Atlanta was the first time we've every played at the Drunken Unicorn.  Really cool place.  A band called Textbook opened and were damn good.  Total Drive Like Jehu worship, which is never a bad thing.  And they made this way cool poster:

Our set was one of the best we've done in recent memory.  And then goddamn Cinemechanica came and pulverized it into the earth with one of their typical, retardedly intense and complex displays of genius.  Goddamn Cinemechanica.

Anyway, lots of people liked what we did and happily purchased CDs, shirts and the like.  All-around great show.

We were originally going to stay with Colin Mee (brother to Danny), whose band Deerhunter crashed at Bogle's when they came through with the Liars.  It ended up being easier to push on to Athens, which turned out to be a very nice move.

We played the Secret Squirrel the last time we came through, and we played there this time as well.  The place has really turned into something special.  It's a DIY performance space.  Frequently that's bad news, but not in this case.  The sound is good enough, there's an actual stage, and they always buy a keg on nights when shows happen.

Cooler than any of that is the fact that there are a couple of very large apartments directly attached to it that are occupied by the people who run the venue, a Cinemechanic or two, other musicians and some regular, nice Athens folks.  One of the apartments was fairly trashed from being the site of constant after-parties, jam session and such.  The other one was clean and quiet.  The folks living there were totally okay with us inabiting their space for two days and three nights (we had a day off after Atlanta because you just can't get a show in those parts on a Sunday).

So on Sunday we essentially did nothing.  Walked around a little.  Watched the Mavericks game at a bar.  One of the guys we were staying with came home on crutches with his leg bandaged because he had been running after a guy holding a rake for a video project, the guy had fallen, and he fell on top of the guy and the rake, which puctured his lake pretty deeply.

On Monday, we had an appointment to get my amp fixed.  The repair guy worked out of a room at the rehearsal spaces that Cinemechanica use.  "Yeah, this is pretty fucked up, dude," he said after popping the back off and having a look.  He told us to come back in an hour and he'd see what he could do.  We wandered around downtown for a little while, bought postcards, got coffee, went back and it was operational.  And at a good price, considering the speed with which the job got done.

Sat around and downloaded tons of albums until showtime.  The first band was Jail Moves, which featured a guy we know from We Vs. the Shark, the guy who owns the Squirrel, one of the girls who lived in the cleaner apartment and a couple of other folk.  Weird fun music.  The Thomas Function from Alabama played next and did energetic, tight guitar rock.  I missed Marriage, who played next, but was told that they were outta sight.  Caspar & the Cookies was somewhat silly, indie pop stuff.  Kind of what I think of whenever I think of Athens pop music.

The space was HOT as FUCK and I felt like I could barely move for the show.  There were many, many more people watching than the last time we came through.  It was a big crowd for a Monday and we totally went over.

It was so rad to load out of the space, stagger DIRECTLY over to a nice, quiet couch and pass the fuck out on it.  That is exactly what I did.

Basically, these past few days and nights have felt like vacation.  Relaxed, wandered around, talked to folks, and generally enjoyed Athens.  The place reminds me of Austin if you took all the shitty things about Austin away, and the people we stayed with were first-rate.

Hi.  We're on tour.  For about three weeks.  By the way, I'm going to include some of the absolutely retarded stuff that we find hilarious while we're out here.  You probably won't agree, but that's because you have no sense of goddamn humor.  Let's do this.

Here is how to start a tour.  Our first show was in New Orleans.  We left a little late as always.  Hit some traffic a few hours out and started to get nervous, but we did some calculating and it seemed like we'd show up on the venue at the exact time we were supposed to start playing.  THEN we hit the REAL traffic jam just outside LaFayette.  There was a wreck and we sat for about an hour and a half.  There was officially no way in hell we were going to get there remotely on time*.

Immediately after getting out of traffic, we stopped to pee at the Tiger Truck Stop, so named because there was an actual live tiger in a cage there.  But why?

I left a few messages on the promoter's voicemail as we hauled ass.  We got there about 2/3 through the show.  Bryan, the promoter, was hella understanding and let us play.  Thanks, man.  So we set up only to discover that my amp, which gave the illusion of being fixed after it apparently blew a tube a couple of weeks ago, was not.  Shit.  We were down to a 15-minute set by this point.

Borrowed an amp from the band that had played before us which we didn't get to watch because we were too busy being totally late, got everything sounding sort of okay, and did our thing as hard as possible as quickly as possible.  I think that our brains were fried from worry that we might not get to play after driving (and sitting) for eight hours.  There were a decent number of people out and they seemed to have a good time while we played.

A guy named Matt had contacted us before the show to offer us a place to crash, on which we took him up.  He had an enourmous and enormously sweet Rottweiler, and Matt even cooked us delicious black beans and rice with sausage.  The spot was hit.  I crawled out to the van to sleep and made it until about 7:00am when it got too hot, then came in and slept for a while longer.  New Orleans is hot, guys.

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*On the upside, we were lucky enough to be stuck behind Eustice Adolf McGillicuddy, age 55.  He changed his name to Bench at about the same time he met his girlfriend, who was in the truck with him.  They met when he chaperoned his 16-year-old daughter at Ozzfest '03.  They first noticed each other in the mist tent when they realized that they had the same rainbow color combination in their yard-long maragritas.  His opening line was, "I cant wait to get to the green part.  Wanna race?"  She's only still with him because he hasn't paid her back for the sweet tribal tattoos on his arms.  He was jamming out pretty hard to some awesome nu-metal in front of us.  This involved lots of pointing.  We were pretty sure that the bed of his pickup was filled with inline skates.

"What a stupid religion that won't let you eat gold.  No thank you, sir."

Here's the deal, y'all:

We don't spam.  We'd appreciate it if you didn't spam us.  If we've never played together or encountered each other here or in real life, kindly drop a note when requesting us.  Nothing personal, we're just trying to keep it real.  And shit.

You can now buy records and shirts at our website.  In fact, you should go buy records and shirts at our website.  For that matter, we goddamn demand that you go buy records and shirts at our website!

RIGHT HERE!  NOW!  RIGHT NOW!

Holy crap, the split-7" with So Many Dynamos is actually done.  It took forever.  That is because rock is complicated.  But now our baby is for sale.  Here's a little bit about the item in question:

Side A is the Dynabros.  Their song is called "It's Gonna Rain," and it's a monster.  Every time we see them play, we end up whistling the main hook until we piss each other off.

Side B is us.  Two songs, both around a minute-and-a-half long (maybe a little more).  "That's Not The Problem" is certainly our quietest and one of our prettiest songs.  "Motion the Movement" is one of our loudest and most aggressive.  We didn't really intend the juxtaposition, but it works.

The cover art is by Rene Cruz, who is just ridiculously good.  It involves dinosaurs.  As anyone who knows the Dynamos could have guessed, this was their inspiration.

The record is put out by Discos Mariscos, aka Emperor X, aka Chad.  We did some shows with him last year when the Dynamos were playing as his backing band.  He is good.  So's his music.  So's his label.

Lastly, and just as astounding, this and everything else we've recorded is finally available at our website.  I think I'll go make another blog entry about that.