February/March 2010 Tour, Day 9

We wake up, and the dogs are all walking around me and being annoying. Billy is up too, and he makes people coffee. His roommate asks if he’s heard what’s happened. Billy says “no” and his roommate says “someone flew a plane into a building in Austin.” It takes me a second to remember that we’re like 5 miles away from Austin. We turn on the TV and it’s all over the news. Some guy intentionally flew his small plane into an IRS center in Austin. Cool? I dunno. No one was kiled, so I guess that’s good, although impossible. I make a joke about how “this is what people get when they let the Atom Age play in cities” and say that we should tell everyone that that guy was at the show last night. For those people who don’t know, that guy was at the show last night. He really was. Promise.

We pack up and get ready to leave. I get to take another towel less shower. Doing jumping jacks in the bathroom is an effective way to dry yourself, but it takes awhile. We thank Billy for everything, and we head out. In the van, we say that if we would want anyone in the world to be our manager, we would want Billy. Our drive is to Houston today. Also, today is the day we get the album. Finally. The drive to Houston is only a few hours, nothing terribly exciting.

We pull into FedEx parking lot, and Ryan goes inside and comes out a few minutes later with a box. We bust it open in the van, and there it all is. 150 copies of our first release. We all grab a digipack, and Ryan opens up one and puts it in the car stereo to check to see if the tracks are all correct. They are, everything seems to be in order. Ryan ejects the disc and says “if you guys want to listen to this, you can. I almost committed suicide mixing and mastering this, and I never want to hear it again.”

We head from there over to the venue. Walter’s On Washington. Tonight is our first ska show of what will soon be many. We’re also playing our first show with “The Real Deal” from Canada. We go inside Walter’s, and there’s a pretty big stage and a bar and a place for merch. It’s not a big space, but they use the space well. You could fit a few hundred people in here, but the max capacity says something ridiculous like 150. We load in and set up merch, and sit around for awhile. I sample my new hot sauces, and encourage everyone around me to, as well. People start showing up, and I guess we’re playing first, so we set up. I get a mic tonight. Joy!

We play our set, and I think we’re sounding good. The past few nights have been solid; I think we’re basically in tour mode so the playing won’t vary too much from here on out. Playing first sucks, and the crowd is small. But, someone’s got to play first. There’s only 3 bands tonight, anyways. We seem to get a good response, some people pick up the brand new CD. Hooray!

The Real Deal are setting up, and Peter tells me that they’re a pop punk band, so I should like them. Ok, cool. They play sort of an MxPx-style skate punk, and they are completely ridiculous on stage. The lead guitarist is the most goofy guy I’ve ever seen play ever. It’s to a whole ‘nother level. They do the whole Blink 182 stupid stage banter stuff that lots of these types of bands do. But, I like them. I miss skate punk, and their songs are good and it takes me back in the day. The rest of the band can’t take it though. They think it’s the cheesiest music, ever. Ryan says that this makes The Leftovers look like 3 Inches Of Blood. We have at least 5 more shows with these guys, which I’m excited for, but the rest of the band isn’t. Sucks to be them. After their set, I thank them for playing and told them that I really liked them and I was glad that we would be having a few more shows together.

I go outside to talk to Danny. I talk to her for longer than I originally thought, and I missed the ska band that played last. This is fine, I’m seeing them tomorrow, too. After I get off the phone with Danny, I help load out, and ask if we’ve got a place to stay tonight. Peter and Ryan say we don’t. I kind of roll my eyes, and think “there’s got to be someone here that will let us crash with them”. The reason we don’t have a place to stay is because we don’t try at all to find a place. I go inside and talk to a few people, and they direct me to the bass player of The Failed Attempt (the ska band I missed). She tells me that we can probably stay with her brother, and she gets a hold of him and works it out. Awesome.

So we finish loading out before we all hop in the van. The guy gives us his address, and because we have GPS, we get food before we follow the directions to his place. He lives in a gated apartment complex, and Ryan is worried about leaving the van inside overnight, because there are signs saying “We Will Tow You” and the van and our trailer take up like 4 parking spots. The guy meets us outside, says that the parking situation is fine, and we head inside his apartment. It’s a small place, and we all get setup in the living room. The guy says that we have to be out by 9:30 the next morning. That’s insanely early for us, so we decide to get some sleep.

February/March 2010 Tour, Day 8

We wake up late, and there isn’t a lot of time to do anything before we have to check out. We decide to head into Austin and go to a Guitar Center. We hang around there for about an hour, just messing around on stuff. I played some surf songs on this nice Fender Deluxe, which sort of brought a little bit of California into Texas. Ryan, of course, slept in the van.

Afterwards, we head into downtown Austin. I’ve been bugging them ever since we got to Austin to let me go to this hot sauce shop called Tears of Joy, which I’ve known about for awhile. I love hot sauce shops, and since I don’t really go to the LA area much anymore, I can’t really go and buy lots of hot sauces that you can’t get most places. So, we go over there and they drop me off. There is a huge line of emo looking kids standing in line for some show in front of this venue, but I just head into the hot sauce shop.

I take a look around and I see all of the familiar hot sauces. They have a shelf for the super extract hot sauces which is shaped like a coffin. After I grab a bottle of the Tears of Joy hot sauce that they make themselves in the store, I ask the guy at the counter the guy at the counter for his recommendations on hot sauces. I ask him what the spiciest hot sauce that still retains flavor is, and he points me to one of the Ghost Chile sauces. I’ve had the Melinda’s ghost chile sauce, and I like it a lot, so I picked up the bottle he recommends. I ask him some more questions, and he’s being kind of a jerk to me for no reason. I mean, I’m the only one in the entire shop, and I’m just asking simple questions about hot sauce. I go up to the counter to checkout and I tell him that I’ve been looking forward to coming to his shop, and tell him that I’m from California, and the only hot sauce place that I know of is the one in LA. The guy says “I went there. I wasn’t really impressed. This place is bigger and has more variety.” Come on, guy. No unity between hot sauce shops? I grab my bottles and leave.

I ask one of the emo girls outside what the line is for. They said “We The Kings”. I don’t know who that is, so I call the guys to come pick me up. They ask who the line is for, and I say “We The Kings”. Ryan knows who they are, and their some sort of emo band, of course. We see their huge tour bus parked outside the venue, and we see them hanging out outside of it. They are way way emo. It kinda gets me down a little bit to know there’s this huge line of people waiting to see terrible music. Oh well.

It’s Ash Wednesday, apparently. John, who has never expressed an interest in religion before, ever, wants to be dropped off at a church so he can do whatever. The rest of the band gives him crap about it, but we have time to kill, so whatever, we drop him off at some church. The rest of us go and find this café that has free wifi. We hang out for awhile, I eat a cupcake, and John comes back with the ridiculous ash crap on his forehead. I’m thinking that his Columbian mother probably guilt tripped him into going to church today.

Anyhow, we eventually head over to Headhunters where we’re playing tonight. There’s nowhere to park, so I jump out and head inside. I walk in, and it’s this smallish bar, but they have a stage. Not many people are there, yet. I walk up to the bartender and say that I’m from the Atom Age and that we’re playing tonight. He’s this huge metal-looking guy, and he turns to me and goes “YAAH!?” I’m used to bartenders not really knowing what’s going on, and being kinda like “well… uh… I don’t really know what’s going on, you should probably talk to the promoter… or something… lemme see if he’s here yet” and not really being forward about anything. But, this guy is loud and swears a lot and is generally awesome. He tells me where to load in, and some more info, so I go outside to tell everyone else. They go and find a place to park, and I go back inside. The promoter was there, this other big guy with a New York style accent named Billy, equally loud and equally nuts. Him and the bartender would yell at each other, and make fun of the patrons. TRU TV was on (which is this channel that has shows like high speed police chases, or people fighting, or other crazy stuff caught on camera) and every time someone got punched in the face or hit by a car, the bartender would go “HOLY FUCK!” or similar.

I walk scope the place out a little more, and I head out to the back patio. Low and behold, there’s like 30-40 kids back there. This got me pretty juiced. There’s 5 bands playing tonight, and having a turnout like this before the first band plays is phenomenal. Not too much longer after this, I realized that there was actually going to be 2 shows in this bar tonight, one on the back patio, one inside the bar. The back patio show is all ages, and there’s only 2 bands playing, but they’ve still drawn a crowd. They were setting up, and I caught the name of one of the bands. It was “We Deal Suicide”. So, this was most likely another screamo/post-hardcore/metal show. Great.

I went back inside and it was time for the first band to play, but they didn’t show up. So, the next guy went on. He was beat boxing. But, somehow, it wasn’t lame. It was just him and an acoustic guitar, but he beat boxed and played bass with his mouth. He also played harmonics on the top strings of his guitar, and then let them ring while he played the melody on the bottom strings. It was really cool, and nothing I had ever seen before. He was a one man rock band. He played sort of slow alternative stuff, which was pretty much perfect for what he was doing. It was cool. He was called Bow Legged Gorilla. During the last song of his set, this guy in the bar lights a glass pipe (weed) and goes up to the performer and blows it in his face. Bow Legged Gorilla maintains perfect composure, which is impressive because he’s doing like 4 things at once. The bartender takes the guy and literally throws him out of the bar by his jacket. This, too, was impressive.

I went outside to the back patio, and the band out there had started. And, I got pissed. Synchronized headbanging of the guitarists in a formation is not cool. Two lead singers is not cool. In fact, there were so many things not cool about this band that I got kind of mad. So, I went back inside. The combination of “We The Kings” earlier, and this stuff now, was just lame.

We played next, which was alright. The stage was super small, and there were hardly any people in the bar. I literally couldn’t move an inch on stage. We played well, the sound was good, but I couldn’t move and was in a not so good mood. The people that saw us seemed to like us fine; I think we sold some merch, too. The sound guy came up to us after our set and was extremely impressed by us. He said “I’ve seen thousands of bands play, and you guys were one of the best bands I’ve ever seen.” He actually came and talked to us a few times later in the night to reiterate himself, and to say that he was “giddy” and “star-struck”. Wow.

The band that was up after us was Homeless People. Remember them? The crusty anarchist folk-punk duo that we played with in Las Cruces? When we were loading in, I said “hi” to them, but didn’t really strike up any conversation with them. We loaded all our gear outside, and hung out outside and talked to Billy, who was constantly making fun of Homeless People. I felt a little bit bad for them, but then they went on this preachy rant about how Texas is super racist, and I wasn’t anymore. I also found out that they rapped over their accordion and fiddle playing, and that hurt my feelings.

The last band was called Knights, or something. They described themselves to me before they played as “Alternative Prog, kind of like Radiohead or Rage Against The Machine”. For those of you not catching on, tonight we’ve played with 2 acoustic bands and these guys. Who puts together these bills? They weren’t bad at all, but I don’t really like Radiohead, so it wasn’t for me. I went outside and guarded the gear, and called Danny, whose best friend just broke up with her boyfriend. There was a hippie pizza place next door, so I grabbed a slice. Later on, some girl went in there and started screaming at one of the guys. I think the guy slept with someone and lied about it, or something. I like it when hippies get yelled at; it proves their not the perfect people they make themselves out to be.

Billy offers us a place to crash at his place. Very cool. This guy is seriously awesome. He liked our band, too. We leave, and we have to follow this guy in his van and he’s driving like a maniac. We get to his place, and he’s got a few dogs that are overly friendly, of course. He’s got 2 couches, and Peter and John take them, the rest of us are on the floor. The guy offers us a pipe, and says he doesn’t smoke. I realize that this is the pipe the guy he kicked out had; he must have confiscated it. We all decline, and head to bed.

February/March 2010 Tour, Day 7

I wake up fairly early and before anybody else, and decide to go into the Pilot and the built in McDonald’s, because I know from my tech news that all Mickie D’s have free wifi now. I write in the tour journal for awhile. I get up and go to the bathroom and I hear over the intercom “Customer number 7, your shower is ready. Customer number 7, your shower is ready.” I think “they have showers here!?” I haven’t showered in a few days, and I was kind of gross. Sure enough, they did have showers, but I decided against it. They also had laundry, so I kept this in mind for future reference.

Brendan comes in eventually and tells me that we’re all about to head out, so I put my computer back in my bag and get in the van. We only had a short drive to Austin. Ryan is still not feeling well, and we pull up to a mall and Ryan sleeps in the van again. Peter and I are getting kinda sick of malls; we’re in fucking Austin, Texas, there’s got to be something to do. John is there to get a new phone charger because his is on the frizt. John talks to his mom and dad for at least an hour every day, no matter what. It’s kind of weird. The rest of the band calls it “Hola, Papa time” because he always answers the phone this way. We go in the mall and I give Danny a call and talk to her. John gets his charger and we walk around the mall a bit with me still on the phone. Eventually we leave because the mall sucks.

Ryan wants to sleep some more, so he offers to get a motel room early so he can sleep until the show. This is fine with us, and it guarantees a place for us to spend the night tonight as well. We find this fairly cheap motel, and Ryan gets us a double bed room. We head inside and I start writing in the tournal journal, and Peter and Brendan read their books (Peter is reading this series of trashy mystery novels, and Brendan is reading Macbeth), while Ryan takes a shower and gets some sleep. John is outside having “Hola Papa” time. I make myself some EZ Mac in the motel microwave. Eventually, we leave to head to the venue.

We’re playing at this place called “Red 7” in downtown Austin. We’re playing in Austin tomorrow night too, and we pass the bar we’re playing at on the way there. We get to the bar, and it’s this big red building. I hop out and go inside. It’s really cool, it’s a communist themed bar. It’s really big, too. They have a few pool tables and arcade games, and a bunch of drinks that are pretty funny. Like one called “The Eazy E” which is just a 32 of High Life in a brown paper bag. They have an indoor stage and an outdoor stage, and we’re playing on the indoor one because it’s cold out. I go outside to check it out later on, and it’s this huge stage and an area that could well accommodate at least 500 people. They also have a green room set up in the back where we could hang out, and it had a mini fridge with energy drinks and water we could help ourselves to. We didn’t really spend any time back there, but some of us grabbed a few drinks. We loaded in, and I found out that the pool tables were free, so I got a few games in with the guys before the first band started playing. They were that sort of Jawbreaker style whiney punk that I’m not the biggest fan of, so I went outside and talked to Danny. I was in downtown, and I looked around and it was actually pretty cool. There were venues everywhere, and all sorts of different types of people. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought I was in downtown SF.

After the first band gets done playing their set, Peter, Brendan, and I go out in search of food. I think Danny (or somebody) told me it was Mardi Gras today, so there were a ton of people with beads on and just people everywhere, in general. I don’t think people in SF really celebrate Mardi Gras, but I was in The South now, so it was a little bit more noticeable. We walk around, and we must have passed like 5 venues in the short walk we took. Punk clubs too, I noticed a few bands I had heard of on their calendars. We got food at this pizza truck, and this group of people came up to us dressed in medieval garb, and this lady dressed as a nun handed us a flyer for something called “Medieval Smut.” Okay. We head back to the bar.

I killed time until we were up. There were 5 bands playing tonight, and we were 4^th. The first 3 bands were punk bands, or some offshoot of punk, and they at least could play their instruments properly and behaved like a real band. It’s depressing to have to point that out, because it’s a change from what this tour has been so far. We set up and start playing. Of course, we blow the power on the 2^nd song. I like that we play insanely loud, and that usually we’re the only band that trips the circuit breaker. It’s kind of a testament to the energy that we like to display onstage. But, after the countless number of times that this has happened, it gets to be a little annoying, but it’s always funny.

We’re playing second to last, so a few people have already left, but we play to maybe 10-20 people. They all seem to like us, and some of them buy some merch. The sound in the monitors was really good, and we all agreed that it was the best we’ve played so far this tour. I think that we’re broken in and are in “tour mode” now, which is good. The final band goes on, and they’re like a grunge/alternative band that sounds a lot like Sound Garden. They weren’t half bad, and at the end of their set, Ryan said that that band was easily as good as Sound Garden.

We pack up and leave, and we get a decent amount for a Tuesday night. We didn’t make $100, but we’re in Austin another night, so we don’t have to buy gas tonight. We get some food somewhere and then head back to the motel room. We sit around and eventually go to bed.

February/March 2010 Tour, Day 6

I woke up and most everyone else was already up. Brendan got to take a shower, and I was jealous, because we were all figuring out what we were doing and thinking about heading out. I get my stuff together and check my phone, and Danny had tried to call me and she texted me saying that her granddad had died, and left me a voicemail telling me that she wanted to talk. A bit later she tries to call again but I was loading the van up so I texted her saying that I would call her soon. Once the van was loaded, I called her back and she was a little ticked off that I hadn’t been answering my phone, because her grandpa dying was a big deal and she wanted to talk to me. This is valid, and I said I was sorry. Ryan stays in and sleeps, and we go out with the lady to get some more Tex-Mex food at this little diner place that she says is really good. We take her car and we go in and I order an enchilada plate, and then go outside to talk to Danny some more while the food gets ready. I talk to her for a long time, and I get back inside and everyone is pretty much done eating. I eat real fast, but it’s OK because it wasn’t that great anyways. The place had homemade chips that were delicious though.

We go back to the lady’s place, and grab Ryan and start our epic drive to Austin, which is a 10 hour drive. We don’t have a show to play tonight, so today is pretty much a “drive day.” I listen to some podcasts and keep myself pretty entertained. We drove on the I-10 and it was sand and dry brush. We stopped at a gas station a few times. One of them had this little food place inside, and it was the first time that I heard a noticeable southern accent. They also sold gizzards. Ya know, like, to eat. Yum. We also stopped for some food at a KFC/Taco Bell and it was the first time that we got stares and people sort of gave us a “you’re not from around here, are you?” vibe. The guy at the counter asked where we were from almost immediately.

The one interesting thing that did happen was we got stopped at a border check point. John was driving, so of course they flagged us down and questioned us. Then they had us pull over to the side of the road and told us to all get out of the van and keep our hands out of our pockets. They had us stand 100 feet away from the van, and line up in a line while they search the entire van with a contraband sniffing dog. While we were in a line, we were surrounded on all sides by a bunch of border patrol agents. I’m always nervous around these types, because a few years ago I flew on an airplane and they checked my bag and found nothing, but after I landed after the flight, I looked through my bag and found a few hundred firecrackers that they luckly skipped over. Basically, I forget things in my backpack all the time because it has a million compartments, and I really don’t know what is in there. The dog finds nothing in the van, of course, so they let us on our way. Later that night I looked through my bag and found an empty package of firecrackers. Those dogs can’t smell shit; that dog was literally directly on top of my bag.

We listened to the Lonely Island, and then Mitch Hedberg, and then Daniel Tosh in the van. John is from Columbia, so it was kind of funny noticing that he didn’t really understand the Mitch Hedberg jokes. We drove into some city about an hour out of Austin, and pulled into a Pilot gas station. It was freezing temperatures outside, and there was talk about John maybe buying a motel room for all of us, but I was more along the opinion that we should save our money and the wusses in the band should man up. Freezing really isn’t that cold; we all have sleeping bags and sweatshirts. We decide to stay in the van, which I approve of. I put my cooler outside and opened it up so that the contents would freeze. I put on a thermal long sleeve, a shirt, my sweatshirt, and my jacket on, as well as a beanie. I was warm, it was fine, and I slept well.

This entry is kind of short, aka acceptable in length, so I guess this is a good time to mention some of the stuff I forgot about or are just constant things that don’t really have a place in the timeline.

The van – The van is slowly committing seppuku. Peter and Ryan talk about it all the time, and they aren’t sure if we should sell it and get a new one, or pour money into it and get it fixed, or what. They keep talking about a “cam shaft” or something. I’m not sure either of them really know what they’re talking about, but I’m not sure of the converse of that either.

The tour journals – It seems that I’ve started a trend and Peter and Brendan now have a notebook each and are writing in it daily. Ryan thinks it’s silly, and I even think that it’s kinda silly, but we all do it anyways. My entries are about 5 times longer than theirs, I think, because I’m longwinded and enjoy detail.

Peter got hit on – I don’t know how I forgot about this. At the El Paso show, after our set, this girl comes up to us. She’s maybe a few years older than us, and I think she was half black or something; it was hard to see in the dark. Anyways, she approaches Peter and I and tells us what a good job we did and all that. She then says “I just love white boys” and “I didn’t like the band before you guys, but as soon as I saw y’all setting up, I knew y’all was going to be good.” She pinches Peter on the cheek. She leaves, but comes back a few minutes later and hands Peter a card with her number on it, written in black eyeliner. Peter has a girlfriend, but she doesn’t really come up much (I didn’t even know he had a girlfriend until months into being in the band) and Ryan and I wonder if she’s really in the picture or not. We totally want Peter to call her, because it would be hilarious. He doesn’t, of course.

We are going broke – This tour, so far, has been nothing but bad shows. Low payout at the door, and long drives between states is running us into the ground. We’re not really sure what we’re going to do about it just yet, but at the rate we’re going, we’re going to be paying out of our own pockets in order to get gas money. We’re out of the south west, where you’re just asking for a bad show, so hopefully things will start catching up. We profited on our last tour, so it’s not like it’s impossible.

Caster Holocaust – Throughout this tour, we’ve lost 1 wheel on Ryan’s cab, 1 wheel on Peter’s cab, and there’s one wheel on the bass cab that broke and is now literally half a wheel. This makes loading in and out totally blow. Especially the big bass cab. I’ve said that we should call this tour “Caster Holocaust,” and Ryan and Peter thought that it was funny. We really need to get new casters, but putting them on the cabs isn’t easy. I think you have to full dismantle the bass cab to do that, so fuck it.

I registered theatomage.com – In El Paso I got an email saying that someone had freed up “theatomage.com”, so I jumped on it and got it. Awesome.

February/March 2010 Tour, Day 5

We got a late checkout, but even still, I woke up 20 minutes before we had to checkout, and no one was awake yet. Whatever, I took a shower and shaved. I got out and most people were up and packing. Ryan was still asleep, and he woke up and got up when the cleaning lady came and asked if we were checking out. We had the whole day to kill in El Paso, so I read this little El Paso travel guide thingy which told me pretty much nothing at all, except that if you want to go into Juarez, you must be some sort of fucking retard. This is my first time in Texas, so that’s pretty cool.

We pack up and leave. We don’t really know where to go or what to do, so we default to a mall because they have teh webernetz, and we’re the punkest band in existence. Driving over there was a trip because on the left side of us was the United States and on the right side was Mexico. You could definitely tell which was which. The river was right next to the freeway, and beyond that was a bunch of buildings that looked all shitty and poorly made. We get to the mall. Ryan is feeling like shit still, so he sleeps in the van. We go to this little Tex-Mex place that’s in the parking lot of the mall; it’s not a chain or anything. We go inside and we’re the only gringos in the joint. We sit down and get menus, except for John who sits there with a Cup O’ Noodles. The waitress actually comes and gives him some hot water without him asking, which was cool of her. Burritos are $2 here, which is outrageous. Free chips and decent verde salsa, too. John has to do a little translating for me to make the waitress understand that I didn’t want any meat in the fajitas burrito I ordered. We get our food and holy shit, it was quite possibly one of the best burritos I had ever had in my life. It was just fajita vegetables, but they were so god damn good I was really losing my shit over it. John, after finishing his Cup O’ Noodles, gets really excited at the salsa bar, and makes himself a condiment salad. And, he ate it. All of it. Astounding. All the waitresses at this place were latinos except for one black waitress with an afro that made her seriously look like she was out of the 70’s.

Afterwards, we went over to the Atom Age embassy, and I sat and wrote in the tour journal and tried to jailbreak my iPhone until I realized that I couldn’t with the newest iPhones. Lame. I guess I’ll tether when Apple says I can tether. Hopefully that will be in June, but probably not. We’re there for awhile, but then we leave to go to Guitar Center and then to the venue. We’re playing at this place called Zen-Miesters, but when we get there, it’s closed. That’s ok, we were there early. We drive around and then go back to Barnes and Nobles, because we’re super cool.

At Barnes and Nobles, I sat next to this guy, and looked over at his computer and saw that he was bittorrenting like 20 downloads. I do a quick speed test on my computer and get 100kbps. For those of you who don’t know what this means, it’s less than 2x dial-up modem speeds aka real fucking slow. I walked over to him and gave him a bit of attitude and told him to maybe max his download speeds to maybe 30-40KBps so that he’s not throttling public wifi like an asshole. He doesn’t really respond, but whatever. We eventually head out and go back to Zen-Miesters.

We get there, and it’s open and the promoter is inside. We talk to her, and this show sounds like it’s going to be the first legit show we’ve played this tour. She said she promoted this show all week, and that she has a strict schedule for bands, and then she introduced us to the sound guy for the night who gave us a detailed rundown of exactly what was going on. It was nice to have it a little bit pro for a change. The only weird thing was that he said that bands would have an hour to play, and that if we went any longer, we would get kicked off the stage. Who seriously plays for an hour? We were playing 3^rd which was fine, and the first band loaded in. I stepped outside and called Danny and talked to her during the first band’s set, which was like a half hour. We loaded in to the designated area, and watched the second band.

The guy on one of the guitars had a Screeching Weasel shirt on, so that was a good sign to me. Both of the guitarists had Line 6 half stacks, which are the masters of tone. They also seemed to have a trumpet player, so this could get interesting. They went on, and the first chord this band played had so much Phaser effect over it that I kind of threw up a little. Did I mention Line 6’s many built-in effects? It really makes them the most versatile amp out there. The drummer was the lead singer, and was totally crazy and had a jew-fro. He also couldn’t really play at all and lost the rhythm frequently, but he was very fun to watch because he was being so nutso.

They played for an hour. It was unbearable. I guess they were slotted for that amount of time, so the club really didn’t care. They finally left the stage, and we loaded our gear on. It was nice having a sound guy, but I think he was doing a little too much, because the bar wasn’t that big. But, it was still cool, and it was good playing on a stage for the 2^nd time on tour. We did a sound check, and it was nice to hear the sax for once and Ryan was really clear. The bar had lost some of its people because of the massive set the last band played, but it was still a good show’s worth of people. We started up.

I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was the fact that I actually got a mic for the first time on tour, or that we sounded completely different because we had monitors for the first time on tour, but I played like a fucking idiot the first few songs. I wasn’t screwing up a lot, but I just felt disconnected from my instrument and I made more mistakes than I usually do. I told the band this later on, but they didn’t seem to notice, and Ryan said that he could hear me fine. We played less than a half an hour, which is how long you should play, god dammit. Before the set, I mentioned to Ryan that he should ask the audience for a place to spend the night, because we didn’t have a place to stay, and he did. The crowd reacted well, I think it was mostly guy pumping drinks into girls. Later on that night I saw this muscley guy with this really drunk girl and she fell backwards off of the bar stool and hit the ground pretty hard, but then got back up again, no problem.

We loaded our stuff off the stage and some kids came over to the merch table and got some stuff. This one guy started saying how he loved the Queers and was totally into pop punk. I tried to talk to him a little bit about pop punk, but besides Screeching Weasel and the Queers, he seemed a little lost, which is what usually happens when I try to talk to people about pop punk. He got the 7”, and wanted me to sign it. I got a sharpie and did. Autographs are lame, but I had never given one before, so that was interesting.

The last band played, and it had the promoter singing lead on it. They did a cool cover of Goodbye To You, and she came out in the crowd and sang with people, but I was the only one who knew the song. I think that she was kinda drunk, but she was a lot of fun to watch. The guitarist had a Marshall MG100DFX, which is my amp at home, and my band made fun of me on more than one occasion because it’s solid state and kinda lame, but I knew that already. The lead singer’s son was there, apparently, which surprised me, because she looked like she was in her twenties and her son looked like he was a young teenager. At one point the guitarist of the band dared the kid to say “blowjob” in front of his mom, and he pussied out and didn’t do it. They played for about an hour or so, and at the end she made her son go up and play a song solo. She said “You’re going to have to get used to this sometime.” He was surprisingly good.

After the show ended, we still didn’t know where we were spending the night. The promoter came up to us and said that we could crash at her place, but we had to be out by 11 and there wasn’t a lot of space there. That was fine by us, we didn’t care, and it was cold as hell in El Paso. She gives us her address and tells us to meet her there. We hang around for a bit, and then head over to get some food at Taco Cabana which is like a chain fast food place along the border that has Mexican food. It was extremely vegetarian friendly, which was nice. We headed back to the venue because Ryan said that this rockabilly chick said that the promoter lived on a shady part of town, and that we could crash with her instead. She said that she has 3 couches and that we could leave whenever, so that was incentive enough for us. Ryan called the promoter and said that we were headed somewhere else, and we followed this lady to her place.

We get there, and it’s this apartment on a small hill in a residential area. We get our stuff out of the van and when I cross the street, I almost get hit by this car going 80 mph down the hill and doesn’t even slow down. Seriously, I almost died, I jumped out of the way. We go up to this lady’s house, and her apartment is pretty cool. She has the walls decorated with vinyl, and some rock and roll stuff. She also had a 3 month old Chihuahua puppy that was seriously the smallest dog I’ve ever seen. It was pretty cute. We get settled in, and we talk to her for a long time about all sorts of crap. The Juarez drug wars, her accent, music, other stuff. We finally got to bed, though.

February/March 2010 Tour, Day 4

I woke up in the morning and it was extremely cold. I managed to muster up the nerve to grab my jacket and put it on, and I found out why it was so freezing. I looked at the walls of the van, and they were covered in condensation. The water had run down the wall and my feet had been pushed up against the wall, so the bottom foot of my sleeping bag was drenched. I got up and walked around the gas station and looked at the scenery, or what passed as scenery in Lordsburg, NM. We only had an hour or so drive, so we were in no hurry. I called Danny for the first time on tour, and we talked for a bit. Ryan was going to sleep as long as he could, so we were in the gas station for quite awhile, but we eventually left.

We drove to Las Cruces, and had a lot of time to kill, so we hit up Whataburger. Whataburger is this chain, which is a southern burger chain. I didn’t really get anything, but the burgers were gigantic. Afterwards, we leave and go to the Las Cruces mall. Ryan was just going to sleep in the van some more, but the rest of us head inside. I see that they have a Chuck E Cheese. I like arcade games, and I figured that arcades could still conceivably be around in New Mexico. I walk in and all their arcade machines suck, and are mostly all ticket-generating games. I don’t even think that they had Skee Ball, so that place was BS and I left.

Walking through this mall was a trip. It seemed like 80-90% of the mall-goers were teenagers. It was Saturday, so this must be where the entire teen population of Las Cruces goes on the weekends. I saw every single type of clique, every type of trend, and every type of hipster. It was like a teen culture museum, walking along this long hallway with small groups of Asian Goths or whatever gaggle of kids were sitting on one of the mall’s couch islands. I walked to the Atom Age embassy, which is Barnes and Nobles, and got bored pretty fast. Free wifi is not as exciting as long as you have 3G. I leave and then walk some more to people watch. And then, I come across the most perplexing mall store I’ve ever seen.

It’s this furniture store. When I passed by it the first time, I didn’t think that it was open, yet alone an actual functioning store. It’s this large mall space, like you could fit a small department store in it. But, instead of any sort of décor, cash registers, or even a single employee, the place was just a bunch of furniture sitting in the center of a large room. I walked inside and sat on a couch and threw my feet up, and watched while people trickled in, looked around a little confused, and came up to me and asked if I worked here. I told them I did not, so they left. At one 15 minute stretch of time, I was the only person in the entire store. I stood up on a table that was for sale and snapped a couple of pictures. A few minutes later, a security guard came in and came up to me and said “Are you here with your parents?”

This kind of puzzled me, and made me laugh a little to think “No, my parents are a thousand miles away.” I said “Haha, no, I wouldn’t say so.” And then, she asked “Are you over 18?” to which I replied “Yes.” She said “OK, I just have to make sure that kids don’t wreck this store.” So, I asked the million dollar question “What is the deal with this place?” and she said “You can buy furniture if you just call the number on that banner over there, so I guess it’s a display area or something. I just come in on my graveyard shift and sit on that very couch that you’re on; I know how comfortable it is.” I say “OK” and she leaves. Some kids come in later and start playing football with a full bottle of Coke. It was anarchy.

I got a call from Peter saying that we were leaving, so they came by the magical furniture paradise and picked me up and we left. We get in the van, and Ryan drives us all over to the venue. We drive up and I hop out. I greet the lady at the door and tell her that we’re the Atom Age and we’re playing later on, and she seems to know what’s going on. But, I ask her what time the show starts and she responds “Oh, you know, when bands show up.” I said “Ok, do you know about when that will be?” to which she replies “Not really, you’re the first band here.” I ask her how many bands are playing, and what the order was. She says “There are 3 other bands, and I was thinking you guys could play last.” For those of you not in bands, playing last fucking sucks because everyone always leaves. I ask her “Uh… well are kid’s going to stick around?” and she says “Hmmm, probably not.” “Well then, is it a good idea for us to be playing last? If no one is going to stay?” “Oh! No, kids will stay.” “Alright… should we load in now? And where will we be loading in?” She directs me to the back of the small club (which is this sort of clubhouse style teen center) and points down this skinny hallway. “You can load in whenever you’d like.”

I go back to the car and report in. This lady clearly has no idea what is going on. Ryan says that on the club’s myspace, there are 7 bands listed to play tonight. I told him that she said that there was only 4. He also said the myspace said the show was going to start soon, and he wondered why there were like 3 kids there. I go back into the club, and play chess against this teenage girl who barely understood the rules (she got really confused when I castled, saying “Um. That’s 2 moves.”), but she was a tactical GENIUS. If she actually knew how to play, she could have been really good. I went easy on her and we ended up in stalemate. I went back to the van a while after, and the band apparently went to Best Buy and came back and were burning CD-Rs with Ryan’s computer. I joined in with my computer, and we watched a little bit of this Joe Strummer documentary that Ryan had.

It was getting late and we were wondering where all the fucking bands were, or why no one had a clue what was going on at all. The lady running the show now says that we’re playing 2nd, which is good news, so we load in. The first band finally decides to show up, and they load in and I notice that this place really doesn’t have a proper PA system at all. The lead singer of the first band was singing his vocals through a Line 6 practice amp. To those not familiar with guitar amps, Line 6 is the McDonald’s of guitar amps. They suck, they’re cheap, and they’re everywhere. People get them because they have a slew of cheesy built-in effects, even though they have no tone. The Atom Age hates them with a passion, and it seems that every night we play with a band that uses one. This band right now is playing some sort of nu-metal/rap-metal, which is just downright awful. We stay inside the van, which kind of makes me feel like an elitist douchebag, but I’m not going inside to watch a rap-metal band.

Brendan leaves the van, and comes back a little bit later and says “The lady says that we’re playing 3rd now, because apparently the band that would be playing third has to leave, so they want to play next.” This shit is getting fucking ridiculous. The lady comes up to the van and asks if it’s alright if we’re OK playing 3rd now. We kind of want to play now, because a few more kids showed up, and it was getting late. She says “Well, the band that wants to play now… their parents are here, and they want to see them play, but they have to get home.” We look out the window and there is a 50 year old couple standing by the door. Great. We’ll play later if we have to, I guess.

Inside the van, we watch as these 2 really gross looking crust-punks bring in an accordion and a fiddle. Typical crust-folk-punk duo. I’m not going in for this band either. We really start questioning the wisdom of the lady who put this show on, and say a few pretty bad things about her, but we’re all kind of tired and tour is starting to wear on us a little bit, being a few days in. But still, she was being a little rude to us and we just wanted to know the deal and to make sure things were set up right, but she was being passive aggressive and never giving us a direct answer, and it was seriously frustrating. The crusties finally finish playing, so we head in and start setting up.

It’s dark outside now, so they turned the lights on in the place. 100% of the lights in the venue are black lights. The club has so many black lights that it’s actually well lit, something I have never encountered before and didn’t know was even possible. We start setting up, and I open my bass case and get the biggest WTF so far in this tour. My bass… is green. The black light of the venue has turned my dark red wine colored bass into a light sea foam green. I now look like I play a Mark Hoppus signature bass. What’s more is that I can now see exactly how much blood I spill on my bass. Right above the strings where I pick my bass, there’s this gross/awesome looking blood spray. Pictures included.

Ryan tackles the shotty PA system, which is not going to hold up at all against how loud we play. He does his best to have it not feedback on us, but it’s difficult. We start to play, and within the first song, about ¾ of the kids leave to go outside. Ryan comments about this at the end of the song, and I tell Brendan that he should go out and terrorize the kids outside during one of the times he has a break on the sax. He does this later on in the set, and he comes back inside with 2 kids chasing him. He apparently stole one of the feathers out of this one girl’s hair (feathers in the hair, it’s a New Mexico thing). We finish up our set and there are a few kids there who liked it and bought a shirt or 2.

As I’m taking pictures of my freak bass, this kid comes up to me and asks “Uh… hey. You guys should stick around for the next set… I’m playing.” This kid is the saddest looking teen I’ve ever seen. I say “Ya, sure, we’ll stick around. Totally.” He says “Alright… You guys like techno?” and inside my head I scream at myself a little bit. “Yah… I’m sure that some of the guys in the band might like techno, sure.” He says OK and leaves. He comes up to the band about 10 minutes later while we’re loading the van and asks the same question. He’s just so awkward.

He starts playing a few minutes later, and it’s just him and a keyboard. He starts playing generic electronic, but instead of being the usual hyped up DJ, he’s super depressed. Between the sets instead of saying stuff like “ALRIGHT LAS CRUCES! ARE YOU READY TO DANCE!?!?!?” he says (and this is verbatim) “Umm… so I was going to dedicate this song to my girlfriend, and tell her that I love her, but she’s not here. I think she left. So… nevermind.” There were 3 or 4 kids dancing, they were sort of doing moon-walking style bullshit, and they would constantly terrorize the kid playing, who always looked like he was about to start crying. We decide to leave, because this is just getting sad, but we haven’t gotten paid yet, and no one wanted to ask the lady for money. So, I volunteered.

I went inside and went up to her and said “Well alright, we’re about to take off. Thanks a lot for having us.” She said “Oh ya! Sure!” and she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a couple of bills. “Is $30 enough for gas?” and I said “Ya, thanks.” $30 was actually a little more than I was expecting, so I was grateful that we got some of the door and that I didn’t have to ask for it. She came outside and said goodbye to the band and talked to us for a little bit.

We talked to this lady for an hour, and we felt like total assholes for saying anything bad about her. This lady was a borderline saint. She had opened this club all by herself, and ran it all by herself. She was a counselor at the high school, and said that there were a lot of kids who were suicidal and homeless and abused and more, and she just wanted to open up this place to give them a safe place to be. She was trying really hard and she promoted all the shows at the local college, but most of the people there come from small towns and aren’t used to going to shows. She was even taking marketing classes to see if she could find a way to better bring people to the club. The show that we played was supposed to be a benefit show for the PA system, because their old one was broken and they just had to make do with the shotty one that they had. She was seriously super nice, and super selfless, and was really trying to give these kids a better life, even though the most likely thing to happen is she is going to pour a bunch of money into this place and it’s going to close down. Ryan later said that there’s a place in heaven for people like her, and I completely agreed.

We also talked to her about whether it was a better idea to stay in a motel in Las Cruces or El Paso. We are kind of worried about El Paso because it’s right across the river from Juarez, Mexico, where there’s pretty much a civil war going on and drug-related violence leads to weekly massacres. She says that El Paso has cheaper motels than Las Cruces, and that it’s actually not dangerous in El Paso at all. Ryan also likes driving at night, so we decide to go that route.

It’s only a 45 minute drive to El Paso, so it’s no trouble at all. We get there and try to find a motel. Every single one we get has no vacancies, or is some insane price like $50 for a single room. Great. We also almost accidentally cross the border a few times by taking the wrong turns. We finally find a place. And we decide that we don’t have to have someone stay the night in the van, so we all head upstairs to our motel room. We watch some TV, mostly Mexican wrestling and news, before going to sleep.

February/March 2010 Tour, Day 3

Ryan had his appointment at 7:30 in the morning, but I woke up at 7:15 and found that he hadn’t left yet. I thought that if he left now, he would still hit LA morning traffic and he wouldn’t get back until like noon. We had an 8 hour drive to Tucson, Arizona, so we needed to leave at 10 to make it out there at a reasonable time. I dozed back to sleep and when I woke up, Ryan had gone. I took a shower, the first one of the tour, and made myself some tortellini to pack as a lunch. Noey left, and I thanked him for letting us stay. He told us not to open the front door of the house, because it locked kinda funny, and also told us that the house was haunted and that he would hear footsteps in the hallways during the night. Glad he didn’t tell us about that last night. Ryan, by some miracle, got back at about 10ish, and we left at a reasonable hour.

We basically drove through the desert of California, and into Arizona, which is pretty much all desert. Saw some bitchin’ cacti, and saw some not-so-bitchin’ people who live in the middle of nowhere. People and things at gas stations in the middle of nowhere are creepy. One of those things is the National Guard’s “Patriot Chopper,” picture included, but this was just one of the things that I felt I could snap a picture of and not get punched in the face.

The drive was about as eventful as the scenery. Since we’re all dumbasses, we forgot about the time change and realized that we were going to be an hour later for the show. Ryan told John to drive like a mad man, and we basically started weaving in and out of cars and semis going 80-90mph in our van that has already had signs of car problems. I tried to not think about dying in the middle of nowhere.

We got there at 8:15ish, Arizona time, and had a little bit of trouble finding the place. We were playing at “The Living Room,” which I googled and found that it was a Christian youth community center. I decided to keep this from the rest of the band, to increase the chances of something hilarious happening. We drive up, and there’s a bunch of skater kids in front of the place, including this awesome kid who must have been 10 years old with an old style skateboard, a shaggy bleached Mohawk, and a JFA shirt. I hop out and talk to the people at the door. They’re a little peeved that we’re late, and say that we’d better hurry up and load in and set up, because we’re up next. I asked how much longer the band had before they we’re done with their set, and they said “Oh, they haven’t started yet.” I don’t really know why they were freaking out, we had plenty of time. We loaded in and John set up his drums and we were ready halfway through the band’s set. They were this band called Little Lungs, and I talked to the singer and they said that they were from Brooklyn on tour. Later, I found out from Danny that the girl I talked to was in Cheeky, a band that I like alright.

The guy running the show came up to me and asked that we play a short set, because they had to close down at 10. I said “No problem, we usually play a short set.” He said “How long?” and I said “Usually between 20-25 minutes” and he said “Try to keep it to 20.” I don’t really know why 10 o’clock is the latest they can go on a Friday night, but this guy was about to have a panic attack and I wasn’t going to be negative about it, so I said “sure, no problem.” We set up post-haste, and start playing, hoping that the kids outside will come in to see us, but for the time being we played for the other bands and the people who ran the club. Ryan broke his strap in the middle of the second song. Yes, his strap snapped in half. He switched guitars, and broke a string. John once again was playing like an asshole, but at the end of the set, Ryan said that he thought that we played better that night than the previous 2.

We loaded out and the final band played. I got to talk to Danny on the phone for the first time in the tour on the phone for a bit. After the band played, the lead singer of the band came out and talked to us for a bit. He was a cool guy, and said that he could hook us up with some food at the restaurant his girlfriend worked at. This was good news, and we head over to the Brooklyn Pizza Company (or some similar name). I thought that “hooking us up” would be free food, but it was like 20% off. We got a pizza, and it was good stuff. The “Sky Bar” next door to us was packed with people, and the live band that was playing was called “The Clam Tostada.” God damn it.

We told the guy “thanks” and he said he was sorry that he couldn’t offer us a place to stay. We said that that was fine, and we left to make the drive to Las Cruces, New Mexico instead of driving it all tomorrow. Most of the band slept while Ryan drove, and we pulled into this Pilot gas station in Lordsburg, New Mexico, right across the border. It was freezing outside; Google said that it was 34 degrees. It was warm in the van though. We threw our luggage in the trailer, made our beds in the van, and went to sleep.

February/March 2010 Tour, Day 2

I got a really good night’s sleep, which was nice. I woke up and worried about if I had slept through a gang of hoodlums breaking into the trailer and stealing everything, but they obviously hadn’t. John came down soon after I woke up and threw his bag in the back. I got up and made myself another sandwich, and then went upstairs to the room for a shower. On the way up, I passed by some rooms that had their doors open, and I noticed that some families were completely set up in this motel permanently. Like their place was fully furnished and they had their own rugs and art and stuff in these motel rooms. The people also looked like they were in real bad shape. Too bad.

Everyone was asleep when I got to the room, naturally. I took a shampoo-less, towel-less shower, and used a tiny motel towel to dry myself. I went back down to the van. Peter came down later and wanted to clean the mold out of the van, so he began doing that with some mildew remover and a sponge. I was sort of worried about the bleach, and the fact that we were going to be driving all day with the fumes, but then I realized that I’m punk as fuck and I didn’t care. We cleaned out a bit of the van, and then got impatient and packed up and left for our drive to Pasadena.

I decided to start up the tour journal again, I don’t really know why. I think I told myself that I wasn’t going to do it this time, because I easily get behind because I’m lazy. But, I felt compelled, so I started. Peter’s parents bought him this beefy power inverter which can handle 2 outlets and 2 USB outlets, and up to 400 watts, so if I wanted to I could run my computer all day in the van. I also have my iPhone which gets internet as long as I have cell phone reception, so I can check my email and surf the web. Touring ain’t what it used to be, I guess. Lucky for me.

We drive into Pasadena and have a few hours to kill, so Ryan parks the van in this upscale So Cal shopping area, and we walk around. John stayed in the car to do some HW; he’s taking the online Health class that I took last year, the poor fuck. We walked around and we separately passed like 3 groups of canvassers, which was kinda funny. There isn’t much to do, so we head into a Barnes and Nobles and I sit down in the café to do some computer stuff, but we decide to leave a few minutes later and just head over to the Old Town Pub where we’re playing (or Olde Town or Old Towne, whatever).

This place is almost impossible to get to, and Ryan and I are constantly screaming at the GPS on both of our phones. We drive around this area for 15 minutes, and eventually Ryan parks the van and everyone except for Ryan heads out to find this place on foot. We still can’t find this place at all, so John goes into a shop (this dimly lit “Desert Bar” … really? A bar for deserts? Fuck So Cal.) and asks where this place is. She says “Oh! Yah, follow me.” She leads us THROUGH the bar towards the back, and through 2 doors, and into the back alley and then into this small super-hidden plaza in the middle of the city block and there it is. This little plaza had green and white Christmas lights and a fountain and a bunch of trees, so emerging into this place from the back of a bar was kind of like entering Narnia. I go in the bar, and it’s like 6 o’clock, so no one’s there. It’s a cool little place, even though the stage is really small. The bar tender says we can load in whenever we want to, but Ryan is still with the van, and there’s no rush, so I head back out.

Peter then tells me that Ryan took the van and went to a free clinic because he was feeling like shit. This was kind of out of the blue, so I had a little wtf? Moment, but then got over it. We hang out in the little plaza for awhile, and then decide to check out The Container Store on the corner of the block, because we had never been in a store that just sold containers exclusively. Finally, Ryan and the van meet us outside the store and Ryan tells us that he has an appointment tomorrow morning at the clinic. The band decides that it wants food, and no one wants to eat at the nice restaurants around here, so we drive like 5 miles to find a McDonalds. I should probably mention that I’m not a real big part of the “we” here; I’m not really hungry, so I don’t care. Dollar Menu is king and will always prevail.

Ryan asks me about the venue, and I tell him what’s up. He’s getting kind of nervous, because there weren’t any bands there or any way to find the place, so I give Noey a call. Noey is the promoter, and he’s from the pop punk message board, so of course Danny knows him and gave me his information and she gave him my info. I call him, and he says the show is starting later than anticipated, and that he was on his way to the place. We head back, too.

Parking in downtown Pasadena is downright impossible. There are 2 alleys that you have to follow to get to this bar, and we don’t want to block them while we load in, so Ryan parks in this red zone on the main street really far from the place and load in. It’s a total pain in the ass, and I ask the bassist of the first band if I could borrow his bass amp for the show. It’s kind of small, and I want to actually be heard tonight, but our bass amp is as tall as I am, and I don’t want to drag it 4 blocks. He says it’s no problem, and then says that touring bands usually don’t do so well here, and that we should probably pass around a donations jar or something. He also thinks that we’re playing second, which is not what the flyer for the show said, and they were about to take the stage, so I go to tell Ryan that this might be the case. The rest of the band was setting up merch in the back of the bar in the outside area, and I tell them what’s up and then go off to find Noey to ask him about it as well. We introduce ourselves, and then he says that we’re playing last, which is what we thought. We talk a bit more, and then the first band, Reagle Beagle, starts playing.

It was a pop punk show, and this band was sort of your run of the mill pop punk band. I thought they were alright. I talk to Ryan in the back and he thinks it’s funny how much bands like this rip off the Queers, and after the band was on for over a half hour, he mentions that pop punk bands should play for a maximum of 22 minutes. Makes sense. The bass amp of the band is pretty quiet, so I thought about asking the next band for theirs instead. I walk by where all the gear is sitting, and see that their amp is pretty small, too. I asked them as they set up if I could maybe use it anyways, but they said that they’re leaving right after the show ends. This was getting stupid, so I just went and hauled out bass amp in; it wasn’t a big deal. The second band, The Simplisticks, was a 3 piece pop punk band, and the lead singer tried really hard to sing like Billie Joe. The first line in one of the songs was even “I know what you’re thinking. This guy sounds a lot like Billie Joe.” The songs were mostly about drinking and smoking pot. They pimped our donations jar out, which was nice of them. I picked up their CD, it was $2.

After those 2 bands played, like 2/3 of the crowd left. This sucked, but oh well. We played a decent set, but Ryan was getting visibly pissed off at John who was drumming not so greatly. The stage was small so I got stuck in back again. We played a shorter set, and a couple of guys at the bar got into it, so that was cool. Ryan said that he heard someone say “that was badass” at the end of one of our songs. We got a decent amount from the tip jar, but no one bought any merch. One of the guys at the bar said that he was going to tell his friend to go see us in Tucson the next day.

Noey met up with us at the end and offered us a place to stay, which we needed. We followed him out to his place in the San Fernando Valley, and I recognized most of the places we were driving through. We got there, and it was a nice place and Noey was extremely hospitable, even to the point where he said we could raid his fridge. His brother was also there, who was decked out in super pop punk garb. Half of the band slept in his daughter’s play room, and Ryan and I slept on the couches in the living room. Halfway through the night, I moved to the floor, which I found to be more comfortable, because I am crazy.

February/March 2010 Tour, Day 1

The beginning of the day is spent packing and preparing. Danny was a little bummed that I procrastinated so much, because it meant that it was less time with her in the morning before I left her for a month. But, she helped me a lot and reminded me of all the things that I would forget, which was very helpful. We went to CVS, and I got a small one-burner camp stove, and a food bin, and some other supplies. The lady at the checkout said “You guys going camping?” to which I replied “No, I’m going on tour. But, I guess it’s like the same thing.” Last tour I didn’t bring any food with me, and sometimes going to fast food restaurants all the time would hurt my brain, stomach, and wallet. So, this time I stocked up on tons of food in cans and bags. We’re heading to The South as well, so I got a palette of bottled water (which I also froze to cool my cooler). I had mentioned doing this last tour, and half the band thought it was a good idea, and the other half thought that it was “totally gay.” But, I don’t really care as long as I can get by easier.

Ryan picked me up around 1, and Danny and I said our goodbyes. Ryan saw all the crap I was bringing and shook his head and told me he was going to charge me “rent” in the van. I knew from last tour that there was plenty of room in the back for lots of crap, and the more things that we could pile on top of each other, the better. Last tour it rained a lot and the bottom of the van got soaked, so anything that can be stacked on top of anything else will be saved this time around. Ryan and I went and picked up John, and we headed down to the Annex to meet with Peter and Brendan.

Ryan was pretty stressed out because he had been recording 4 albums at once, and also almost went crazy mixing and mastering our new album. Also, the CD plant fucked up on our CD and they’re a week late, so we’re getting the CDs shipped to Austin, which sucks because we have literally TWO 7”s left. At least we have a bunch of shirts to sell, but we don’t have any stickers. Bummer. We got to the Annex, and Peter and Brendan were sitting there waiting for us. Ryan had to take care of some work really fast, so the rest of us hung out outside. Everyone was in good spirits, which was good because riding with Ryan (who wasn’t in good spirits) was a little lame. We take a look at the back of the van and it’s completely covered in mold, so we throw away anything back there that is remotely wet or covered in mold, which is pretty much everything. A few pillows, shirts, towels, and a sleeping bag. We packed everything back up in the van and the trailer and headed out towards Fresno.

The ride was pretty uneventful. Ryan said that he was getting a lot of positive feedback about the album, which was good to hear. He also said that Middah entered us in to see if we could get picked for Warped Tour, which John was excited about, but everyone else in the band agreed that it would be a total nightmare. Ryan explained that it really doesn’t take anything to get on Warped Tour as a side-stage band, but you’d be literally competing with NOFX and be in the sun all day and play a shitty short set and not get paid a dime. We’d be way better off doing a short tour on our own. Also, Warped Tour is lame.

We get to “The Lamppost” in Fresno fairly early, about 6-7, and I go inside to scope it out. It’s an extremely small bar, and at the moment it looks like no one inside is under the age of 40. The bartender says that we can setup and play anytime we want to, but we need to let him know so that he can move the benches out of the way. Uh, ok, I guess. I go back outside and report. It’s early and none of the other bands are there, so we go out in search of food and a Walmart or something where Ryan can buy a new sleeping bag. We stop at Panda Express and head inside. I don’t get anything (obviously), and John asks the people there for some hot water for his Cup O’ Noodles. He apparently didn’t care that the water wasn’t going to hot enough to cook the noodles, and we all stared in amazement when he opened a small can of mini hot dogs and dumped them in his lukewarm water and crunchy Cup O’ Noodles, and ate the whole thing. Wow.

Afterwards, Ryan finds us a Walmart on his new Droid’s GPS with awesome voice guided step-by-step instructions that keeps losing connection and blurting out a “GPS Singal Lost,” which was a riot. I don’t usually find myself inside Walmarts, it’s kind of insane how much of a small city it almost is. Ryan and John pick up a sleeping bag, and I find this knife for 1$ that turned out to be terrible, but whatever.

We get back to The Lamppost and the other band Asiago is there. We played with them at the Hot Dog Heaven show there last month in Los Banos, and I was glad to be playing with them again; they seemed like a cool bunch and they were one of the better local bands I think that we’ve played with. The guy from Quote Your Pulse records was there, too. Shortly after we get there, a DJ shows up and starts setting up his equipment, so I guess there was going to be a DJ as well. He starts spinning these mashups that are pretty crazy, like Sublime and Lil’ John or NWA and nu-metal stuff and country. I guess that’s what you do if you want to appeal to/offend all audiences. We miraculously setup all our gear in the small space we had, but we had to completely block the front door to do so. This was most likely a fire hazard. I borrowed the bass amp from the bassist in Asiago, because the Atom Age bass amp was too massive.

We’re about to go on, and the guy who booked the show wanted to say a few things first, but we weren’t sure where he was, but we waited for him anyways. He turns up a few minutes later, and takes the mic and says (paraphrasing) “Thanks for coming out. My name is Doctor Claw and I’m going to perform a few songs for you before the Atom Age go up, I hope you like them.” So, we put down our instruments and watch him perform 3 rap songs with the DJ supplying him with his beats. Kind of unexpected, but this was the first show of the tour, so I didn’t really mind. I just thought it was funny. Afterwards we retake the floor and go into it.

We played fine; I could hardly hear myself through the Asiago bass amp, and after the first song we had to turn it up pretty much all the way. I stood behind everyone and didn’t have a mic and could barely move because the space was so small, but that was fine. Our set was short, but nothing went wrong and I thought we sounded pretty tight for our first show. There was hardly anybody there, I think just a handful of people that weren’t in Asiago or from Quote Your Pulse, but we needed a warm up show. We sold a few shirts after the show, and got a small amount from the bartender which was more than we expected. Not bad.

Asiago came up after us. They were the only other band, and I liked them and remembered a song or two from last time. They didn’t have their album out yet; I would have picked it up if they had. We got invited to stay at the singers house, but it was over an hour in the opposite direction which translates into “far enough to equal a motel room in gas money.” The band wanted to stay in a motel which is the first time that I had ever heard them express interest in paid lodging. I was fine with the van, but I think that Peter had scared everyone else into not sleeping in the van because of the mold. Sissies. We found a suitable motel and Ryan said that someone had to sleep in the van to protect the gear. I volunteered, because I was already cozy with the idea of sleeping in the van, and also I didn’t have van defender duty once last tour, so I felt sort of obligated. Plus, I wanted to make myself a sandwich, which I did as soon as the band went up to the room. I got out my sleeping bag and went to sleep.

The Rest of the November 2009 Tour

Basically I stopped writing about this tour, but there was only 2 days left of it, so there wasn't much. Here's a small recap of those 2 days.

We drive down to San Diego and get to the pub we're playing. They're really anal about keeping the underage members of our band from coming inside, even when loading gear they are making sure that they're not lingering. Pricks. Travis and Ryan had shown up to the show, but they thought that the show was seriously at 8pm, so they had been there for awhile. All the shows on myspace say 8pm as a default, and bar shows usually don't start until 9-10ish. They were already pretty drunk and had brought some friends. The Bombpops played, and they were really good. We played, and my friends and their friends were super drunk and going crazy. Travis afterwards made everyone buy a ton of merch. Ryan bought 4 shirts. One of the girls that they brought flashed her tits to the band to try to get free merch, but I was inside at the merch table and didn't see it. She just came in later drunk and demanded that I give her a free shirt because she showed her tits to Brendan and John. I didn't give her anything. She also flashed her ass to the whole band later on, but I looked away. They offered us a place to stay, but we went to Jen from the Bombpops place to crash instead. We watch some 50's mafia/romance movie thing and go to bed.

The next day we sit around and watch some TV and watch Evil Dead or Army of Darkness, I can't remember. I manage to completely wreck my computer by deleting the partition table, but I use some Linux magic to restore it. We played in Oceanside, and we hung out on the pier a little bit. The show we played was at this bar with saw dust covering the floors. Brendan has this awesome idea to Rick Roll the entire bar because they have one of those internet jukeboxes that can play any song, but the song never comes on and steals his money. The first guy that played was this super super SUPER wasted guy who played really sloppy acoustic guitar and really wanted to be Bob Dylan. We played, and I think it was fine. The band after us was this Orange County punkish band with a very charismatic lead singer who was kinda doing the whole Gwen Stefani/No Doubt thing. They were fun. We went back to Jen's place and I forget what we did, maybe just went to sleep. And then we drove home the next day.