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.

My Old Apt. In South End

June 26th: Boston is easily one of my favorite cities in the world.  I lived there while working on a summer session at Berklee and I would love to permanently move there if I could only put up with their annoying infatuation with the Red Sox.  My sister (nine years my senior) went to college in its suburbs and visiting as a young lad, I developed an early affection for the place.

Our friends and fellow Miami musicians, The State Of, recommended this place in Cambridge called “The All Asia.”  It was described as an oriental restaurant and they even warned us that louder bands could sometimes create a muddled mix in the small(ish) bar.

At this point, we had all realized that there was a very common difference between the northern and southern venues.  As the tour progressed and we ventured closer and closer to the Mason-Dixon Line, we noticed the appreciation for our work and the empathy for our daily dilemmas kept growing.  In the South, we were “the band,” here to entertain the people with background noise while they drink and talk amongst themselves but once we hit Raleigh, we noticed that people were coming out to hear original music.

There is such a disparity between the performances of small bands and famous bands and most of the time, it has nothing to do with the quality of the performance, but the quality of the songs. Of course a great show is mandatory but as a new band, you’re asking the audience to both pay attention to this new art you’re throwing at them but also enjoy themselves.  It really isn’t an easy task to ask of someone out for leisure.  It’s infinitely more fun for both parties when the audience has a predisposed expectation and they can put the concentration and comprehension aside and just rock out.  People up north, for the most part, seemed way more willing to listen and not just hear and as someone who spends an exponential amount of energy writing songs that contain a lot of honesty and very little apprehension (or at least I hope they do), it’s a huge compliment and very comforting. But I digress…

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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 Ale’s expense.

June 23, 2009: With three New York City shows in four days, we were settling nicely into the Big Apple. Colin started to feel better and wandered around with Ale and Rich. Chase, Mike and I went to find wireless internet in the village and Dan found solace in walking every single block on the island. The previous night, someone got word of a 311 concert in Central Park. I think we all wanted to go but only few wanted to dish out the money so the rest of us went to a free Fema Kuti concert in Prospect Park. It wasn’t until then that I thanked my mother for nudging me into all those African dance classes when I was young. Na Poi!

Just Outside Prospect Park After The Show

The day of the show, we got there early to look around.  Southpaw was one of the more famous venues of the tour and we spent quite a bit of time perusing the archived show advertisements adorning the walls.  The venue was pretty large for our standards and had a downstairs green room (ooh la la!)  After the exploration, we listened to A Tribe Called Quest and killed some time in the opposite parking lot. Behold, the “46th Annual Brooklyn Football Fest.”

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