Greetings to you all, my digital friends, family, and fans! This blog finds me sitting on the bus (running a bit late) riding to our gig, which today is in Goshen, IN. The past several days have been wonderful. Just a few days ago, we were in Des Moines, IA at a large, outdoor, Rib Fest! The ribs were just as succulent, smoky, sweet and/or spicy as could be, but the hang was even better…

Our show time was from Noon to 1:00pm, so even after signing autographs, and loading our stuff off the stage, we were done by about 1:45 with a whole day of bands ahead of us (Hootie didn't go on until 7 that evening). Well, that seemed to be just as good of an excuse to have some festivities as anything else, so we stocked up on Margarita Mix and Tequila, pulled out our trusty Margaritaville margarita machine, got some ice and went to town! Our friends from that "other" band we're touring with pulled out their beanbag game (known in Chicagoland as "Bags", known to that "other" band as "Cornhole") and what ensued was a wonderful afternoon of delicious frozen Mexican cocktails and steep bean bag competition. With all the fun we had, there were two things that reminded us of our fragile human condition. The first thing was that Cowboy (Johnathan Hepner, our trusted stage hand/monitor guy) tried to make margaritas without the top on the machine which resulted in overflow, thus soaking the Margaritaville box. That in itself wouldn't have been so bad, but later on when he was putting the machine away the box gave out on him and the glass carafe that actually holds the margaritas shattered into kingdom come. So, for the rest of the tour there won't be any frozen concoctions, we'll have to keep our 'Ritas on the rocks! The other thing that was a little squirrely about the day was a massive, booming, drenching, thunderstorm that rolled in about song 7 of Hootie's set. Now, this summer, we've experienced some rain, but we never got as drenched as these poor guys did. I'm talking buckets of water on their equipment, emergency tarps being pulled out as the band played on, and sadly for the fans (which includes us, btw) their set being cut drastically short. All in all, and despite the trials and tribulations of overflowing cocktails (we should all have such problems!) and rain it was one of the most memorable and fun days of the tour thus far… and, sorry for this but I forgot to take any pics of that day – I blame the Margaritas!

After Des Moines we hit Waukesha, WI for their annual county fair. It couldn't have been a more beautiful day – summer sun sure sits satisfactorily on my skin. (Stupid?) Here are a couple of pics from Waukesha that y'all might just enjoy a bit…

Here's one of Drew and Dean (bass player for Hootie and the Blowfish) backstage after exercising. In the Hootie camp, the head of security, who's name is Buddy Wright, is also a personal trainer who inflicts great heaping mounds of pain on anyone who dares to work out with him. (I tried it in Waukesha 3 days ago and I'm still sore!) You are gonna want to see pictures of Buddy and I'll get 'em out to you here next blog…





Besides the concert, the other big attraction at the Waukesha County Fair is a uniquely American pastime, a pinnacle of pointless fuel consumption, a veritable masquerade ball of muddiness, the TRACTOR PULL! Now, for those of you unfamiliar with this particular motor sport the rules are pretty simple: pull the weighted sled as far as you can with your Tractor. No time limit, no bonus for going extra fast, and no hybrid vehicles allowed. This guy had one of the cooler tractors on site…





And just incase you thought I was only joking about the fuel consumption, check this out:






The concert started after the tractor pull, and even though those tractors were plenty loud, we had big speakers…







By the time Hootie and the Blowfish went on the crowd was at capacity and they were rocking! Here's what it looked like from the stage:







Here's what is looks like from the side of the stage where the talented Peter Holsapple (who plays keyboards, guitar, and mandolin with Hootie), performs:







And here's what it looked like with Hootie playing and the sun setting on a wonderful day in Waukesha, Wisconsin…







The next day we went into Chicago to have lunch with some of our friends. From left to right we've got: Johno, Johnathan, Roger, Dave (Hootie stage guy in charge of electrical power), Dave (our drummer- duh!), Billy (Hootie's front of house sound engineer), and finally Mike (our front of house engineer). See? That's how much we like the Hootie guys, we drove to downtown Chicago to have lunch with them on our day off!!! Even more amazing is that they agreed to lunch with us?!!?! (Oh yeah. I was there at lunch, but someone had to take the picture!)







So, we're still having fun, still rocking the crowds and still enjoying each other's company. But on a more serious note, a few of us encountered a disturbing car while driving to Chicago. This guy seemed to be not only full of hatred, but overflowing to the point where he had to plaster it all over his broke-down sedan. Clearly, this guy hates Jewish people, and has some misguided ideas about warfare. He also had a bumper sticker that said something like "Abortion = Murder". Without getting into a huge political discussion, I just wonder what this guy would think about a Jewish woman having an abortion? On the one hand he is clearly anti-Abortion so he would be mad, but he also is anti-Semitic so maybe he'd be happy… Anyway, I support the first amendment (you know free speech and all that), even though I find it disturbing to have the kind of hatred that I saw the other day driving around on the streets that my tax dollars paid for.






Now, even though I hate haters like the idiot who's car is pictured above, I'm mostly a lover. Having seen this guy on the road doesn't make me want to kick his a--, what it does make me want to do is to encourage all of you to go out this week and help me spread a little love around this world. So go hug a stranger, toss a homeless guy a sandwich, pick a flower for someone you care about, or just write a comment on how much you love my blogs…

Much love to y'all,

Mo

Hi blog fans! I know, I know I've been really lagging on the blog thing lately, but as the great modern philosophers say, "Don't hate the player, hate the game!" The game, in our case, has kept us extremely busy with both work and fun. I hope that this blog will help us all catch up a little bit and get to know each other once again…

The biggest news is that we've now been on tour with Hootie and the Blowfish for about two weeks, or for eight shows. The tour has been incredible. Not because we are playing great (which I, in all humility, must say that we are), and not because we are playing in front of consistently larger crowds than ever before, and not because it feels great to be playing in front of a group as famous as Hootie and the Blowfish, but really the tour has been great because the guys in Hootie and their crew are some of the best-tempered, laid-back, helpful and just plain cool guys we've ever had the chance to work with! Seriously, they have made us feel welcome and appreciated in too many ways to list here.

So far on tour we've played in Texas, New York, New Hampshire, and Virginia. Right now we're on our way to Nashville to do things like get a little work done on our bus, hit some media interviews tomorrow, and then play at the Wildhorse Saloon downtown on Wednesday! We're psyched to be bringing the tour to Nashville and hope to see a lot of our friends there…

We are almost to the pictures section of my blog, but before I go there, I need to tell everyone who doesn't know yet (duh!) that our new album "Crossroads" is available on iTunes in it's entirety – so if you want it just go and get it!

Okay okay – here are some pics!

First, here's a shot from my vantage point from the first gig of the tour. Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, TX is the oldest continually operating Honky-Tonk in Texas (and maybe in the world!) The guy in front of my microphone is Johnathan "Cowboy" Hepner, who until he went on tour with us was a 98 lb weakling working in a Chinese firecracker factory. (Actually, he was the second mix engineer on our record and has worked with the incredible Billy Decker making hits in Nashville for the last year!)



Next up is a pic from New York. The boys and I played on Long Island, near my father's house on the 3rd of July and on the 4th we celebrated America's birthday in my dad's backyard. Here's the Sams Club shopping cart full of our party supplies… it was a great party!



Everyone had something to do at the party, games, relaxation, bodybuilding/croquet competitions…


Bocce Ball!



Roger needs some tape cuz he's RIPPED!



Here's me, undoubtedly saying something stupid and Dave mugging for the camera.



This table doubles as a beer pong table too…



The 4th party was a blast and we hope you all had a good one too! For me seeing my family and friends was an amazing addition to an already fantastic summer!




Leaving Long Island, we took a ferry ride across Long Island sound – it was foggy and empty, check it out…







Fortunately, the next day we were in Hampton Beach, NH and the sun came back out! Here's the world champion Wiffle Ball team starting their post-game cool down…



Here's one from yesterday at the Wolf Trap outside of Washington D.C. This pic is from soundcheck, but if you use your imagination you can see what we saw during the show… all of those seats filled up with screaming new DDB fans!



And finally here's one of our front of house soundman, Mike "Hottie" Hotovec learning why you never, ever, ask Drew about his hair care products!



Also, we've been without our trusted companion, John "Johno" Arthur for the past week or so (he's been at his sister's wedding) and I know I speak for all of us when I say "Hurry back Johno!"

It's the day before we start our summer tour with Hootie and the Blowfish. There's a whole bunch of things going through my head right now. It's pretty unbelievable how much stuff there is to get done before a big tour like this one. What songs to play? Who ordered the T-Shirts? Is the CD artwork going to be done so that they can be shipped in time for us to sell at our show? Are we doing enough to promote our fanclub? Will Hootie's fans like us as much as we hope that they will? Is all of our gear in shape? How is the bus running? Is everyone ready for the biggest tour of our lives? What can we do to push ourselves over the top with this tour? And, most importantly, is there enough Miller Light on the bus for us AND our crew?

Well, there's never enough Miller Light, we all know that, but the other stuff is really important and we are all thinking overtime on this stuff.

That doesn't mean that we haven't been having a great time! We played some amazing shows over the past couple of weeks. The band really feels better than we've felt all year. We were a bit stressed after our Riverstages performance on June 8th because Shaun Balin, known to our fans as "The Kid" decided that he didn't want to continue on tour with us through the summer. That left us without a fiddle player. We auditioned a player who played wonderfully and decided that he would do the tour with us. We even picked up his gear in Nashville, so that it would be with us and ready to go in a couple of weeks when he was available to start on the road with us.

Then we went and played at the Beacon Club in Casper, Wyoming and everything changed. We played as a 5 piece for the first time all year and somehow, someway, all the magic came back to our show. We had the best show that we had had all year long. It felt great! Drew performed like a champ, Loren played some amazing guitar licks, Dave and I were locked tighter than Fort Knox and Roger really looked good! ☺ Anyway, we started talking about doing the Hootie tour as a 5 piece and the next day when we had another amazing show up in Deadwood, South Dakota, the deal was sealed.

We continued through Kansas City, Chicago (three cheers for the Ballydoyle Pub!), and South Bend at a rodeo where we got to hang with some actual Bull Riders and where Drew rode a tame donkey on stage. Anyway, after 6 great shows in a row, we are all fired up for the Hootie tour and feeling GREAT about our lineup. Hope you can all come out and see us somewhere on tour!

Here are three more pics from the road…


This is the motel that we named our album after… or did they name the motel after our album?






See? I told you Roger looked GREAT! Both on and off the vehicle…





I helped my buddy Phil do some work on his lake cabin this week. I was on Raccoon control duty. Somehow they aren't this cute when they are roosting in your chimney and eating your garbage!

With the dust and dirt from the sprint car races still in our teeth, the Drew Davis Band rolled into Nashville ready to rock out at Fan Fair! We had an early start to a busy busy day with an autograph/picture signing session at the CMA booth in the convention center. We shared our time slot with Rio Grand who are some cool dudes! It was awesome to get to meet so many fans and really felt great that so many of you guys showed up for us. Thanks for supporting! After signing we headed to the Riverstages where we were slotted to play in between Jamie O'Neal and Carolina Rain.





Both of them put on excellent shows – and I gotta give a shout out to Josh Gracin and his band who closed the day. Before we could play our show, however, we did an interview with our friends on GAC. It will air on the 16th of this month during the GAC nights show so check it out!! Finally we got to the stage. What a cool thing and an honor to play with some of the biggest names in Country Music for some of the biggest fans in Country Music! It really felt like everyone was there and even though our show was a short one, we had a blast! We played all high-energy songs: Good Times, Everything or Nothing, Turn it Up, and Dirty Blond Bombshell! Without tooting our horn too much I gotta tell those of you who missed it that we rocked! The rest of the day was spent eating, drinking and running around Nashville. Thanks to Andrew Parvin for putting us up and thanks to Ebie for getting us involved in Fan Fair this year. I'm hoping that we'll be back there next year and I'm really hoping to see all of you there too!

In other news, the Kid, Shaun Balin, is no longer on the road with us. We'll miss him and wish him well in his future endeavors! We did pick up another team member. We call him Cowboy, but his real name is Johnathan Hepner. He was one of the guys who helped mix "Crossroads" and he is coming on the road to help us out during the Hootie tour. It's a busy busy time for us right now, making sure that all the gear, merchandise, travel plans and budgeting is all squared away for what will be the biggest, most high-profile tour that any of us have ever done. We kick off in about two weeks and look forward to seeing you guys at a show!

California

Well, I know it's been awhile since I put up anything for y'all to read and let me start this blog by saying, it's not because I don't care. I do care. In fact, we all care. We love our fans, maybe even more than you love us. To us, you are like the first sunny day of spring after a long, cold winter, you are like a thunderstorm after hot, dry spell, you are like that first home-cooked meal after being on the road for 4 months eating only fast food. You renew us and keep us going to the next show.

Ahhhh, who am I fooling? I'm not that sentimental in real life! But we still do really like you guys and to prove it, here's a few words about what's been going on with us…

We spent about the last week of May out in California. It was a busy time for me personally, because in addition to visiting radio stations and playing gigs, I had to get my stuff out of my place in Los Angeles in preparation for a permanent move to Nashville at the end of our summer tour. That all went smoothly and I'm super-excited about relocating to Nashvegas!!! Come visit in the fall!

We started out in Riverside, CA visiting our friends at KFRG. They have been big supporters of the DDB since the early days and it was nice to get back and see those folks. From there we went up to Solvang and Santa Maria. Solvang is a very interesting town – it's a little touristy but cool in that it's all done up to look like a Danish village. We continued on through Santa Barbara (where we did a 3 song acoustic set at a night club) then to Salinas for another radio station visit and to Clovis where we played a real couple of sets at a club frequented by Cal State Fresno folks – good times!

The highlight of our California trip, for me, was getting up to San Jose which is only about 20 minutes from where I went to High School in Palo Alto. We visited KRTY and played our album for them. I'm happy to say that we received great feedback! (You all know that if you want to get the new album you can do so, but the only way to get it for now is to sign up for our fanclub for free at www.drewdavisband.com, then you can download all the tracks from the new album "Crossroads"). Anyway, we played a gig at Club Rodeo in San Jose, and a whole mess of my old friends from High School showed up to cheer us on! It was wonderful getting a chance to re-connect and (since I'm moving to Nashville) to say good bye to some of my California cohort!

I'm gonna put up a couple of pics from San Jose, visiting the radio station, crossing the street, and one of Roger helping park the bus. Tune back in for more updates. Now that we're back on the road I know we'll have some fun stories for you!

Mo

Hi guys! Well, after typing for 2 hours yesterday on our drive from Kansas City up to North Platte, NE, I just couldn't shake the feeling that I wanted to write a little bit more…

Since nothing REALLY happened since the last time I wrote (aside from eating at a really bad Chinese Buffet in North Platte and watching the Lakers absolutely blow it in game 4 of the NBA finals) I am making a command decision to take a trip in the way back machine and to show y'all some pics from earlier in the year. But we're gonna work our way backwards.

So most of you guys only get to see us play from the front of the stage, and that's cool. BUT, there's a whole world that goes on backstage, especially at some of the larger shows we do. So… here are a couple of snaps from back behind the drum riser at Riverstages last weekend. Now you have an idea of what we see when we look out at all of your smiling faces!









Next stop on the way back machine are a few pics from the Sprint Car races that I talked about in my last blog. As you can see Roger and I fit right in… And check out the different sizes of the sprint cars in the pit. In Arkansas, they start their kids driving sprint cars before they can walk!

















About a month ago, Drew and I played in a charity golf tournament hosted by the famous pitcher and sports announcer, Rick Sutcliffe. Here's a pic of Drew and Rick with Johnny Lee (famed for his hit song "Lookin' for Love"… in all the wrong places!). We had a great day that day and ended up jamming with Johnny's band at the Harrah's casino outside of Kansas City that night.









One of our best friends and our biggest supporter, is Shawn Byrum. Shawn was one of the initial investors in the ill-fated 903 Music (Neal McCoy's record label that signed us to our second deal. 903 is no longer, but Shawn is still someone who we have tremendous respect and gratitude for! In this pic we just ate lunch at PF Changs in Dallas.

Finally, here's one of my favorite signs in San Francisco. It really has nothing to do with the band, but I just think it's kind of funny!





P.S. We are in Casper, WY today and tomorrow we head up to one of our favorite place, Deadwood, SD where we are playing a big festival opening for none other than Tommy Tutone (remember 867-5309?).

Hey y'all… just wanted to get back on the blog, as it were and catch up with with you guys a little bit. When I last wrote, we were about to take the stage in Tuscaloosa, Alabama opening for Lonestar and Jo Dee Messina. Well the show went very well, (thanks for asking), except that right as we were closing our set with "Dirty Blonde Bombshell" a light drizzle started. That wasn't so bad. What kind of sucked was that the light drizzle turned into a thundering downpour within about 15 seconds! It was super intense! We've never been rained out of a show before. We've cut it close a few times, but have always somehow managed to avoid getting drenched. Not this time… The downpour hit us hard (thankfully only during the last song of our set), soaking pedalboards, microphones, instrument cases, drums, cables, etc. Luckily the stagehands were on the job and as soon as we were done they helped us get everything to a dry location so we could towel most of it off. Of course, some of the electronics and cases were still damp inside, so try to picture this: our bus parked next to one of Lonestar's busses with both of our generators running, created the perfect wind tunnel of hot air. Once the rain actually stopped, we laid out all of our wet gear in the makeshift alley between the busses and let it dry off in the warm air that was blowing over the generators. The bad news is that it looked pretty silly for all of our gear to be laid out like a yard sale between the busses, but the good news is that it worked like a charm and everything dried out nicely. We left Tuscaloosa just after the gear was dried and high tailed it to Dallas, where I hopped on a jet for Los Angeles, while the rest of the guys crept their way across country on the bus!

It's been great to be back home in LA, although a little bit bittersweet this time. See, I'm moving to Nashville after our summer tour, so this trip is one of the last chances I'll have to say good bye to the friends I've made since living in LA for the past 9 years! I'll miss you guys!!!

We'll be in California with a full schedule of radio station visits and concerts until next Monday. Then we're back on the road! Keep an eye out here for some more updates on how our travels are going and we'll see you in the real near future!

Mo

Ps. If you haven't yet done so, go ahead and sign up for our fan club at www.drewdavisband.com/fanclub (we are making it free to join for a limited time). That's the only way you can buy tracks from our freshly completed album!!! Of course we'll have hard copies for sale here in just a bit, but you know you want to be the first on your block to have the new Drew Davis Band songs bumping in your car as you're driving down the road with the windows closed… TURN IT UP!!!!

The Current Conditions in Malibu are:

Wind: West @ 8 - 11 mph

Air/Water Temp: 61F/56F

4 ft Swells

 

Now, we're not in Malibu, but we're close. Happy to say that we've arrived in Cali and it sure feels good to be home. It's been so long since we've been here that I really took notice of how beautiful it is here. I miss the mountains, the weather, and even those strangely cool Joshua Trees which line the desert coming into LA.

Whenever we come out here I get a craving for In-N-Out Burger. Great burgers and can't get them in most places around the country. Admitidely, I'm not much of a burger guy, but I like their burgers. If you've had them, you'll know what I mean.

We're hoping we're going to get a change to get up to Old Town Pasadena...which is where the band got its start. We used to rehearse in my old house and then walk to the local bars and restaurants after playing. We frequented Twin Palms plenty, knew a great pizza joint around the corner, and had plenty of good sushi at Sushi Roku.

Blah, blah, blah...it's good to be home. Hope some of you can make it to some of our Cali shows. Talk to you soon.

Loren

Hello! Roger here. I am sitting on our bus listening to iTunes spitting out some random songs. We are here in New Mexico on our way to LA tomorrow. Very excited to be going home for a bit. We haven't been there as a band in almost a year, and that trip was only for a day!
Dave Johno and I went out on the town here in Deming, NM on the search for dinner and a couple margaritas. We found that this is a very interesting little town. A mix old school homes, trailers and new buildings and restaurants. Pretty unique. No Walmart, Best Buy's or Applebee's like the towns we usually get to. Dinner was cool and I tried my first wine margarita. hmmm. It was ok, did the trick! lol
Anyway, just wanted to say that something pretty cool happened out there today. As we walked into the McDonalds for some coffee and desert, we passed by a homeless guy out front. Maybe that's not the pc term or whatever, but that was the situation. John and I walked past with a bit of a blind eye but I guess this gentleman asked Dave if he could get him some food.
Next thing I know Dave is walking back out with a full meal for this guy. It struck me as one of those random acts of kindness that really no one would ever see or hear about. A seemingly pure act of altruism. Pretty rare.
I know people have there different feelings and views about giving handouts to people on the street, but I just felt like passing on a story about a little compassion.
Sorry if I got a little heavy there. Just thought it was pretty cool.
Anyway, be well and if you are in CA and want to check us out in our home state, come rock with us! (I guess Home is a bit of a loose term for us now! lol)
See ya
Roger