Bloggidy blog blog blog…hello interwebs, sorry we’ve been slacking on the update tip…I’ll try to get you up to speed…

Ok, so after a kickass sendoff show at the Middle East (thanks again to Burning Streets, Side Effects, Six String Bullets, and the Televandals, and to everyone that came out and sold out the show), we headed north to Rochester New York to play with our buds in This Is A Stick Up…good show, then we went back to the singer’s house, where we ate candy and watched movies til the wee hours…and we’re off and running…

…to Cincinnati Ohio…we got there early, drank on a playground, headed to the venue, beat the locals at pool, watched the three opening acoustic acts, played to the two kids who came out to see us, collected our 25 bucks, hit the road…yay, Cincinatti…next…

…to Columbus…played at this rad spot called Skully’s; great stage, great system, and a soundman who actually knew what he was doing…refreshing change, haha…tooled around the neighborhood for a while before the show, found a cool bike shop where the folks there let me test ride the new PK Ripper, it was dope, I want one…show went well, not as many people as I’d hoped, but whatevs…crashed on a floor, and rolled out the next morning to…

Indianapolis…headed downtown and hit the mall for a well balanced meal of free samples at the food court…the Future Farmers of America Convention was in town; blue jacketed cornfed white kids everywhere you looked, so we split downtown and headed to the venue…where we discovered that we’d left a guitar in Columbus…great…after a flurry of frantic phone calls, we located the guitar in Columbus and made plans to go back and pick it up the next day…so we load in, set up, turn on, and Matt’s amp shits the bed…which double sucks since he’d just had it retubed the day before we left…we borrow an amp and rock the fuck out for 45 minutes or so…the small crowd was enthusiastic, but there weren’t enough people there to cover the guarantee, so the promoter paid us 80 bucks out of his own pocket and the rest from behind the bar in the form of multiple whiskey shots…a good time was had by all…don’t remember where we slept, but we did, and woke up early to head to Bloomington to see if we could find a place get Matt’s amp fixed…

…which, after inquiring at the only two shops in Bloomington, turned out to be a mistake, as the only tech who might be able to replace the transformer was back in Indianapolis…so we dropped Steve off at the gym and headed back…to Uncle Albert’s Amp Repair in Indy…dude was like the secret wizard of amp repair…he’s done work for everyone from the Indigo Girls to Tom Petty to Dokken to Green Day to…Have Nots…pity we didn’t have an 8X10 glossy to autograph and put on the wall next to all the rest, haha…he properly diagnosed the problem immediately, replaced the filter caps, and sent us on our way back to Bloomingon…
…where we played a house show, the first of the tour, with this rad band from SF called La Plebe, check ‘em out…highlight of the show, besides seeing La Plebe, was the bat dive bombing us throughout our entire set, and the kid who lived there finding a squirrel that had been hit by a car, bringing it home, cooking it in a stew, and eating it…”nah, it’s cool, man, I saw it die…it’s fresh”…oh-kayyy…cool show, except for the last band stealing some of Steve’s drum hardware, thanks, dicks…anyway, passed out on yet another random couch and woke up the next day to drive to Charlotte NC, via Columbus, to pick up the forgotten guitar…12 hours later…

…we love Charlotte…never a bad time, and our friends there always take care of us…we played in a photo studio where our friend Jessica used to live, with some awesome locals, namely The Not Likelys, IED, Southside Punx, and the Lesser Pauls…huge room that sounded surprisingly good, great crowd, lotta dancing and falling on the beer-soaked concrete floor, epic success…crashed with our friend Amanda, who made us lasagna…awesome…

…played another house show the next night in Rock Hill SC, after tooling around Charlotte all day…bought some books, checked out a rad Dia de los Muertes art show, drank too much coffee, and headed to the show…played in a 10X10 foot living room to a packed house…kids were dancing up a storm and singing along and even crowdsurfing, and the floor was bouncing up and down so much we thought it might cave in…awesome…we found out the next day that after we’d left, the floor actually did cave in, and broke a gas line…punk fucking rock…don’t think those kids are getting their security deposit back though…

…day off the next day, so we were lazy bums, watched some movies, did some laundry, and played with Molly the three-legged dog…crashed out at Amanda’s again, and headed out to Atlanta the next morning…

…played a pretty cool spot in Atlanta; pool tables, gambling hall, two separate venues…we opened the show at eight o’clock, then watched the next two acts…the first was a “sad bastard country” band called American Aquarium who were awesome, the second was a pretty typical bar band, don’t remember their name, but they were pretty good at being a typical bar band…

…and on to Birmingham Alabama…I have a friend who grew up around here, and when I texted her to ask what we should do in Alabama, she replied “RUN”…so, yeah…headed to B’ham (as the locals call it) with a little trepidation…got to the spot after our GPS led us in circles for half an hour, and found out that the local opener had cancelled…super…but the folks there took good care of us, and after waiting around and playing pool til we were sick of it, we ripped through our set, and proceeded to get rip-roarin’ drunk with the bartender and a couple of the locals…the bartender and doorguy had recently moved out of their apartment, and offered it up as a place for us to stay…”there’s no furniture, but there might be some food in the fridge”…and how…we hit the motherlode on this one…we hung out til 4 a.m. with one of the bartenders (who’d snuck out a pint glass of Makers), gorging ourselves on veggie burgers, edamame, chocolate covered sunflower seeds, gummi dinosaurs, and ice cream, acting up and laughing at stupid shit til we passed out on the floor…B’ham, thumbs up…

…and on to Auburn AL…we figured it was a college town, so we could find some cool shit to do…headed downtown, parked, and walked for about a block in every direction before realizing that there was nothing to do there, cool or not…so we said fuck it and went bowling with the free passes that the chick in the bagel shop gave me when I went in to use the bathroom…Matt ended up victorious, by a long shot…with nothing else to do, we hit the old standby, which is to say we walked around Walmart for a couple of hours til it was time for the show…the kids there were awesome (at the show, not at Walmart), as were the other acts, a solo reggae artist named Jason Chin, and a great little ska band called Blame Sydney…we crashed with these kids that we’d met, Holly and Jason, at their trailer, where we passed out while watching Shawn Of The Dead…all in all, a great night…

…wake up, get in the car, go to Mum’s, kill Philip, save Liz, and go to the Winchester, where we’ll have a nice pint and wait for all of this to blow over…ok, not really…headed to Florida for our show in Tallahassee at St. Michael’s Pub…this is a Pre-Fest show, so there’s a million bands playing…standouts were our friends Assassinate The Scientist from Gainesville, and the Blacklist Royals from Nashville…we played first, but the crowd was still into it, which was cool…Steve won a $200 gift certificate for a tattoo from the shop that was sponsoring the show, so he has a couple weeks to figure out what he wants before out next show in Tallahassee…too hot to sleep in the van, so we pricelined a hotel (thanks Shatner) and crashed out…

…another night off, so we head to Gainesville, where The Fest is getting underway…our hope was that we could ask around and find a post-show party to play, but the only thing we got was a “maybe, there’s three other bands, but you could probably play when they’re done…party starts at 2 a.m.”…hmm, maybe not…so we headed to Cleremont FL, where we were playing in a church the next night, on Halloween…

…so, every other time we’ve played in a church, it’s usually in the basement that some kid has rented out, gotten his hands on a crappy PA, made some fliers, and had a show…the folks putting this show on had said that there was “an empty house attached to the church”, which we took to mean yet another abandoned apartment for us to squat…nope…this show was actually being put on by the church itself, and the “empty house” was actually the church’s daycare center…kinda weird sleeping on the floor next to a bunch of cribs and baby swings…

…so the church folks, figuring that the town needed a venue, built a stage in their youth center, and got half a million dollars in sound equipment donated to them when Disney closed Pleasure Island…the night took a strange and tragic turn when a little boy got run over and killed about two blocks away from the church while trick or treating… needless to say we didn’t really feel like playing after that, but we honored our commitment and played our set…really weird seeing a bunch of kids running around and dancing and smiling while we could see the lights from the cop cars and ambulances coming through the door… our hearts go out to that kid’s parents…fucking horrible…

…so, on that note, we head out early in the morning…great people, great venue, and we wish them the best of luck getting it off the ground, but the whole experience left us shaken, so we figured we’d put some miles between us and Clermont…we have the next two days off, so, with Shatner’s help, we got a great deal on a hotel in St. Augustine…checked in, dropped our shit in the room, and hit the beach…a little overcast, but the ocean was bathwater warm, and we had a great time playing in the waves…headed back to the hotel, hit the hot tub, and Matt and Steve rolled down the street to a winery for a “tasting” while Jameson and I hit the TV…

…woke up late the next day and hit the beach again…surf was kinda rough due to a hurricane somewhere off shore, but we rented some boards anyway and spent the next couple of hours getting pummeled in the chop…windy as fuck though, so we gave up after a while and just laid out on the beach for a bit…then back to the hot tub, showered, and more TV…sometimes there’s more to touring than long drives and sleeping on cold hard floors…Matt and I woke up at the crack of dawn the next day to try and catch a couple more sets, but the surf shop didn’t open til ten, so we swam around for a while and then headed back to the hotel to shower and check out…when we get back, Steve tells us that the show that night has been cancelled due to the bar being shut down for serving to minors, so we head back towards Charlotte, where we’re playing the next day…on the way up there, some kid informs us via the myspace that there’s an electric open mic night in the area, so we post a resched online and head over there…guess the kid had promoted it as well, cos a bunch of folks showed up, danced, and sang along…we played seven songs, packed up, and headed back to Amanda’s in Charlotte, where Jessica had made us baked ziti…yum…feed, chill, pass out…

…so right now the rest of the boys are in town putting up flyers for the show tonight, while I’m sitting here on the couch blogging my little heart out and watching Law&Order…life could be worse…that’s all for now…more later…

xoxo, Jon & Have Nots  



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