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...

Continue reading…

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 Colin's expense.  :D

June 13, 2009: Goodbye Florida! Hellllloooooo.........Mobile, AL?  Yep and lemme tell ya, that place is awesome.

We were very happy to learn that Mobile was less than 90 minutes away from Pensacola.  After sleeping a few extra hours, we loaded up for our last show as a trio.  We had been in constant contact with our bandmate Alejandro (who had to miss the first few dates due to a prior commitment) and planned to pick him up the next day in Atlanta.  I think we were all ready for a thicker sound and plus, we missed our little brother!

None of us had ever been to Alabama and we didn't really know what to expect.  Stereotypes aside, we anticipated a very southern, laid back town...Welcome to Alabama!

I'm not sure if the fact that we just left the Cockroach Inn had anything to do with it but the downtown Mobile Holiday Inn was amazingly nice.  And it was walking distance to the gig.  We were schedule to perform for four hours that night at the grand opening of Hopjacks, (we played the first Hopjacks location the previous night in Pensacola.)

Continue reading…

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 some of 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 12, 2009: I'm not very proud to admit that the majority of the band, save a few geography wizards, thought that Pensacola was on the eastern side of the state.  Little did we know, that we actually had a seven hour drive to our gig that night.  We didn't get back from The Dungeon until about 3 a.m. the previous morning so getting up at 8:30 was so much fun.  Especially for Chase, who on a side-note, amazingly drove all 5,000+ miles of the trip (he earned a special prize for that which you'll see later on...)

We arrived safely at the hotel in the late afternoon but not before a small panic when Dan swore he saw us miss the exit for Pensacola.  We all double checked the map and verified our correct course but Dan was pretty insistent.  That is, until he mentioned that he noticed it was in an alternate spelling involving a "g."  We were ok.

We later deduced that Dan must have thought the sign on the left was how to spell "Pensacola."

We were staying in the crummiest dust bin in all of the Florida armpit.  Aside from the shattered door locks, stains on the carpet, nasty funk in the air and rock hard beds that would make a paraplegic toss and turn, it was basically the Ritz.  We threw the football, walked about a mile to a Quizno's down the road that turned out to be an Econolodge, proceeded to eat Wendy's then went back and showered up for the gig.

Downtown Pensacola is a very cool place.  For about a 2 or 3 mile radius, there are nice ale houses, restaurants, stores etc.  We were scheduled for a four-hour slot at a bar called HopJacks.  While loading the gear and grabbing a pre-show meal, we noticed a very odd trend.  Throughout my adult life, I've learned that one of the facts of nightlife is that the populous of guys will always out number the girls.  That part isn't odd, it's just a foregone conclusion. Lord knows where the hell all the girls are.  Anyway, we noticed that there was an even greater tilted male to female ratio.

We took the stage and played our set and a lot of people really enjoyed it, dancing and moving to the front, but most of the men in the bar seemed to gravitate away from the stage.  After our set, I asked one of the waitresses if this was a gay bar.  She laughed at me. I asked her how she plans to explain the sausage party. She told me that there is a very prominent Air Force base just down the road.  Apparently, our loud music was intruding on one of the few military mating nights of the season.

So on behalf of The Juice, I'd like to apologize to all Pensacola-based Cadets for making their pickup lines sound that much worse.

We had a great time playing and hanging out with some fans afterward. Once we got back from the Waffle House at 4 a.m., I got mistaken by some crack whores for a drug dealer named "Tommy" and crawled into my sleeping bag just as the sun started to creep in through the greasy first floor window.  All in a day's work as a touring band.

One of the funniest moments of the tour, and one that we retell to this day, came during an impromptu cover of Weezer's "Say It Ain't So."  Because I was jamming it clean (with no overdrive), I implemented a little reggae feel, thus neglecting the very distinctive and distorted signature guitar riff during the chorus.  But that didn't stop Colin who made up for it with his singing...

I couldn't sing the next chorus because we were all laughing so hard.  Absolutely hilarious.

I'm sorry that we didn't take many pictures or videos on this particular day.  I honestly can't remember why we didn't but we have tons for the rest of the shows...

Have you ever been to Mobile, Alabama?  Neither had we and we were really surprised by what we saw the next day...

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 11, 2009: Orlando! Host to the happiest place on earth.  I've always had fond memories because as a tot, I was lucky enough to go every few years.  

That morning, we slept in a little and set off for the 90 minute drive at about 11.  Because Ale (who at about this time was making his way to Bonnaroo) and Dan had joined The Juice just a few weeks earlier, I tried to book us for as many shows as possible the week before the tour.  As of the 11th, we had played something like 8 out of the last 11 days.  So by the time we got to Orlando, we didn't want any more days off. We were ready to roll. 

You know you're in Orlando when your hotel looks like a box of Fruity Pebbles

(One thing I feel I should preliminarily explain is that as a young, regional band, it's very difficult to find gigs outside of your town.  You could have the best music in the world but all that the venue cares about is..."will you bring a crowd?"  Of course, we knew only a handful of people in Orlando so we weren't expecting to play the civic center.  But the idea is to either play a very good venue with an established band of the area or play a spot that has a built-in crowd.)

We were booked at this place called "The Dungeon."  And, it was...strange.  As we drove up, we noticed the house directly across the street had hung weird signs on their fence.

We didn't understand and I'm not sure we wanted to

Here's Colin's account of the night:

"This was the first real show on the tour, and when we arrived we all couldn't help but laugh at the situation.  It was located in what looked like an abandoned building behind a hardcore biker bar.  But the venue turned out to be pretty nice, if not a little off-genre for us.  The stage was big and the sound was good, but the interior was decorated like a literal dungeon.  There was a cage off to the side of the stage for dancing that had a sign above it that read "Walk-ins Welcome."  The walls were painted with images of skulls, fire, demons and battle axes.  And above the stage was a giant ghost/skeleton, holding a can of PBR.  It was kind of surreal to play the songs in that atmosphere."

Surreal, indeed.  

The people and staff were very cool though and if we ever evolve into a Slipknot cover band, we'd go back in a heartbeat.

Next up: Pensacola