Hi and welcome to the blog.  We’ve returned safely from our 21-day tour of the east coast.  It was quite an amazing time and best summed up by Chase (our road manager and friend since childhood) as “Four months worth of life in three weeks.”  So , I’m going to be recounting our  happenings with pictures and videos. I hope you enjoy them.  Feel free to leave comments. Especially if they come at Colin's expense.  :D

June 20, 2009:  Poor Alejandro and Mike wearily knocked on our door at eight o'clock, having packed and readied for the day's commute.  When I opened the door, they looked flushed and fatigued, like they had just donated enough blood to aid an entire platoon.  "Dude. Dan slept with the thermostat at 80 degrees in our room last night. It was like a f*cking Turkish bath."

A band is so much like a family.  When  you're on tour together, you have to be able to make compromises.  Not everyone is the same as you and for the unity and good nature of the group, you're required to give up some of your personal habits or preferences.  

Every hotel we stayed in, we booked two rooms. Three guys in each. Chase and I normally shared a room because we like the temperature to be freezing.  65 or 66 was about right.  Dan never stayed with us because he liked his sleeping temperature at about 80 degrees.  So the other three normally rotated.  Needless to say, the guys had some rest to catch up on during the ride.

We left Virginia Beach quite early.  It wasn't a particularly long drive to D.C. but we were just really excited to get there.  We were getting so much into the routine of playing everyday that our off days felt underachieving.  I remember, we were packing up the van, getting ready to leave....everyone was pretty quiet - tired, most probably.  Some mornings, it felt like I was sleepwalking.  And that's what was so remarkable about Chase.  He never seemed tired and yet aside from the two to four hours of our performances each night, he had to stay alert the entire time.  Driving such a large rig takes considerable concentration, helping unload, making sure the rest of us were out of bed on time, etc.  He definitely earned his stripes. And he never complained! Being in charge of five dramatic, sensitive and passionate artists for three weeks on the road is not an easy job. Trust me. 

Anyway, I was finishing up some packing and about to get in the car when he got out of the driver's seat and double checked, finding my cellphone and wallet on the car's roof.  Uh......Thanks, dude.

This is one of our many pit-stops.  You can see that everyone is well into the routine and Chase still in high spirits.  

God Likes The Music

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Hi and welcome to the blog.  We’ve returned safely from our 21-day tour of the east coast.  It was quite an amazing time and best summed up by Chase (our road manager and friend since childhood) as “Four months worth of life in three weeks.”  So , I’m going to be recounting our  happenings with pictures and videos. I hope you enjoy them.  Feel free to leave comments. Especially if they come at Alejandro’s expense.  :D

June 18, 2009: Raleigh.  I spent my youth there.  I started music lessons there.  I lost my virginity there.  I learned to drive there.  I graduated from high school there.  I met a lot of incredible people there.  It was the gig I was most looking forward to on the entire tour.

My pal Seth (who, in his own right, is an excellent manager of our friends Ever So Klever) helped me put this tour together.  He is a much better salesman than I and was responsible for booking us in most of the venues on the tour.  And yet, as good as he is, he could not cement us in Raleigh.  I thought that of any city on the tour, a date in Raleigh would be the easiest to secure.  I was sure of attracting twenty or thirty people to the show and that's good enough for most places with regards to a touring band. One of my sisters still lived there, some of my very close friends still live there...No problem.

Or so I thought.

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Hi and welcome to the blog.  We’ve returned safely from our 21-day tour of the east coast.  It was quite an amazing time and best summed up by Chase (our road manager and friend since childhood) as “Four months worth of life in three weeks.”  So , I’m going to be recounting our  happenings with pictures and videos. I hope you enjoy them.  Feel free to leave comments. Especially if they come at Dan's expense.  :D

June 19, 2009:  On a high, we drove up to Virginia Beach, though it was one of the toughest drives for Chase.  A couple of hour long traffic jams made the time crawl.  With Ale in tow, we talked about how Leonardo Da Vinci and Ben Franklin were probably the epitome of man's vast potential and everyone shat all over my plan to save the world (making American citizens apply for parenthood - trust me, I know it's a big idea that's very unrealistic not to mention completely communistic but I'm encouraged...)

Much like Tampa, we learned that our gig that night was cancelled.  That is the shit that you have to put up with as a unestablished touring band.  Undeterred, we set out to see the town.  We were booked in the downtown area but heard that the place to be was the boardwalk twenty minutes down the road.  We almost brought our acoustic instruments but then realized we didn't really have any. 

Apparantly, It's a Civil Crime to Swear

 So we walked around a little.  It was a Friday night and there were quite a bit of people out.  The place can basically be summed up as a northern Myrtle Beach.  We did find some interesting things.  Ate at an interesting restaurant, where we were served by "Bridgette," (see pic.)  Went to the beach for a second.  Ate ice cream. And after we discovered that the mini-golf place had closed, we rode back with a drunk cab driver.  Not much else happened other than that.  Sucks not playing.

I think these are pretty funny pictures.  The video is only kind of funny though. I hope you enjoy.  We're onto Washington, DC next (where we do plan on playing.)

But We Roll Mad Hard, yo

Chase's New Girlfriend, "Bridgette." The Wedding's in October

Hi and welcome to the blog.  We've returned safely from our 21-day tour of the east coast.  It was quite an amazing time and best summed up by Chase (our road manager and friend since childhood) as "Four months of life in three weeks."  So , I'm going to be recounting our  happenings with pictures and videos. I hope you enjoy them.  Feel free to leave comments. Especially if they come at Alejandro's expense.  :D

June 14, 2009:  I don't think I've ever more eagerly awoken from a five hour sleep than I did on this morning.  We quickly packed up our bags and loaded in the car with the excitement of knowing that the next time our feet touch the ground, it will be in one of America's greatest cities.  

But first, we had to say goodbye to a town that treated us so well...

You know that scene in Swingers when Vince Vaughan and Jon Favreau are driving to Vegas and they keep screaming for the sheer excitement of each other, "Vegas! Vegas!?"  

That was totally us.

The musical history, the architecture, the food!  We got a great deal on a hotel on the west side of the French Quarter.  Once we unpacked, we all went out for a stroll.  The city was rustic and (pardon my ignorance) didn't look very damaged at all.  I really wanted to talk to the people about Katrina.  Were we walking on ground that had been submerged just a few years before?  Realizing the sensitivity of the subject, I never asked.  We asked a local for a lunch recommendation and it was the best move we made all trip.  "Mother's," they said.  We were game.

Looking back at the video, the food doesn't actually look that special.  In fact, some might even say it looks bad.  But it wasn't.  Oooooh it wasn't.  It was honestly one of the greatest meals I've ever had.  Shrimp Po'boy, Seafood Gumbo, Jambalaya and all the fresh bread you can eat. AND our waiter was even forgiving when Chase spilled his drink all over the table...can't take that Chase anywhere I tell ya.  

Bright Idea

Inside of Mother's

There were pictures on the walls of all the famous people who had come to Mother's.  George Bush, Lil' Wayne, Brad Pitt.  They asked for Colin's photo but he declined.  

We ordered our food and sat down, waiting patiently with empty bellies and talking about how hungry we were.  That's when Dan told us he ordered a chicken salad.  We found out he wasn't joking and told him that he absolutely HAD to try some New Orleans' own cajun food.  We offered him some gumbo but he wasn't really into that.  So we settled for spicy jambalaya and he was still very hesitant...

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