Back in Brooklyn

We made it back to New York for a sold out show at North Six, which kind of feels like home to us. When you're out in the middle of the country with weeks of shows ahead of you until you finally get to sleep in your own bed, going home sounds great. When we pulled up to North Six to play our last show with Youth Group I instantly started feeling sad.

I'm really sorry that we have to leave Youth Group now - the 3 weeks with them went really quickly and we had more fun with them than with any band we've ever toured with. I really hope we get to see them again, hopefully to play more shows together, but at the very least we'll hopefully get to hang out next time they're back in New York. Also, their tour manager Simon Bennett is one of the coolest people we've ever met on tour so hopefully we'll get to see him again before too long too.

The show was great (as all our shows at North 6 have been), and the after party that AAM hooked up was a lot of fun. I'm also glad that my brother (who happened to be in New York on business) was able to see us play in New York. Chicago is great but home is home. And now I have to walk back over to North 6 to pick up our gear and go play more shows.

DC and Philly

The last time we played in DC was opening for Liz Phair at the 9:30 Club. When I saw the 9:30 on the itinerary for this tour I wondered if we would be able to fill half the room (it holds 1200 people). The day before the show we found out that over 900 tickets had been sold which instantly made it the biggest headlining show we ever played.

We also got to have the bigger dressing room this time around which has a great balcony over the stage, so I finally got to take some good pictures of Youth Group in action:









By the time we went on the show was sold out (which is amazing). I couldn't resist taking my camera out on stage with me so I could get a picture from the stage of the biggest crowd we've ever drawn:



The DC show was the first show in a long time where I was actually nervous to go out and play. It took a few songs before I felt comfortable but it ended up being a pretty amazing show. After the show we went to DC9 to get drunk with Youth Group and a bunch of Dan's friends who live in DC.

The Philly show was at WXPN for World Cafe Live, which will eventually be broadcast on NPR. We played on WXPN for David Dye's show during the Liz Phair/Guster tour last fall. We had to get to Philly early to get my BRAND NEW amp fixed (I have no luck with guitar amps). We had to kill an hour while the amp dude worked so we wandered around for a bit, ending up at a dollar store where I made this amazing purchase:



Backstage at WXPN I finally got Trevor to pose with a pic of his doppleganger, Cary Brothers. We first discovered Trevor's twin on a poster at the San Diego show, so I went online and downloaded a bunch of pictures. The likeness is uncanny:



Steve-o and Dan and I also attempted to make a movie documenting my new purchase. The idea was that we were fooling Dan into sitting on the whoopee cushion (which says "Flarp" on it - apparently what a fart sounds like if you spell it out).

Here is the movie (click to watch or right-click save-as to download):
whoopee cushio movie

Atlanta and Chapel Hill

There are a lot of rules that come with touring, one of which is that the only two people in the van that can't sleep are the driver (obviously) and whoever is in the passeger seat. We're all good about adhering to this rule but about 15 minutes away from our hotel in Atlanta, Trevor just couldn't make it. Another rule that kicks in in this situation is that you have to get a picture of whoever fell asleep:



Atlanta was a lot of fun this time around - it seems like every time we're in town we're at a different venue. This time we were at the Loft which is part of a complex that has 2 other venues, one of which had a 10 band battle of the bands going on that night.

Apparently while we were playing some dude came in to our dressing room and tried to steal a bunch of stuff. Fortunately Simon, Youth Group's tour manager, caught the dude before he got anything.

Exciting load out picture:


The only picture of our friends Lucy and Julie who came up to visit from Orlando:


We've played a few shows in Chapel Hill since I've been in the band, always at Local 506, which is pretty small. This time we were able to play the Cat's Cradle which is owned by the same people. They had the basketball tournament on on a big screen tv which made me happy (and at this point my bracket wasn't looking too bad). They also have a video game room with a bunch of classics (Tron, Double Dragon etc) but about half of the games didn't work.

At this point I'm running out of ideas for pictures:

New Orleans and Birmingham

We got a late start on the drive to New Orleans due to the part that was apparently needed in order to fix our AC. By this poit in the tour I think we're all pretty exhausted, and I'm starting to find the drives really boring. These are the kinds of things I find myself taking pictures of during drives:


His name is Glasscock. That was enough to make me laugh at this point on tour.


And we've got quite a bird shit collection going on our windshield.

The show in New Orleans was by far the smallest of the tour but I'm glad we got to at least drive through and see what the city looks like now. We didn't really see any major evidence of what happened there until the drive out of town towards Alabama (though seeing the Superdome on the way into town kind of creeped me out given all the stories of the horrible things that went on in there after the hurricane). Going east on the 10 from New Orleans we could see entire neighborhoods that had been underwater - some homes intact, most with at least some roof damage, some completely destroyed, huge trees ripped from their roots on the side of the road, abandoned cars that had been flooded out, a boat in the street, entire shopping malls boarded up and lifeless.. I've never seen anything like it and I'm sure what we saw is just the beginning.

Birmingham was a lot more fun than I anticipated (not sure what I was expecting but it was a lot of fun). After the show we ended up at a bar called the Nick where Hotel Lights (the drummer from Ben Folds Five sings in the band) were playing. We had no intention of going to see a band.. it was completely random, and they were pretty amazing.

Dallas, Austin and Houston

Its hot in Texas. And humid. We're getting our AC fixed in Houston but until the its windows-down on the highway. The Gypsy Tea Room is a great club with a smaller 300 capacity room and a larger one that must hold at least 600. We didn't know until we got there that Mates of State were playing in the big room. Fortunately both shows were packed . I didn't get to check out Mates of State since they went on right when we did but I watched Sound Team play for a while and I actually really liked it. I've never heard their record but the live show was cool.

Fortunately our Austin show was before the entire music industry rolls into Austin for SXSW. The film stuff was going on but its no comparison to how packed the town gets later in the week. The show at the Parish was great. (my first time there). My parents drove over from Houston for the show so I didn't end up really taking any pictures.

After the show we went to Sidebar on 7th street where I REALLY wish I had had my camera. Har Mar Superstar was there but the really crazy thing was seeing Andy Dick, every bit as drunk as you would hope he would be out in public.

The drive to Houston was our last highway-with-the-windows-rolled-down-because-our-AC-is-still-broken drive:





The highlight of the Houston show was the crew my parents brought to the show, including my dad's friend Chuck who immediately bought shirts from both bands, and wore the Youth Group shirt during their set and the mpPA shirt during our set. Later that night at my parents' house we decided to see how we all would look in the new emo kid hat Dan bought:











We spent the day off in Houston getting the AC in the van fixed, doing laundry, eating, sitting around, and eventually watching the Constant Gardener, which is a pretty amazing movie.

Scottsdale and on to Texas

The last time that we drove from California to Arizona was on the Keane tour in June of 2004. We had no AC due to a mishap during the attempted construction of a loft prior to leaving for the tour. It was 95 in LA when we left and 110 in Phoenix when we arrived. We were pouring entire bottles of water on ourselves during the drive only to watch them evaporate almost instantly.

This time we had no AC due to the fact that our van seems to have it out for us. All of the mishaps we've had with the van have been the result of bad luck - we actually can't blame ourselves for this problem this time around. Fortunately the weather was much more cooperative - we actually experienced the first rain in Scottsdale (all 10 minutes worth) in something like 145 days. We also passed the stadium where Barry Bonds will train for the upcoming baseball season during which he will most likely (barring injury or an unforseen act of humility on his part) defile baseball history by breaking Hank Aaron's home run record, unquestionably with the aid of steroids.

This was my favorite aspect of the Scottsdale show, a quote from Ron Burgundy on the wall of the dressing room:



And here is a pretty boring pic of us hanging out backstage:


After the show Youth Group joined us at a bar to celebrate something I'm not supposed to talk about.

The next day we started the 20 hour drive to Dallas. This is without a doubt one of the most boring, least scenic drives I've ever done in my life. We stopped at the Texas Welcome Center just over the border to throw the football around a bit:



And you could see the moon during the day:



We got back in the van and made it as far as Midland, Texas, where we stopped at a hotel for the night. The hotel shared a parking lot with this place, where you can apparently get rhinestones put on anything:



It was also nice to see that we were at a hotel that was doing something to combat the wasteful internet surplus:

less internet(click on the link to play the movie or right-click save-as to save the file).

LA and San Diego

Its great to be on the west coast, especially because we haven't played any shows out here since we opened for Keane in June of 2004. After not being allowed into the Troubadour for an hour due to the fear that we might steal the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' rental gear that was still inside, we finally got to load in and soundcheck and in Dan's case, shower. Unfortunately the Troubadour marquee doesn't lend itself to great photos:



Trevor at work mixing for Youth Group:


After playing a sold-out show to one of our stranger audiences (there were vocal objections from audience members to both our setlist and the sound in house) I caught a ride down to Irvine so that I could spend the next morning with my friend Momoko and her painfully cute daughters Kimi and Mia:







After meeting up at Rubio's (one of the many California Mexican food chains that should open a store in New York) we drove down to the Epicentre in San Diego.

Classic Naked Gun reference pic:


There were only about 200 people at the show but they were a great audience. A few of them had heard our KEXP show and had written down Trevor's phone number, which is hilarious. The night ended with a run to another favorite California institution, In N Out Burger.

Portland, a blizzard, and San Francisco

The short drive from Seattle to Portland was pleasant enough. We arrived at the Doug Fir Lounge in Portland only to find out that they also have a nice hotel that we could have stayed at were it not for the fact that we had to drive overnight to San Francisco immediately after the show.

The audience in Portland was maybe the the most enthusiastic of the tour so far, which makes it a lot more fun to play. Dead silence between songs is kind of creepy. Again it would have been great to hang out after the show at the Doug Fir, but we packed the van up and got on the road immediately.

The first chunk of the drive went smoothly. Around 5:30am we switched up teams and Dan took over the wheel. As we approached the California border we started seeing signs that I-5 was closed due to a blizzard in the Cascade mountains. We kept driving until we were forced off of the highway in Yreka, where a cop told us that they hoped to have the 5 reopened by the end of the day. We ended up going over to wal-mart to buy chains (and support a truly wonderful company) but they didn't have chains for our trailer, so we waited another hour for an auto parts store to open. They didn't have the chains either so we just got on the highway hoping that one of the chain installers on the road would have the chains for the trailer. Luckily he did, so we drove at about 30mph for 3 hours through this:











Somehow we made it through ok. At one point a tractor trailer jackknifed next to us. Matt could see a car rear end the trailer and total itself in the rear view mirror. The Youth Group guys weren't able to make the show at all.. Apparently they reclosed the 5 after we got through. Given what we saw, it really shouldn't have been open in the first place, but if it hadn't been we would have had to cancel the show in San Francisco.

The show in San Francisco was great despite Youth Group's absence and pouring rain. We missed the Oscars, but I was glad that Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ang Lee won. I think Crash winning best picture will go down in history with Angelina Jolie in Girl Interrupted and Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinnie as one of the worst Oscar wins in the history of the awards. The voters passed up 4 pretty amazing films in order to pat themselves on the back for their collective ability to cut through the proverbial bullshit and show us what racism really means in 2005. I don't believe in the whole "Hollywood liberal agenda" garbage but they certainly are out of touch with the world outside Malibu, which is maybe the only thing that Crash successfully demonstrates. The only reason I even saw Crash was that I was on a plane and had already finished my book, and it was still a waste of time.

Really I'm just bitter that we missed Jon Stewart...

Vancouver and Seattle (again)

Vancouver is another place on this tour that I had never been before and had always wanted to go. The Red Room is kind of on the edge of downtown. Sometimes you get to actually see a decent amount of a city in a day on tour. In Vancouver we saw a few square blocks of downtown near the club, as well as the many sex shops and prostitutes who inhabit the area near our hotel.

With all of our gear getting ripped off and having the van break down 3 times, we kind of assumed we'd been through enough on this tour. That was until about halfway through Youth Group's set in Vancouver, at which point the power source blew on the mixing board. The show just stopped. Dan compared it to an apparently famous Iron Maiden show in New York years ago where a fan poured a beer on the sound board after only 3 or 4 songs, destroying the board and ending the show. I think we all assumed we wouldn't be able to play, but the promoter was able to get a new board over in 15 minutes. Most of the crowd stuck around and the show went well.

We went back to our hotel (apparently in the red light district) and went to sleep after a fruitless search for a place to get one drink before going to sleep.

The next day we drove back down to Seattle to do an on-air performance on KEXP, probably the best radio station in the country.
This really made us glad to be back in the States after a day in Vancouver:



And this thing is in Seatte:



During the radio show Trevor's cell phone rang on the air, which prompted us to give out his phone number (which fortunately I remembered) for people to call us with suggestions for what to do with our night off in Seattle. Within a few minutes Trevor had about 10 voicemails and a few text messages.

We ended up going out to a few bars near the Crocodile Cafe. The night ended with Trevor and I telling a girl at a bar that we were a rap metal duo with a strong Kenny G influence.

Boise and Seattle

I had never been to Boise, Idaho before this tour, and I don't have a strong desire to return. The show was at a place called "Bourbon Street" and we happen to be playing there on Mardis Gras, which is kind of ridiculous. A show on Mardi Gras in Boise, Idaho at a place called Bourbon Street.

As soon as I walked onstage to set up a kid said "thank you for coming here" in a way that only kids from places like Boise can.

Dave Chappelle was on tv in the dressing room, followed by the Amazing Race, which we watched up until we had to play. I like how they refer to the openly and obviously gay couple as "lifelong friends". smooth...

We played the show and afterwards I ate my chicken caesar salad, which was delicious. After the show we got in the van and drove two hours to Baker City, Oregon in order to cut down on the drive to Seattle.



Dan and I went to a gas station to get some chips. There was a cop asking the woman working there to look at mug shots and identify the man who had apparently robbed the place the night before. She was able to identity the suspect, saying she was 60% sure he was the guy. She also guessed he was 32 though the man in the mug shot she picked out looked to be at least 40 to me.

The next day during the rest of the drive to Seattle Trevor purchased some Valentine's Day candy hearts that were on sale. Trevor is not one to pass up a bargain like that, and I'm glad that he didn't. The box of hearts had one with the word email on it. I couldn't get a picture of it where you can see the word but here is one to prove that the heart at least exists:



The show in Seattle was our first with Youth Group. I got a new amp delivered to the show in Seattle so now I'm more or less back to normal gear-wise. The show was sold out and Youth Group sounded great (and they are great guys who are a lot of fun to tour with). We went back to the hotel and fell asleep.

I will update this soon I swear

I realize I have fallen off on the tour updates. I have a lot of pics to upload etc.. I will it as soon as a I can. Youth Group is a great band and they are all great guys. Really happy to be on tour with them. More to come soon..

Our f***ing van

So we already had to take our van in once on tour, the morning after the show at the Paradise in Boston. The dealership in MA couldn't find anything wrong with it so we kept going. It gradually got worse and worse over the next few weeks. It was never perfect but seemed like it would at least be able to get us through the tour.

After a really fun incident where I had to restart the van while not being able to accelerate above 20 mph trying to get on the highway in Minneapolis, we decided to take the van into a dealer in Madison. After doing a ton of repairs that forced us to cancel both St. Louis and Lawrence, Kansas we thought we would be ok but it became apparent within an hour of leaving Madison that the van still wasn't 100%. We made it to Denver ok and played one of the better shows of the tour (in front of 400 people, far more than we expected here).

This morning we got up to drive to Salt Lake City. Matt got into the van and said "the key won't move at all." The ignition block was just frozen - couldn't shift, couldn't turn at all, the key wouldn't move an inch. We called AAA and hung out in the parking lot until the repair guy came:


Steve-o took the whole situation in stride, as is his way:


We also decided to re-enact the old "Oh what a feeling" Toyota commercials in tribute to our piece of shit van:


We finally got moving when the van decided to stop accelerating again, so now we are stuck in Fort Collins, Colorado (which smells vaguely of manure). We just saw the Celebrity Fit Club finale. We're very proud of Young MC, who lost an impressive 38 pounds. And now our Domino's pizza is here.

Minneapolis and Madison

The Varsity Theatre in Minneapolis:


Show pics taken by my friend Jess Johnson (who I don't get to see nearly often enough):














Also thanks to Jess for putting us up and taking us to one of her favorite "clubs".

The show in Madison was our only support slot on the tour, opening for the New Pornographers. They're a great band and were really cool to us. The promoter said that Carl Newman (singer of the New P's, and has an amazing solo record out as well) said something about how that bill would have been a great tour.

The New Pornographers in action: