T-Minus Four Weeks

Currently listening to: Mimicking Birds -- Mimicking Birds

Slowly knockin' down the to-do list, thankfully. It almost seems like every item I check off leads to another being added.

Checked off the list:

-Jetted to Edmond after working at my real job and met up with Zach. Together we proceeded to Firestone and initiated the necessary motions for three new trailer tires (MUCH needed after who knows how many months of saying "man, we're going to have a trailer blowout this time"). Seriously, you should see these tires. The axel has some kind of misalignment issue, leading to the right tire wearing down extremely unevenly and severely. It's okay if we have a blowout because we have a spare--the tire that was in it's place before and is somehow still holding air. This issue (and constant fear when driving to shows) will be no more after this weekend.

-Car repair on the Suburban is also in motion. Road ready rig en route.

-Finally finished constructing padded and durable storage units for our crazy-huge, 1,364 watt smoke machine and laser generators. Whew.

-Met up with Wil and tackled a gnarly stack of email and promotion tasks. By next week, all of the venues we will be playing this summer will have tour posters to stick somewhere eye catching to advertise that particular show. We also constructed some media releases that will soon be trucked all across the nation by the trustworthy United States Postal Service for various magazines, blogs, labels, and other publications. Here's a bit of the late night handywork:

Promotion from across state lines is a dehydrating sport:

We topped off the evening prior to my Norman bound departure like most normal people do--with 10 syncopated pushups on a carpet floor. Mmmm.. revitalizing.

Got home late and watched "Up" for the first time. That old guy definitely did not have an instrument rating, no wonder descending through those clouds lead to trouble--"Mr. Fredrickson, turn left 1-8-0, descend and maintain 3,000 until established on the... uh there is no localizer ...or IAP out here . . . radar services terminated, maintain VFR." Training, people. Training.

T-minus four weeks, here's the tour as of now:

June 4 - Denton, TX - The Boiler Room
June 5 - Austin - Scoot Inn
June 19 - Wichita, KS - LIV Music Festival
June 21 - Lawrence, KS - Eighth Street Tap Room
June 22 - Columbia, MO - Mojo's
June 23 - St. Louis, MO - 2720 Cherokee
June 24 - Champaign, IL - Mike N' Molly's
June 25 - Chicago, IL - Quenchers
June 26 - Chicago, IL - Ronny's
June 27 - Indianapolis, IN - Birdy's Bar and Grill
June 29 - Memphis, TN - Nocturnal
June 30 - New Orleans, LA - The Circle Bar
July 1 - Austin, TX - Mohawk Lounge
July 2 - Denton, TX - The Boiler Room
July 6 - Amarillo, TX - 806 Coffee Lounge
July 8 - El Paso, TX - The Percolator
July 12 - Phoenix, AZ - The Rogue Bar
July 14 - Los Angeles, CA - The Viper Room
July 15 - San Francisco, CA - Pissed Off Pete's
July 17 - Portland, OR - Big Busk Music Festival
July 17 - Portland, OR - Mt Tabor Theater
July 18 - Portland, OR - Rotture
July 20 - Seattle, WA - Comet Tavern
July 21 - Provo, UT - Velour Music Gallery
July 22-25 - Denver, CO - Underground Music Showcase Festival
July 24 - Fort Collins, CO - Avogadro's Number
July 25 - Lincoln, NE - The Bourbon Theater
July 26 - Omaha, NE - O'leaver's Pub
July 28 - Chicago, IL - Quenchers
July 30-31 - Tulsa, OK - Free Tulsa Music Festival



It's a beautiful Friday morning and I have a great day ahead full of sunshine, band stuff and a pretty girl. Man, life is hard.

--life on the line continues!

Tulsey Town!

Currently listening to: Bela Fleck and the Flecktones -- Live Art

We met up around 3pm to jam a bit before taking off for Tulsa, I city notorious for the constantly changing face of its music infrastructure. It seems like there is always a new venue opening up in place of an old one shutting down, responsibility and ownership changing hands and bands fading off the map as quickly as new ones emerge. Point in case: the tale of The Marquee, Crystal Pistol's revival from the 1980's and most recently (and most commonly known at this point) DFest's "hibernation." I learned some details on that from a few plugged-in Tulsa natives but let's just stick with "it's not happening this year." Don't worry--it looks like there are plans in the works for blowout DFest-relief, outdoor shows in Norman and Tulsa, both of which are being worked on by solid, accountable individuals. We may end up with the tough decision on our plates of which to attend (admittedly not the worst decision to face).

To get back on track--we met up at 3pm to jam. Looks like we may have a new one in the works; time will tell what happens with this fragmented sonic love child:

As we're loading the trailer and preparing to head out, a neighbor who just so happens to be a member of Gentle Ghost is doing the same. Wil: "where are you guys off to?" Scott: "...the show. We're playing the show with you tonight!" Come to find out the Crystal Pistol show now consisted of Gentle Ghost, Student Film, The Non and Native Lights. We hit the road around 5:30pm--everything starts late in T-Town:

We knew everything started late in T-Town but underestimated just how late. An issue with the PA put the four band bill kicking off around 10:35, notably late but somehow just right for Tulsa, really. In that down time, however, fifteen minutes of fireworks were visible to the north of the skyline. Somebody else was having a good night too, I guess. Gentle Ghost did an awesome job, Student Film was definitely having an "on" night. Seriously--so, so good last night. Student Film is one of my favorite local bands and they blew it away. Their new material is just awesome and few things are as fun to watch as Sethy doing what he does, swinging from side to side like one of those towering cranes being used to build the Devon tower downtown except on speed. Lots of speed.


Our set was equally "on." The stage was so small that we did not even set up our can lights (the four high-wattage, halogen lights that often come on and off via foot pedal at bigger local shows) and could hardly move without risking the [inevitable] collision of guitar headstocks. It was what could be called a "dry show" in terms of the visual effects: lasers, tower lights, can lights and smoke. BUT it does not take all that fancy stuff to make a great show. We all felt great about the performance and received some great feedback. Something about everything starting so late, moving in such a rapid-fire fashion (we were loaded on the stage and off in about seven and four minutes, respectively) and feeling so intense fit the evening perfectly, which took place at--let's not forget--the Crystal Pistol, a venue which saw a lot of my favorite punk bands travelling through in the 80's. I'm glad this place has been revived.


I drew the short straw and got to drive home. We hit the road, homeward bound, around 2am. Arriving back at the launchpad in OKC at something like 4am, we all took turns joking about Tulsa's endless plaid and mustaches and considering going to Waffle House:

4:30am saw my sweaty face hit the pillow, not to rise again until 2:30 in the afternoon later that day. Man, I'm ready for tour.






--life on the line continues!

So--Here We Are.

The idea of journaling on the road always sounds cool but never really comes to fruition. I've tried before to no avail--it's just too tedious and difficult to scrawl thoughts and observations in a notebook when you are driving for upwards of eight hours a day and sleeping on somebody's floor in a different city every night. Right, I know, you think "dude, you've got EIGHT HOURS to SIT, how difficult can it be?" For some reason, very. With all of this blogging business so popular now I thought it might be a good idea, and possibly the solution to the always annoyingly difficult writing-in-moving-automobiles issue, to type instead. I know, I'm deep. So--here we are.

I plan to update this thing fairly frequently with news on whatever I'm (we're) experiencing or thinking. This is primarily for my own sake, really. I think it will be pretty cool to look back on and have a slew of those "oooh yeah, that was the time when you..." moments. I don't suspect this will gain a lot of readers but, should anyone decide to follow the events of the summer for me and The Non, feel free.



A huge amount of work goes into booking a summer tour and getting all of one's "ducks in a row" for such an operation, especially as a DIY band without fancy things like record labels and managers. It's the nitty-gritty and a lot of local artists all around the country/world deserve more cred than they receive for the effort they put into this crazy business. It's not as easy as just driving to Dallas and eating Pop-Tarts. Before we actually hit the road for the six week's we'll be out, I'll go ahead and outline some of the preparation that goes into this kind of thing.

Plans for this summer stint have been in the works for about eight months--that's about where the "we're going to do this next summer" thoughts arise and everyone figures out whether or not they'll be able to hold on to their jobs or take summer classes. It takes some dedication, I have to say, on the part of the whole for four people to say "yes, I want to dedicate my summer to this and work my ass off beforehand and during and eat on a budget too low to reveal and forfeit any chance to hold down a real job and try to make money like normal kids." Planning is, as one would expect, a large part of all of this.

When projected dates are maybe three to four months away, the getting-intimate-with-the-computer-screen time sets in. Hours and hours and hours of email correspondence through both traditional email and MySpace (the sad social networking site now reserved for bands, strangely) take place, leading to an average of something like one confirmation on a date in 20 messages to different venues/bands (that you dig up using things like MySpace and Google). Getting those shows is a serious undertaking when you're nobody they've ever heard of and you're the 17th email in their inbox that day. TO GET THROUGH THIS DRAB PORTION AND MOVE ON--hard work and dedication lead to GOOD shows getting set up. It's not like every event booked in another town is the first one that said "yes." We have some seriously great shows lined up with some incredible bands at some awesome venues.

It should be noted that Wil has been the key figure in booking most of this stuff. His dedication is seriously to be commended.

That whole booking process is endless. It will continue out on the road, trying to confirm that one band for next Tuesday or whatever the case may be. There is no doubt in my mind we'll book off the cuff, too: walking into coffee shops in the afternoon and trying to set up a show on the spot. You have to just reach a point and say "well, there's the tour, boys." Hopefully everyone feels good about it (in The Non's case--we most definitely do).

I'll go ahead and cap this entry here, with a brief summation of what went on yesterday, what's happening today, and what needs to get accomplished in the near, near (too near) future: Yesterday was an eventful day in the world of merch. Wil, Zach and I got together and bought new road-ready merch gear to hold t-shirts and CDs. We inventoried and folded a bunch of shirts. Rock 'n roll! Previously that afternoon, Wil and I met up to discuss some registration and financial issues that we're working with but that's a bit too dry and personal to reveal. Today is a jam day; we'll be getting together this afternoon to have some fun jamming, seeing what new ideas get sucked through the cosmos and put out by our hands and minds. We're hoping to have at least three new songs to debut and finely hone on the road in the coming weeks. Tomorrow holds (as does today) more emails and media updates: FB, Twitter, MySpace, etc. An abbreviated version of the to-do list reveals the following:

• Hard copy tour notebook
• Summer budget
• Media to venues
• Bands for some existing gigs
• FB events
• Car/trailer repair
• Laser/smoke road cases
  

It's all great stuff!

Certainly, it is quite time consuming to do all of this, the whole band thing, as one would imagine. It is a decision we all made a few years ago. It's not just the garage rockin' you do when you're 14 (or 57 for that matter) but a part of your life. There's always something going on and it's basically as significant as school in terms of time, frequency of events and required attention. It is almost like what a signifant other might require and be happily, willingly given. ...this brings a whole new meaning to "music is my girlfriend." Seriously. Anway--it is all GREAT and a HUGE amount of fun and I feel incredibly lucky to be a part of something like this. Always have, always will. Alas, the to-do list grows...

Tour poster designed by Scott Hill

--life on the line continues!