We played Slim's Downtown in Raleigh the night before last. Matt Tyson had a real nice group of old friends come out. In addition, some kids from our Chapel Hill show made the drive so they could get a second helping.

It was a really cool room. One of my favorites so far, actually. Long, narrow, low stage, good acoustics (for us).

On the first song, Kenny destroyed his snare head. The drum stick went through it, and the bottom head. It's pretty cool that he can do such a thing. But changing a drum head is not an ideal way to build momentum. So we paused while he changed his head. I told dumb jokes, and then Matt and I quizzed the crowd with some rock and roll trivia.

We started playing again and all was going well until I broke a string. Luckily, I had my backup ready to go. But still, it was just one of those sets. I think we sounded pretty good, I think we played pretty well, the crowd was definitely great. But I kind of feel like we failed to truly build up great momentum.

But it was by no means a bad show. In fact, all in all, it really was a good show. And the crowd made us feel like we'd never played better.

After the show, we got a nice personalized tour of the Raleigh Times, a really cool bar/restaurant. Then there were some Belgian Beer, and then there was some more of it. And, really, how great is that?

We rolled out of Raleigh and headed down to Columbia feeling good about the previous night's show, and hopeful for what was in store for us at The Whig.

When we were booking this tour and had figured out that we could go down to South Carolina, we knew what we had to do: Get in touch with The Unawares. We had played with them at a house party in Atlanta. They were really great back then, and super nice guys. So we got in touch with them about this tour, and they came back with a confirmed show within about five minutes.

On the drive down there, I get a call from Rhett (their drummer) asking us what kind of food we want, because he was going grocery shopping for us. He told us we could stay at his place. What we didn't know was that his place was a nice big luxurious house. A luxurious house stocked with freshly bought food.

We rolled over to the club first where The Unawares guys were waiting for us. They helped us unload our gear. Me and Matt had some work to do, so we needed a place to plug in our laptops and get online. The bassist James told us to hop in his car, and that he'd take care of it. He did. He took us over to a place called Goatfeathers, where he works. We got a nice big table near an outlet and signed on to their free wireless and got to work. Meanwhile James bought us some beers. Not that I was drinking beer while I was working. I was working between sips.

Actually, before I started working, I checked my e-mail and Matt and I were astonished by what was waiting for us. Tons of awesome press. First, there was a live review of our show in DC. Then there was this review from Exclaim. Then there was an interview published on Thrasher Hits. Then there was a write up in the Free Times (a Columbia weekly). AND THEN, a truly big piece: DECIBEL! They reviewed our record, highlighted it, and gave it a 9 out of 10! They also gave us some mentions elsewhere in the mag, including a track review and a couple jokes in the Reviews By The Numbers section. We're going to head to a bookstore today and see if we can't pick up some copies. This comes after Revolver Magazine featured Goes Cube in its Bootleg Series along with an exclusive non-album cut, "Loose Ends."

So then I started working, though it was tough, because we were pretty excited.

Anyways, so we go back to The Whig and got some food. They took care of us and fed us with some really delicious food. And because we were playing, the beer was free. I actually had to do a few more hours of work, though, so I really couldn't fully enjoy hanging out at this place. But when it neared showtime, I clocked out and looked around only to see a completely packed house. The Unawares started playing, and they were better than ever. Their whole set was great, but there were a few songs which really knocked us out. When it was our turn to play, we were pleased to see that the crowd hadn't thinned one bit. In fact, they were really eager to hear more music. The venue was packed to capacity, and it seemed like every single person was rocking the hell out. We met some great folks after the show and moved a good amount of t-shirts and records. Then this dude who guys by the name SilDag did a performance of some of his poems. One of which is about beer. Matt got video of it.

We headed back to Rhett's house had some food and got to spend some quality time with The Unawares. I actually couldn't hang out too much because I had to work more. I grabbed a solid three and a half hours of sleep, woke up and worked some more. While I was doing that, Rhett was running out buying us a whole bunch of Bojangles.

So in short, The Unawares booked us an amazing and completely packed show which is going to be hard to top, and they took care of us like family. Yeah, Columbia was pretty damn good, I'd say.

By the way, Matt---who is a better writer, and who's not nearly as verbose---is keeping a tour journal on one of his 83 websites. It's called Tysonius. It's got videos of some of our performances and other fun stuff.

We played Chapel Hill last night. It was our third show in Chapel Hill. It was at a place called Jack Sprat that was a really cool little new place. The crowd was by no means massive, but their enthusiasm more than made up for their size. The show got an Indy Pick in the Chapel Hill paper. And half the crowd or more said they're driving to Raleigh tonight to see our show at Slim's.

On the personal side, we stayed with Graham and Emily last night. Our third time staying with them. We met them because they're good friends with Matt Tyson. Now we're all friends. Graham and Emily have always been so generous and last night was no exception. They make sure we're fed, have beer, and have a dog to play with. Apologies to Emily if we kept you up last night by watching American Psycho and turning it up really loud every time Patrick Bateman gave a dissertation on an 80s pop act.

Lastly, we got word that REVOLVER MAGAZINE posted "Loose Ends," a song which did not make it on to our full-length. They also posted an interview. Check it out here!

The tour started on 5/14. It was our record release show, and it was also Matt Frey’s farewell show. If you’d like to read about his retirement, you can do so by reading the previous blog post. I won’t go back into it again, but I will say it was a great show, it was also emotional. A special thank you needs to be extended to the other bands who played: Red Beard, Constants, Austerity Program, and Jones Street Station.

 

We kicked off the out of town show in DC with Constants. We played at The Red and The Black, which is a really cool little venue that also has great food. I feel like half our tours start there, and it’s a good place to kick things off. But this wasn’t just a normal show in DC. This show was our first show with our new bass player, Matt Tyson.

 

Matt hasn’t actually performed live since 2003. And back then, it wasn’t a bass he was playing. It was a keyboard. And in the interest of full disclosure, Matt only started learning our songs about one month ago (he learned 14 of them for this tour). And yet if we hadn’t actually told people it was his first show with us, no one would have ever known. He got his nervous jitters out on our first song. And after that, he did phenomenally. Actually he did phenomenally on our first song, too. But he was beating himself up over a couple wrong notes. We told him a couple wrong notes are okay. He chose to use those couple wrong notes on the first song on the first night, and that’s fine. That just means he has to play perfectly for the next three weeks.

 

It was a pretty fun night. My wife and Matt’s wife were along for the ride, lending support, and taking some pictures. You can see one of those pictures, and follow Matt’s personal thoughts on the tour over here at tysonius.tumblr.com. We spent some downtime on Saturday with family, and got an early rest. We’ll need it as we have a show nearly every night for the better part of three weeks.

 

Last night, we played Nara Sushi in Richmond. We’d played there last year. What a cool spot for a show. It’s actually a sushi restaurant that turns into a punk/hardcore/metal venue when it closes. Last night it was a punk venue. And to be honest, most of the punk kids weren’t into us. No sense in lying about it or trying to spin in it. All three of us in Goes Cube have very deep punk rock roots, and I think a lot of our music is influenced by punk rock. Hell, some of our songs are mostly punk rock.  But the thing is, punk rock kids---and I’ve noticed this ever since high school—don’t really seem to be very open about liking other kinds of music. I mean, there’s obviously a good amount of exceptions. But on some broad, and albeit unfair level, I feel like punk rock kids are very strict about their music. I mean, even within the very narrow genre of punk. Pop punk, not rock’n’roll punk. Old British punk, not cow punk. Et cetera. And yet, there are tons of people who aren’t strictly punk rock kids, who love punk. It’s like the compatibility only runs in one direction.

 

So there were some guys who not in leather jackets or spiked belts who really dug us, but a lot of the kids out there with straight-out punk kids, and they weren’t into it. So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut says. Everyone who loved the show asked us to come back but suggested we play a metal night. We agreed.

 

We’re heading down to North Carolina today. We have three NC shows, and one SC show. We absolutely love North Carolina, and Matt Tyson has many friends there, as he lived there for a longtime. So we should be pretty well taken care of, and hopefully we’ll have some folks out to see the show.

 

In the meantime, we got some bowling to do. We went yesterday and had kind of a rocky start. I’ll post scores soon.

 

OK, FINALLY: I have a very important question. Please post your answer in the comments:

 

How do you pronounce the word “ancient”? Please spell it out phonetically and include as much detail as possible.

 

OK, I’ve got some work to do. My bosses are pretty amazing folks, and are letting me do some work on the road. So I have to sign off now.

We're working our asses off booking the tour that will start the day after our record release show. Here's the info on both.

RECORD RELEASE SHOW
The show will be at The Studio at Webster Hall. The good news is that we'll be playing with some great friends of ours. The bad news is, these great friends are also in great bands. Like REALLY good bands. So we may get outclassed.

But, it's worth it! Look at this bill: Red Beard, Constants, Austerity Program, Goes Cube, Jones Street Station. That's start to finish.

TOUR
I just posted a few of our confirms. We have A LOT more to post. And we'll be doing that soon. We have a whole bunch of shows that are almost confirmed. Fingers very crossed that they'll be in the coming couple days. Once we post those, we may just post all the TBAs, too, and see if you can't help us out.

OTHER:
Keep your eyes out for more press, news, and stuff soon.

The release of our first full-length record, "Another Day Has Passed" is still a month and a half away, but we've been pretty damn excited to see there's some pre-release reviews and interest. Check it out:

PastePunk: Goes Cube is an "insanely metal/post-hardcore band. "Loud" is an understatement. I listened to their debut full-length Another Day Has Passed in mp3 form, and the quaking from my subwoofer had my row of sports Bobbleheads in a full-on headbang."
read the rest: http://www.pastepunk.com/news.php?nav=rss&rss_id=10974

Pure Grain Audio: "Another Day Has Passed is the newest release from Goes Cube. This disc starts off relentless and heavy as hell right from the very first note; the pounding is incessant and at times over bearing."
(Well, we'd rather be overbearing than underbearing). Read the full review: http://www.puregrainaudio.com/reviews/goes-cube

And here's an interview we did recently: http://azm-magazine.blogspot.com/2009/03/goes-cube-interview.html

Well, what can I say? The Austin shows were awesome. Great crowds, great bands, and we even lucked out (relatively) with parking.

The Ends Records showcase at the Ale House on Thursday was phenomenal. All I can say is that I really can't believe we're on The End Records. Watching the other bands: Junius, Hull, These Are They, Tub Ring, and Early Man... I just kept thinking wow.

What an honor. It was a short but successful tour. We're home now (we had work obligations, and started our 1750 mile drive straight after our set on Thursday night), and we're glad to be home. But we're so honored to have toured with Valient Thorr, and played the SXSW shows that we did.

We're playing at the Charleston on 4/11. Come on out.

Last night (Monday night) we drove down to Norman, OK, and cut out around half the miles between KC and Austin. And we hit a bowling alley with an amazing special: $1.29/game. We found a brand new Motel 6 and checked in and offloaded our gear before we hit the bowling alley. Wow, we've stayed in a LOT of motels over the years, but this place is incredible. I told my nearly-wife it's like staying in a luxury hotel. Big room, huge bathroom, free coffee all morning. Cleaner than any place we've ever stayed in. Flat screen TV. Refrigerator. AC/heat that works. Free high-speed internet. Prior to checking in, we hit a Wal-Mart where we got some rotisserrie chicken, bread, cheese, beer, salad, and, a few sandwiches for Kenny.

We bowled pretty well, and we bowled pretty awful. Kenny and I bowled five games each, but Matt's wrist got tired after four games. He hung it up after failing to pick up a 10th frame spare that would have given him the high game of the tour. Instead, he got a respectable 170; only one pin shy of my 171.

We rolled back to the Motel. Ate our food, watched some Comedy Central, and drifted to sleep, dreaming of nearly-wives, amazing shows, and in Kenny's case, big sweaty beefcakes.


name:                   666    TCB    GAY
game 1:                171    104    116
game 2:                142    147    132
game 3:                124    126    158
game 4:                 96    170    115
game 5:                 161    ---    146
tour average:          147    139    131

We were told we'd be playing with Valient Thorr in Dallas on the 17th, but it turns out that show fell through for us. So our show in Kansas City, which also almost fell through but was rescued by Valient Themselves, was our last one with the band. Disappointing. Not the show. The show was awesome. What's disappointing, is that the tour with them flew by.

The crowd was big and it was enthusiastic. We did well with merch. Man, I'm really not used to blogging about a tour where every show is good. Usually I have stories to tell you about how the power went out four times (like it did at Glasslands two weeks ago when we played our kick off show).

Oh well, I shouldn't speak so soon: We have two shows in Austin coming up!

By the way, we didn't have time to bowl because load in was early. This was especially tough on Kenny, 'cos for him a day without touching balls is like a day without sunshine.

We loaded into the Picador in Iowa City last night as three people feeling exhausted, hungover, and...exhausted (we didn't even bowl). We left as three different people. We were at our happiest, most inspired, most excited yet. The show last night was just awesome. We didn't know a single person in the crowd last night, and we'd never played in the state of Iowa. Yet, they treated us like they'd been waiting months to see our band play (truth is, they'd been waiting months to see Valient Thorr play - and who could blame then?).

We cannot wait to come back to Iowa this Spring with our new record.

After the show, we found a motel outside of Iowa City for about 35 bucks pre-tax. It was a disgusting room, to be honest. The soap in the shower was already unwrapped. There was a used plastic cup on the floor of the bathroom. And then when we turned on the TV, it was literally blurry.

We might go with the 40 buck room tonight here in Kansas City. A little luxury never hurt anyone now, did it?