I was asked a little while back by someone close, what my motivation was. My motivation towards being a musician. That's a hell of a question. Why do we do this? I had to think about it for a while.

This question, I think, was answered over this past weekend.

Friday morning we awoke at the house. Zane was still working on the Durango, Matt McClure was sleeping on our couch and I don't know what Zach and I were doing. The drummer John Wright came over around 8:30 and we were ready to go. . .nowhere. We had to go to the U-haul place to get a trailer and fix some of the wiring on the Durango so that it would have tail lights. We were supposed to be on the road by 9:00 am. We didn't leave till 12:30

Once we got on the road we were off to East Lansing to pick up Vanessa, our keyboardist. Then off to Milwaukee Wisconsin to play a show at Shank Hall with our new friends Freshwater Collins. They are a great band, I highly suggest you check them out. Shank Hall was cool. The History behind this place is interesting. In the Movie "This is Spinal Tap", they play a Shank Hall in Milwaukee, and depending on which story is true, it either burned down or was just a fictional venue for the movie. So back in the 80's The current owner of Shank Hall was a concert promoter and booked Spinal Tap to play a show. They hit it off well and the owner said that if he ever opened a club in Milwaukee he'd call it Shank Hall. Very sweet place with lots of national acts playing there and a bunch of mini stonehenges for decor.

After the show we crashed at FC's guitarists home for a couple of hours and hit the road again to get to the next city. And due to our inability to do anything easily, the next town after Milwaukee was Fayetteville Arkansas.

We rolled in to a place called George's Majestic Lounge just on time to set up our gear and start playing. This place had been going strong on the campus of University of Arkansas for about 80 years. Great crowd. We were invited out by a band called Wooden Stares, another great band which I too, highly advise you look into. They will be playing with us on November 11 at the Berkley Front. These guys were the coolest, Lance and his girlfriend Micah let us crash at their place on saturday night where I managed to pass out drunk in their front yard underneath a pine tree (not the first time this has happened).

But anyway, there was something so cool about stepping on to a stage and having the house lights dim and the music go off, and then it's all about the Chinz. Our response was great at both these shows. We met so many cool people on our trip. We just can't wait for the next time. It's so crazy to pack six people in a durango and drive fourteen hours just to play a set for forty-five minutes, and that's what we love about it. The shear craziness of the life, the connection you make with new people through the power of music. When we were in Arkansas, people spoke differently. Depending on how much they drank it was almost like a different language. But we all understood eachother through the universal language of music. And that is why I do it! And that is why Zach does it and Zane and Vanessa and Whoever is playing drums this week.

Take care everybody

Mark

I hope that answers the question