlton in his outside voice how much he hated deadsy. “if my favorite band in the world was playing and deadsy was opening I wouldn’t go for fear of accidently hearing deadsy!!!!” wow. Carlton being the southern gentleman that he is just smiled and sipped his jack and coke. I think maybe he was listening to his ipod and just pretending to listen to the conversation. Haha. And we are off to baltimore.

Tour diary 4

Baltimore.

Mike and amber. Best people ever. Once they were fans and now they are family. We have been staying at their house for several days now and it feels like home. Yes we are leaving soon!  Mike took me jogging around his neighborhood. I’ve gone jogging around the same loop so many times now that the neighbors all wave. Within 3 minutes of walking in the door jager shots were poured. Oh no I think. This is about to get ugly. As the night progressed someone got a picture of brent taking a dump in the kitty litter box. Then running around the house bottomless. Later brent shoved cat food into jinxx’s mouth which he chewed and spit into brents mouth who immediately puked. A lot. I was busy shooting zombies on xbox 360. I would like to point out that we don’t normally do this. Mike and amber were egging this behavior on and laughing their collective asses off. We promise not to poop in your litter box. And if we do we will scoop it out. The fletchers show was fun. It was the first night we met trust company. I have been a fan of theirs for years. Our old bass player bones turned me on to them and  they have been in my ipod ever since. So it was cool to finally meet them. Nice guys. Kind of shy at first. An awesome fan from jersey brought us about 10 pounds of pasta that night and we took it up to the dressing room and shared it with trust company and eve to adam the other band on the tour. I think we had a pretty good show that night. Brent had some problems with his bass rig and we never sure if he was on or not. But he looked sexy and pissed off for  the whole show and that’s basically what his job is so whatever. Haha. Met a cool tattoo artist. Justin valentine.  Might get some work done while I’m here. Watched trust company. Awesome band live. This is a good concert. Well worth the 10 dollar ticket. We all hung out after the show and talked and it was a lot of fun.

Had a day off the next day. Carlton and jinxx and I dug out the acoustic guitars and wrote a new song. I think it’s going to be good. It’s different feel for us. I’m excited to do some more writing on this tour. Maybe have half the record writtin before we get home.

Found out tonight that we aren’t on the vienna virginia show. It’s been on our myspace page for a month now but I guess trust companys agent forgot to mention us to the club so they have no idea who we are. We posted that we weren’t playing but found a few hours later that we could come play after all.  We were grateful. We love playing and it sucks to be out here away from home and family and not getting to play in front of any fans.

Jammin java is a cool venue. Nice stage and room. They filmed the show with three cameras. Hope I can get a copy. We played well. I think it was our first tight show on this tour. It always takes a few days to work the bugs out. Fun crowd. Not super huge but excited. A lot of people knew the words and sang along. Saw some trust compnay fans from baltimore singing along to us too. That’s awesome. Making new fans is why we are out here. Got to watch trust company again. It’s like I get to play music and watch one of my fave bands every night for free. Almost makes it worth being away from home. Haha. Nothing too funny happened last night. I’m all stoked to get a new tattoo today. Jack and sally! Another day off in baltimore. Thinking about doing a photo shoot in the woods out back of mikes house. We don’t have a photographer besides me. And I like to be in the band pictures. Even though I’m not one of the cute ones it’s still important to me to be in the picture. Haha. We are off to boston tomorrow. Get to see some old friends. See you all then. More later. –c-

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