You can check out the whole lineup on Electrical Audio's Forum, aka THE PRF, as well as get information on tickets and food & beverage donation. Let's have a party. But be aware--these can get a little crazy.
File photo
5/16/15
PRFBBQ2015: Our first show since October 2012!
You can check out the whole lineup on Electrical Audio's Forum, aka THE PRF, as well as get information on tickets and food & beverage donation. Let's have a party. But be aware--these can get a little crazy.
4/27/15
Rev.Ever's new toy
-DrAwkward
4/1/15
It's been a long time since we rapped at ya
It was a good time for a break, though--after nearly 13 years of high-volume, high-intensity rock shows, 7 national tours, 4 records, an online-only EP, and countless bruises, broken teeth, concussions, and hearing problems, it was time to take some time off. I don't know that any of us expected it to be almost two and a half years off, but we knew that we would know when the time was right to ramp it up again. Right now, it's about that time.
On Thursday we'll reconvene for our first band practice in a loooonnnng-ass time. We'll run through some old tunes that we're not still sick of and start to sort through the hours of practice recordings we were putting together before our hiatus, deciding what still cuts the mustard and will form the basis for our next record (that's fucking right, fools--like we'd come back just to play the "hits"?). We're pretty damn pumped to start making music together again, although it's safe to say we won't be approaching everything the way we did things for nearly 13 years. What that means, we'll figure out over the next few months.
When will you guys be seeing us again? Not sure yet. But soon. First order of business is to put a set together. We have two bandmates that haven't played a show with their full-time band in a long-ass time, and man, i can't imagine what that's been like for those dudes. I will warn you, though--one of the guys that's had noise-rock blue balls for the past two years and five months once put a bass guitar through my face, and the other guy's Yale Delay. I make no guarantees regarding the safety of the first three rows.
-DrAwkward
6/19/12
BREAKING: "Sexy Results" to receive new physical format release
Folks, it's a whole new game of tiddlywinks out there. Kids who were born in the early 90s and thus have no memory of a world before the internet are consuming music now, and if they're all like this Emily goofball over at All Songs Considered, none of them place any value whatsoever on recorded music. Like, none. (They may or may not place value on raw yet sentimental vocals or nostalgic songs about hometowns, best friends, ex-girlfriends etc., but that's neither here nor there.) Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, you've got Old Rocker Dudes railing against the new paradigm like it's a murder of windmills (DISCLAIMER: i'm not sure that's the collective noun for windmills). "Your refusal to pay for music killed my friends," and so forth, all the way to sort of sticking up for the way major labels used to do business. What the what?
With all this yelling and gnashing of teeth about, it's clear that some thinking outside the box is A Thing That Should Happen now. With that in mind, let's go back to Emily's blog post:
ITEM! IFIHADAHIFI TO RELEASE Songs From Sexy Results: Cedar Block's Dig for the Higgs and How the Quest Was Won IN DARING NEW T-SHIRT FORMAT
That's right, fools -- these dapper new "Captain Kitty" tees will cost $12 and include a download code that will permit the fashionable music aficionado to add our latest sonic misstep, Songs From Sexy Results: Cedar Block's Dig for the Higgs and How the Quest Was Won, to their iTunes or equivalent digital music exhibition system via our Bandcamp site. We're not entirely sure about this, but this may make IfIHadAHiFi the first Milwaukee band to ever release a record on cloth, although it obviously isn't the first ever Milwaukee band-related release onto a t-shirt (amirite Gordon Gano?).
Sexy Results Captain Kitty t-shirts will be available for purchase at the 2012 PRFBBQ in Chicago on June 30 and July 1. And yes, many of them will be pink. We're certain that with this torso-hugging apparel on your back, you'll be guaranteed some truly sexy oh god i'm sorry i almost actually made that joke.
If you're wondering why the blue hell a t-shirt featuring a Sexy Results download features artwork from Nada Surf +3, you just shhh your pretty little head. Ain't none a' yo' concern. (Hint: IT'S A GODDAMN KITTY.)
With all this yelling and gnashing of teeth about, it's clear that some thinking outside the box is A Thing That Should Happen now. With that in mind, let's go back to Emily's blog post:
As monumental a role as musicians and albums have played in my life, I've never invested money in them aside from concert tickets and T-shirts.Hmmm...t-shirts, you say...??
ITEM! IFIHADAHIFI TO RELEASE Songs From Sexy Results: Cedar Block's Dig for the Higgs and How the Quest Was Won IN DARING NEW T-SHIRT FORMAT
That's right, fools -- these dapper new "Captain Kitty" tees will cost $12 and include a download code that will permit the fashionable music aficionado to add our latest sonic misstep, Songs From Sexy Results: Cedar Block's Dig for the Higgs and How the Quest Was Won, to their iTunes or equivalent digital music exhibition system via our Bandcamp site. We're not entirely sure about this, but this may make IfIHadAHiFi the first Milwaukee band to ever release a record on cloth, although it obviously isn't the first ever Milwaukee band-related release onto a t-shirt (amirite Gordon Gano?).
Sexy Results Captain Kitty t-shirts will be available for purchase at the 2012 PRFBBQ in Chicago on June 30 and July 1. And yes, many of them will be pink. We're certain that with this torso-hugging apparel on your back, you'll be guaranteed some truly sexy oh god i'm sorry i almost actually made that joke.
If you're wondering why the blue hell a t-shirt featuring a Sexy Results download features artwork from Nada Surf +3, you just shhh your pretty little head. Ain't none a' yo' concern. (Hint: IT'S A GODDAMN KITTY.)
3/7/12
You should be downloading all of our awesome crap.
You're aware that we released two EPs already in 2012, right? No? What, haven't you been paying attention? It's ok, i get it; we're an old band, and no one cares about old bands that never got famous or whatever, so y'all are busy grooving to Washed Out or what the fuck ever. Well, turn that Top Gun soundtrack d-side nonsense off and throw your mp3 player out the window (or, just take the Washed Out mp3s off it if you're feeling practical instead of dramatic), because you should be paying attention to:
Songs From Sexy Results: Cedar Block's Dig for the Higgs and How the Quest Was Won
Six songs about particle physics, recorded for a killer night of science and art at Turner Hall in February, now available as a $5 download from our Bandcamp page:
Meanwhile, DUH, Latest Flame Records continues to pimp our most recent physical release, the Nada Surf +3 EP:
It's the EP that got us mentioned in an NPR interview with the band, Nada Surf, and that was snuck into the Barsuk Records warehouse to get this choice photo taken:
Sure, it's not headlining Coachella, but we take our victories where we can.
Also, we're gonna be playing some shows in March and April. March 30 at Quarters Rock 'N' Roll Palace with the mighty POLICE TEETH, STRANGE MATTER, and LIKE LIKE THE THE THE DEATH. And then Friday April 13th at the Riverwest Public House with NERVOUS CURTAINS, CATACOMBZ and HEAVY HAND.
These shows will hit you like a Mike Awesome chair shot to Masato Tanaka's god damn head.
Songs From Sexy Results: Cedar Block's Dig for the Higgs and How the Quest Was Won
Six songs about particle physics, recorded for a killer night of science and art at Turner Hall in February, now available as a $5 download from our Bandcamp page:
Meanwhile, DUH, Latest Flame Records continues to pimp our most recent physical release, the Nada Surf +3 EP:
It's the EP that got us mentioned in an NPR interview with the band, Nada Surf, and that was snuck into the Barsuk Records warehouse to get this choice photo taken:
Sure, it's not headlining Coachella, but we take our victories where we can.
Also, we're gonna be playing some shows in March and April. March 30 at Quarters Rock 'N' Roll Palace with the mighty POLICE TEETH, STRANGE MATTER, and LIKE LIKE THE THE THE DEATH. And then Friday April 13th at the Riverwest Public House with NERVOUS CURTAINS, CATACOMBZ and HEAVY HAND.
These shows will hit you like a Mike Awesome chair shot to Masato Tanaka's god damn head.
2/5/12
Ohmigod, all this new music!
ITEM! The Nada Surf +3 EP is now available, and has been for a couple weeks! You can order a physical copy on vinyl or CD by visiting the label that pays us, Latest Flame Records. Or, if you believe physical media is dead, dead, dead, and only want to download the mp3s, you can do that by visiting our Bandcamp page and giving us $5. Fun fact about the download (which is also available for free when you buy the vinyl): there are secret bonus songs in the download NOT AVAILABLE ANYWHERE ELSE. So suck on that, nutley.
People really like Nada Surf +3, by the way. AV Club Milwaukee:
If anything, frantic tracks like “Minotaur Documentation” and epic centerpiece “All Hail Magnets” push farther into cacophony than anything the band has previously recorded, and the blistering, trebly production perfectly captures the energy of a HiFi live show... in terms of visceral impact, this is the band’s most powerful work yet. Whatever this record lacks in cohesiveness, it makes up for with ingenious songs.
Pocket Jury:
It might be a credit to the Hi-Fi and a warning to any prospective listeners that a couple of times over the week I was forced to remove the headphones from my ears because it felt like my brain was being microwaved. The sound of the record is so trebly that it occasionally resembles some kind of aural collage of white noise, which remarkably only endears me to what amounts to some of the band’s most immediately memorable songs. In fact, the best moments are when the quartet more or less abandon their slender regard for the listener’s ears and add more and more layers of heavily processed insanity, burying their surprisingly potent vocal melodies in a wash of Day-Glo green distortion.
Playground Misnomer:
Yes, the songs go essentially at one collective speed and volume: Rip your head off. But it’s called noise rock for cripe’s sake – you’re not signing up for ballads. They’re making seriously fun music that says something important disguised as something harmless and full of taglines...If you’re looking for something you can have on in the background while you read or try to sleep, this isn’t it. But if you’re looking for an album where hard work and a love for the music the band makes comes through, Nada Surf EP +3 is a good place to start.
(By the way, PM posted an interview they did with us back in October...check it out:)
Rockfreaks.net:
Forget how the word 'punk' is mostly used these days. You'll find no buzzy yet warm guitar melodies here, nor any raw yet sentimental vocals or nostalgic songs about hometowns, best friends, ex-girlfriends etc. What you'll get is a truck load of noisy feedback, distortion and discord, crashing drums and tuneless yelling, delivered with no hint of relent or compromise whatsoever.
Order it, crank it, love it.
Meanwhile, gear up for Sexy Results: Cedar Block's Dig for the Higgs and How the Quest Was Won at Turner Hall on Saturday, February 18! Join us, Lunaversol9, Buffalo, Lisa Gatewood, Picobots, and many many more as we attempt to use art, multimedia, and music to solve the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything by discovering the elusive Higgs Boson with our art. And watch our Bandcamp on that same day to download the following companion EP:
More shows coming after that, including shows with our labelmates Police Teeth and Nervous Curtains in March and April! Holy frijoles!
12/13/11
The Sexy Results Crew at Fermilab
The HiFi is hard at work crafting six new songs for a February event called Sexy Results: Cedar Block's Dig for the Higgs and How the Quest Was Won. To gain inspiration, Cedar Block's Brent Gohde took several of the Sexy Results artists on a road trip to Fermilab in Batavia, IL, to visit the particle physicists whom we will be honoring in this Turner Hall multimedia extravaganza on February 18. I went on the trip and had a nearly religious experience that you can read about at my blog:
The Sexy Results Crew at Fermilab
11/15/11
"Permanent Sleeperhold" in CHIKARA clip!
Our buddy Jesse Dorje Irwin put together this clip using our song "Permanent Sleeperhold," a song about that time former AWA kingpin and 9-time World Champ Verne Gagne bodyslammed his roommate in the old folks home and broke his hip, indirectly leading to his death, in a pre-show vignette that aired before CHIKARA Pro Wrestling's "High Noon" internet per-per-view (iPPV) event on November 13! We think it looks pretty rad, and we're grateful to Jesse for a little exposure there, don'tcha know.
"Permanent Sleeperhold" is on the Nada Surf +3 EP, out in January on Latest Flame Records.
"Permanent Sleeperhold" is on the Nada Surf +3 EP, out in January on Latest Flame Records.
10/28/11
The Latest on Nada Surf!
Let's not bury the lead: You can now stream ALL of the new Nada Surf +3 EP on our Bandcamp site. Listen to the entire record that is FINALLY coming out in physical form in January 2012, kicking off Latest Flame Records' 10th anniversary.
Previously on IfIHadAHiFi.net, we explained the reason for the delay: a sample owned by WWE that we brainfarted on in the song "Somebody Take the Damn Money," the tale of Handsome Harley Race's callous $25K bounty on the head of the dirtiest player in the game, "Nature Boy" Ric Flair. Listen to the stream and you'll discover how we rectified the situation--we re-recorded the sample with some first-rate voice talent: Cleveland indie wrestler "M-Dogg" Matt Cross! Wrestling fans are very familiar with Matt, as he's a world traveler who's competed in Ring of Honor, Combat Zone Wrestling, Pro Wresting NOAH in Japan, and promotions in Ireland, Germany, and Italy. We met Matt through our friends Jay and Andy of Mondo Lucha!, the lucha libre-based burlesque variety show here in Milwaukee. Matt hopped into the HiFi van and grunted through Harley's Classic lines while Jay from Mondo Lucha! paced outside holding a pair of wrestling masks for his kids, wondering how it looked for a dude holding masks to pace back and forth in front of a blue van that grunting was coming out of.
Speaking of Bandcamp, the awesome developers there just released a Facebook app that enables us to place our entire Bandcamp functionality onto our Facebook page! Now you can stream all our releases, buy our records (including Nada Surf +3 in January), and help Russ Feingold right from our Facebook page. Frickin' cool.
So! What next for us? After a stretch of shows in October, we're now going into hibernation for the rest of 2011 in order to finish up songs for Sexy Results: Cedar Block's Dig for the Higgs and How the Quest Was Won. That's right--in February we'll be at Turner Hall debuting some BRAND NEW SONGS about the Higgs Boson, Particle Physics, and SCIENCE! And you thought we were nerdy before...
Previously on IfIHadAHiFi.net, we explained the reason for the delay: a sample owned by WWE that we brainfarted on in the song "Somebody Take the Damn Money," the tale of Handsome Harley Race's callous $25K bounty on the head of the dirtiest player in the game, "Nature Boy" Ric Flair. Listen to the stream and you'll discover how we rectified the situation--we re-recorded the sample with some first-rate voice talent: Cleveland indie wrestler "M-Dogg" Matt Cross! Wrestling fans are very familiar with Matt, as he's a world traveler who's competed in Ring of Honor, Combat Zone Wrestling, Pro Wresting NOAH in Japan, and promotions in Ireland, Germany, and Italy. We met Matt through our friends Jay and Andy of Mondo Lucha!, the lucha libre-based burlesque variety show here in Milwaukee. Matt hopped into the HiFi van and grunted through Harley's Classic lines while Jay from Mondo Lucha! paced outside holding a pair of wrestling masks for his kids, wondering how it looked for a dude holding masks to pace back and forth in front of a blue van that grunting was coming out of.
Speaking of Bandcamp, the awesome developers there just released a Facebook app that enables us to place our entire Bandcamp functionality onto our Facebook page! Now you can stream all our releases, buy our records (including Nada Surf +3 in January), and help Russ Feingold right from our Facebook page. Frickin' cool.
So! What next for us? After a stretch of shows in October, we're now going into hibernation for the rest of 2011 in order to finish up songs for Sexy Results: Cedar Block's Dig for the Higgs and How the Quest Was Won. That's right--in February we'll be at Turner Hall debuting some BRAND NEW SONGS about the Higgs Boson, Particle Physics, and SCIENCE! And you thought we were nerdy before...
9/12/11
Nada Surf EP official release delayed. Well, crap.
While on tour out East, we got an unfortunate email from Dan at our lovely label Latest Flame. The short version: we screwed up and the album release is unfortunately being delayed while we fix our SNAFU.
The long version:
Our song "Somebody Take the Damn Money," the ballad of Harley Race and his early-80s wrestling promo placing a $25,000 bounty on Ric Flair, included samples we had snagged from the original audio of the promo. Because we are morons, it completely escaped us that the audio may be under copyright to a certain wrestling company that, in 2001, bought all of the National Wrestling Alliance's video library. Yep, the sample is under the copyright protection of the WWE. Whoops. Boy, are our faces red.
So, while Dan leaves multiple voice mails for the licensing person at WWE, we are moving ahead with a backup plan to change the song so that it passes copyright muster. We're hatching some fun plans right now that we'll divulge once we've confirmed that they can come to fruition, but the huge drag is that this means that the song has to be remixed and remastered, and the lacquer re-cut before the vinyl can get pressed. A costly error on our part, to be sure, and it looks like it means the official release date will be pushed to sometime in January of 2012 (almost two years after Nada Surf's If I Had A Hi-Fi was released, which means that we suck at capitalizing on cheap promo). So, we're sorry, and we hope you bear with us while we try to figure out when we'll get the record out and in your grubby little hands. Nada Surf +3 is, if we do say so ourselves, and pretty baller record, and we hope you'll eventually agree it was worth the wait.
In the meantime, anyone know how to get WWE to respond to a voice mail?
The long version:
Our song "Somebody Take the Damn Money," the ballad of Harley Race and his early-80s wrestling promo placing a $25,000 bounty on Ric Flair, included samples we had snagged from the original audio of the promo. Because we are morons, it completely escaped us that the audio may be under copyright to a certain wrestling company that, in 2001, bought all of the National Wrestling Alliance's video library. Yep, the sample is under the copyright protection of the WWE. Whoops. Boy, are our faces red.
So, while Dan leaves multiple voice mails for the licensing person at WWE, we are moving ahead with a backup plan to change the song so that it passes copyright muster. We're hatching some fun plans right now that we'll divulge once we've confirmed that they can come to fruition, but the huge drag is that this means that the song has to be remixed and remastered, and the lacquer re-cut before the vinyl can get pressed. A costly error on our part, to be sure, and it looks like it means the official release date will be pushed to sometime in January of 2012 (almost two years after Nada Surf's If I Had A Hi-Fi was released, which means that we suck at capitalizing on cheap promo). So, we're sorry, and we hope you bear with us while we try to figure out when we'll get the record out and in your grubby little hands. Nada Surf +3 is, if we do say so ourselves, and pretty baller record, and we hope you'll eventually agree it was worth the wait.
In the meantime, anyone know how to get WWE to respond to a voice mail?
9/2/11
Upcoming Business
Gang, we're home and we have some regional shows lined up through the end of October, at which time we're going to take a quick break to hammer out some new songs that we need for an upcoming project in February. In the meantime, catch us LIVE at the following shows:
Sept. 17: Racine, WI @ Mosquito Inn w/Stock Options and Fresh Bison
Sept. 23: Chicago, IL @ Quenchers w/Haymarket Riot and Like Like The The The Death
Sept. 24: Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club w/Haymarket Riot and LLTTTD
Oct. 1: Chicago, IL, the PRFBBQ Auktoberfyst @ Klas Restaurant w/Sinking Suns, Begin By Gathering Supplies, Cougars, Call Me Lightning, and so much more!
Oct. 15: Dubuque, IA at TBD w/TBD (this should be hammered out soon, but rest assured, it's happening!)
Oct. 21: Madison, WI @ The Sett, UW-Madison w/Northless
Oct. 22: Hanging out in Madison to see Obits but not play with Obits, which is ok because holy shit goddamn fucking OBITS
Sept. 17: Racine, WI @ Mosquito Inn w/Stock Options and Fresh Bison
Sept. 23: Chicago, IL @ Quenchers w/Haymarket Riot and Like Like The The The Death
Sept. 24: Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club w/Haymarket Riot and LLTTTD
Oct. 1: Chicago, IL, the PRFBBQ Auktoberfyst @ Klas Restaurant w/Sinking Suns, Begin By Gathering Supplies, Cougars, Call Me Lightning, and so much more!
Oct. 15: Dubuque, IA at TBD w/TBD (this should be hammered out soon, but rest assured, it's happening!)
Oct. 21: Madison, WI @ The Sett, UW-Madison w/Northless
Oct. 22: Hanging out in Madison to see Obits but not play with Obits, which is ok because holy shit goddamn fucking OBITS
8/28/11
Let's Wrap This Up: "Skeeter Pomeroy" Tour '11, Part 10: "Sorry, Someone's Fucking in the Bathroom"
Here i sit, in front of my computer in what will soon be my former apartment, slowly allowing my life to return to a state of post-tour normalcy. I've got a lot to deal with this week--i need to move the rest of my stuff to the new place; i need to figure out when i can go visit Dad; somewhere in there i have to get back to that little annoyance of trying to find a job. But for now, i'm chilling out, petting my cat, and putting the finishing touches on our 2011 tour journal, because i know all twelve of you who've been reading can't wait.
Lansing, MI - Mac's
Paulding/Arson/Sleeperhold/Imp Walker/Defenestrate/Telescope/NMM
By the time the show began at Mac's on Friday, many of us were wiped out and cranky. The Wizard was snapping at people and many of us needed naps. I blame a combination of things, but the one thing we were most excited for--leisure time--was probably a huge factor. Thanks to the 90-minute drive from Detroit to Lansing, we had lots of time to waste for the first time all tour, and we opted to spend it in East Lansing among the college dudebros. Record stores and comic book shops were descended upon while Yale took to a coffee shop to do some day job work. At one point i met up with him and overdosed on the most amazing of mango smoothies. After two weeks of just staying afloat, health-wise, my body reacted to such a brazen intake of nutrition by slightly altering my consciousness to the point where i couldn't tell if i was in a food coma or if i was tripping balls on vitamins and nutrients. Add in a stop at a pita joint on the main drag and my only option was a power nap while the rest of the gang watched Punch-Drunk Love in the bar. Fortunately, the brief 15-minute crash was just what i needed.
Still, it felt like the prevailing attitude among some in our little party was "let's just get these last two shows over with," which is a dangerous frame of mind to be in. It screws those bandmates of yours who are actually trying to give the paying customers a memorable show, and it screws those customers, who are paying money to see you play and be 100% entertaining. It's the ultimate in selfishness, and no band should tolerate or suffer it. As Skeeter Pomeroy once said in the pages of the venerable, long-discontinued Milwaukee zine Milk, "if you're going to be sad, you have to be mad, or it's not going to work." In other words, if you're not rocking out, then fuck you, and the audience is well within their rights to let you have it.
Fortunately, this time, neither band's performance was adversely affected, and all crankiness was exorcised by the time HiFi played to what was probably the best crowd of the entire tour. Mac's was fairly packed for both our touring bands (even though we had to play before the two local bands instead of bookended between them, but whatever--chalk it up to miscommunication), and we blazed through some of our finer performances of the tour. I think it was Pittsburgh where my body finally managed to make sense of the endurance test i'd been putting it through; while most of the tour found me playing Zebras songs in a very tense, barely-held-together fashion, by Pittsburgh my arms and posture managed to find their zone (as well as my brain finally realizing that if i play the fills in the lightspeed "The Sun" as triplet sixteenths instead of standard sixteenth notes, i'm not pushing my arms to their dropoff point), and it's been clear sailing ever since.
Ft. Wayne, IN - The Brass Rail
Pot. Energy/Paulding/We Fiddle/Imp Walker/Arson/Black Holes/Success
After some more time spent in East Lansing, an incredible breakfast at a pancake house that served peanut butter and banana French Toast, and the realization that the bass cab was going to be fine for the last show (it blew because of mismatched ohm ratings between head and cab--an 8-ohm head pumping into a cab with two 8-ohm speakers that apparently cancel themselves out into a 4-ohm rating or some shit, so with only one speaker connected the ohms matched...I DON'T KNOW I'M JUST THE STUPID DRUMMER), spirits going into the final show were crazy high. We also had done a count of the cash in the HiFi band fund and realized that we were finishing this tour far ahead of where we started, somehow. We began in a $95 hole thanks to the fun times with the van impound and an oil change; even with that money reimbursed, we still ended the tour with around $290 in our previously depleted band fund. BRING ON THE STRIPPERS!
The Brass Rail is a killer little punk rock/rockabilly dive, and apparently the only cool thing happening in Ft. Wayne, a town where people apparently still drive past the punk bar and yell "hey, is that a gay bar?" at you when you're outside it. Pal, if this place were a gay bar, the drinks would be even stronger than they already are, so i don't know why you consider that an epithet.
On this night the HiFi played after a touring pop-punk band from Detroit and before Zebras and the local headliners, Kan-tis, a sort of more metal Primus (complete with funky bassist wearing a propeller hat and...a Primus shirt. Fuck yeah). After the pop-punksters' positive reaction from the crowd, HiFi set up, opened with "(The HiFi Vs.) Potential Energy," and were immediately greeted after the opening number with the following from some visibly pissed burly dude:
"THIS IS THE WORST SHIT I HAVE EVER HEARD!"
Well, strap in, buddy, because we're about to get a whole lot worse. Meanwhile, a dance party was breaking out in the front row as two well-dressed individuals couple-danced and one complete knockout gyrated near her boyfriend (or someone who wanted to be? I dunno). All in all, i'd call our completely face-melting set a win, and this set the best tour-closing performance HiFi's had since 2004, when we closed our tour that year with a killer show at Madison's High Noon Saloon and two of our girlfriends surprised us at the venue.
As i tore down my drums after a similarly killer Zebras set (possibly the best one of the tour, complete with rowdy fans who had seen the band before and a great sequence in "The Gift" where The Wizard took the theremin into the crowd and played it against people's heads), i bemusedly observed a fairly amorous couple lose the ability to wait until they got home to take matters into their overly-rambunctious pants. The girl disappeared into the ladies' room while her boy stood guard at the door and then not-at-all-surreptitiously went in after her, locking the heavy bolt on the door behind them. I can't say it was a bad plan, as that bolt was secure as hell--i used it myself when i had to drop a deuce at the venue earlier (normally i do my damnedest to avoid pooping at a punk bar because the men's room is never a crap-safe area--there's never a door on the toilet nor a lock on the bathroom itself. But we were talking critical goddamn mass and so the women's room was my only choice. Funny thing--ladies' bathrooms are covered in WAY fewer band stickers than men's rooms).
A girl showed up to knock on the door, but i broke the news that the facilities were due to be unavailable for a while. "Sorry, someone's fucking in there." "Are you serious? God, i really have to pee!" I had been chatting with a guy friend of Kan-tis' (and explaining the restroom coitus to him as well), so we assured her that if she used the men's room we'd stand guard. As she attended to her needs in the dude's room, we heard the megabolt unclack and the glowing couple emerged. I greeted them with a loud "YYYYYEAAAAAAAHHHH!" and Friend of Kan-tis lost his shit laughing. To the couple's credit they merely grinned, giggled and went about their evening.
Every touring band was paid $100 at the end of the night, which solidified the Brass Rail as Completely Fucking Rad in my book. Despite their weird-ass oddly-shaped stage (more long than wide, which made our stage plot a bit weird to sort out and meant that i was about 4 miles from the rest of the band on stage), and because of their patrons' willingness to voice their displeasure in hilarious ways (along with the dude yelling at us during the set, at one point i went back to the men's room, where i had tagged the celing with a HiFi sticker, only to see that the sticker had been removed), i would highly recommend this place to anyone who wants to play a show in one of those small towns where they're happy to see decent punk rock of any kind come through.
We followed a years-old HiFi tradition of driving straight home after the last show, arriving in Milwaukee around 7 AM with bleary eyes and happy hearts. Was this the best tour IfIHadAHiFi has ever been on? I don't know if i'd say that. I'd call it a pretty damn good one, however. Sure, we played in front of some ambivalent zombies in Nashville, and had shows with audience numbers in the single digits, but as i've said before, getting our name "out there" is, at this point, a secondary goal behind visiting pals and taking in this incredible country of ours. Sure, there were times while driving through torrential rain on precarious New York bridges where none of this touring nonsense seemed worth it, but we also finished strong with four consecutive shows that reminded me exactly why we do this. Am i already planning next year's two-week tour? Fuck no, but i'm definitely not against doing another one.
I'd rather not drive as much next time, though.
Lansing, MI - Mac's
Paulding/Arson/Sleeperhold/Imp Walker/Defenestrate/Telescope/NMM
By the time the show began at Mac's on Friday, many of us were wiped out and cranky. The Wizard was snapping at people and many of us needed naps. I blame a combination of things, but the one thing we were most excited for--leisure time--was probably a huge factor. Thanks to the 90-minute drive from Detroit to Lansing, we had lots of time to waste for the first time all tour, and we opted to spend it in East Lansing among the college dudebros. Record stores and comic book shops were descended upon while Yale took to a coffee shop to do some day job work. At one point i met up with him and overdosed on the most amazing of mango smoothies. After two weeks of just staying afloat, health-wise, my body reacted to such a brazen intake of nutrition by slightly altering my consciousness to the point where i couldn't tell if i was in a food coma or if i was tripping balls on vitamins and nutrients. Add in a stop at a pita joint on the main drag and my only option was a power nap while the rest of the gang watched Punch-Drunk Love in the bar. Fortunately, the brief 15-minute crash was just what i needed.
Still, it felt like the prevailing attitude among some in our little party was "let's just get these last two shows over with," which is a dangerous frame of mind to be in. It screws those bandmates of yours who are actually trying to give the paying customers a memorable show, and it screws those customers, who are paying money to see you play and be 100% entertaining. It's the ultimate in selfishness, and no band should tolerate or suffer it. As Skeeter Pomeroy once said in the pages of the venerable, long-discontinued Milwaukee zine Milk, "if you're going to be sad, you have to be mad, or it's not going to work." In other words, if you're not rocking out, then fuck you, and the audience is well within their rights to let you have it.
Fortunately, this time, neither band's performance was adversely affected, and all crankiness was exorcised by the time HiFi played to what was probably the best crowd of the entire tour. Mac's was fairly packed for both our touring bands (even though we had to play before the two local bands instead of bookended between them, but whatever--chalk it up to miscommunication), and we blazed through some of our finer performances of the tour. I think it was Pittsburgh where my body finally managed to make sense of the endurance test i'd been putting it through; while most of the tour found me playing Zebras songs in a very tense, barely-held-together fashion, by Pittsburgh my arms and posture managed to find their zone (as well as my brain finally realizing that if i play the fills in the lightspeed "The Sun" as triplet sixteenths instead of standard sixteenth notes, i'm not pushing my arms to their dropoff point), and it's been clear sailing ever since.
Ft. Wayne, IN - The Brass Rail
Pot. Energy/Paulding/We Fiddle/Imp Walker/Arson/Black Holes/Success
After some more time spent in East Lansing, an incredible breakfast at a pancake house that served peanut butter and banana French Toast, and the realization that the bass cab was going to be fine for the last show (it blew because of mismatched ohm ratings between head and cab--an 8-ohm head pumping into a cab with two 8-ohm speakers that apparently cancel themselves out into a 4-ohm rating or some shit, so with only one speaker connected the ohms matched...I DON'T KNOW I'M JUST THE STUPID DRUMMER), spirits going into the final show were crazy high. We also had done a count of the cash in the HiFi band fund and realized that we were finishing this tour far ahead of where we started, somehow. We began in a $95 hole thanks to the fun times with the van impound and an oil change; even with that money reimbursed, we still ended the tour with around $290 in our previously depleted band fund. BRING ON THE STRIPPERS!
The Brass Rail is a killer little punk rock/rockabilly dive, and apparently the only cool thing happening in Ft. Wayne, a town where people apparently still drive past the punk bar and yell "hey, is that a gay bar?" at you when you're outside it. Pal, if this place were a gay bar, the drinks would be even stronger than they already are, so i don't know why you consider that an epithet.
On this night the HiFi played after a touring pop-punk band from Detroit and before Zebras and the local headliners, Kan-tis, a sort of more metal Primus (complete with funky bassist wearing a propeller hat and...a Primus shirt. Fuck yeah). After the pop-punksters' positive reaction from the crowd, HiFi set up, opened with "(The HiFi Vs.) Potential Energy," and were immediately greeted after the opening number with the following from some visibly pissed burly dude:
"THIS IS THE WORST SHIT I HAVE EVER HEARD!"
Well, strap in, buddy, because we're about to get a whole lot worse. Meanwhile, a dance party was breaking out in the front row as two well-dressed individuals couple-danced and one complete knockout gyrated near her boyfriend (or someone who wanted to be? I dunno). All in all, i'd call our completely face-melting set a win, and this set the best tour-closing performance HiFi's had since 2004, when we closed our tour that year with a killer show at Madison's High Noon Saloon and two of our girlfriends surprised us at the venue.
As i tore down my drums after a similarly killer Zebras set (possibly the best one of the tour, complete with rowdy fans who had seen the band before and a great sequence in "The Gift" where The Wizard took the theremin into the crowd and played it against people's heads), i bemusedly observed a fairly amorous couple lose the ability to wait until they got home to take matters into their overly-rambunctious pants. The girl disappeared into the ladies' room while her boy stood guard at the door and then not-at-all-surreptitiously went in after her, locking the heavy bolt on the door behind them. I can't say it was a bad plan, as that bolt was secure as hell--i used it myself when i had to drop a deuce at the venue earlier (normally i do my damnedest to avoid pooping at a punk bar because the men's room is never a crap-safe area--there's never a door on the toilet nor a lock on the bathroom itself. But we were talking critical goddamn mass and so the women's room was my only choice. Funny thing--ladies' bathrooms are covered in WAY fewer band stickers than men's rooms).
A girl showed up to knock on the door, but i broke the news that the facilities were due to be unavailable for a while. "Sorry, someone's fucking in there." "Are you serious? God, i really have to pee!" I had been chatting with a guy friend of Kan-tis' (and explaining the restroom coitus to him as well), so we assured her that if she used the men's room we'd stand guard. As she attended to her needs in the dude's room, we heard the megabolt unclack and the glowing couple emerged. I greeted them with a loud "YYYYYEAAAAAAAHHHH!" and Friend of Kan-tis lost his shit laughing. To the couple's credit they merely grinned, giggled and went about their evening.
Every touring band was paid $100 at the end of the night, which solidified the Brass Rail as Completely Fucking Rad in my book. Despite their weird-ass oddly-shaped stage (more long than wide, which made our stage plot a bit weird to sort out and meant that i was about 4 miles from the rest of the band on stage), and because of their patrons' willingness to voice their displeasure in hilarious ways (along with the dude yelling at us during the set, at one point i went back to the men's room, where i had tagged the celing with a HiFi sticker, only to see that the sticker had been removed), i would highly recommend this place to anyone who wants to play a show in one of those small towns where they're happy to see decent punk rock of any kind come through.
We followed a years-old HiFi tradition of driving straight home after the last show, arriving in Milwaukee around 7 AM with bleary eyes and happy hearts. Was this the best tour IfIHadAHiFi has ever been on? I don't know if i'd say that. I'd call it a pretty damn good one, however. Sure, we played in front of some ambivalent zombies in Nashville, and had shows with audience numbers in the single digits, but as i've said before, getting our name "out there" is, at this point, a secondary goal behind visiting pals and taking in this incredible country of ours. Sure, there were times while driving through torrential rain on precarious New York bridges where none of this touring nonsense seemed worth it, but we also finished strong with four consecutive shows that reminded me exactly why we do this. Am i already planning next year's two-week tour? Fuck no, but i'm definitely not against doing another one.
I'd rather not drive as much next time, though.
8/26/11
The Bass Speaker Blowout Tour '11, Part 9: "Keep Playing"
Detroit. Small's.
We Fiddle/Arson/Black Holes/Magnets/Imp. Walker/Telescope/NMM
I'm at the bar after both my bands have gone over big time at Small's. Sure, we somehow managed to blow the second bass speaker of the tour, but throw all the HiFi feedback into the mix, and no one really noticed the flappy flap that much. We're selling some CDs and hearing killer compliments. One dude is adamant that he being us back in the Spring to play with his band and Child Bite. The bartender is pouring me my third whiskey & coke and a cup of water when the cute brunette in the oversized Descendents t-shirt next to me makes eye contact.
"The drummer." It's a statement, but she's squinting, looking for confirmation, as she has been drinking. I confirm her suspicion.
"Your talent...rises...above. Really." She's being exceedingly complimentary, almost fawning. She's a piano player who is trying to learn drums, and she's asking question after question about my ability to sing and play drums at the same time. I give her my usual boilerplate when it comes to the whole singing drummer thing: it was tough as hell to learn, i used to listen to The Pop Machine sound board recordings and hear my tempo accellerate out of control on the songs that i sung, i've been drumming for over 20 years, practice, practice, practice. All the while, the girl is getting more intense and more inquisitive, and i can see this conversation is leading to something that she needs to get off her chest. It's been on her mind, and she's been waiting for the right person to unload on--the person who'll understand the story she needs to tell. And i'm not sure how much she's had to drink tonight, but suffice to say it was enough to guarantee that this story will be told tonight, because apparently the singing drummer in the touring band, it has been decided, qualifies as the sympathetic ear she needs tonight.
"Have you ever had anything in your life that has kept you from doing this?"
I'm not sure where she's going with this, but i've never been considered an under-sharer, so i'm not uncomfortable telling her that i once had a relationship that ended because of the distance that resulted from me not moving to another state and choosing to remain with the band. But essentially, no, i've chosen jobs that enable me to tour and make music, and i've always made it a top priority.
The dam breaks, and my new friend, fueled by a night of rock n roll and lots of alcohol, let's 'er rip. You see, she wants to do what i'm doing--touring the country and rocking out, but her father is incredibly sick and it has fallen to her to take care of him. It takes up nearly all her time and she can't dedicate the time to her music that she wants. She's on the verge of tears several times during her story, and while i'm a little uncomfortable--after all, i've known this girl for ten minutes at this point--my heart is breaking for her.
I'm thinking of, and i tell her about, my grandma, who lost most of her adult life to a combination of single motherhood and caring for a parent (my great-grandma) who was unable to care for herself after my great-grandpa died, for various reasons including her health. I've at times, on my grandma's behalf, resented her immediate relatives, who never bothered to help with her mom. I most assuredly feel for this girl.
What i don't tell her is that as we're speaking, my father is in a hospital recovering from an infection and dealing with the fact that his cancer has returned and he will soon be losing his jaw and may never eat solid food again. I don't tell her this because this conversation is about her, and all she needs to know is what my mentioning my grandma accomplished--that i empathize.
Every child has to face the possibility at some point that the tables may turn and that they may become their parents' caretaker. Perhaps selfishly, i've always been a little thankful that since i live in Milwaukee, that responsibility may fall to siblings of mine that live closer to my ever-aging parents. But faced with it now, with this sweet, sad-eyed girl living out my worst-case scenario, thinking about how my own father is fighting right now, there's little i want more than to drop everything and be at his side.
She's wondering aloud how she can possibly have her own life, to the fullest that she wants to live it, when she has this stifling responsibility. I manage to say something trite about how important finding balance in life is--figuring out how to reconcile life's responsibilities with finding a way to live life to its fullest--but i have no idea how she should go about this. I don't know her life, and as much as i'd like to dole out a magic, cure-all answer to life, the universe, and anything, i don't have it. So all i say is all i can: "you've gotta keep playing."
She's said all that she wants to say. She asks me my name because she wants to remember our conversation. I tell it to her but i'm skeptical that the beers will allow her to remember it. I thank her for her truly flattering compliments and i adjourn to the performance room to watch the last band of the evening play, our conversation spinning around in my head.
I guess that was really all i could say to her, right? "Keep playing." "What happens if he finally dies, and suddenly i'm 40? I've already lost so much time." You've gotta keep playing, for yourself at the very least, or else, in her words, you'll explode. Would my dad be happy that i bailed on tour to be with him? I'm sure he'd appreciate the gesture, but ultimately he'd want me to finish my shows. Does my new friend's father know that she's put her music on hold for him? I have no idea, but if he's a good dad, i can't imagine he'd be happy about it.
So at the end of the night, i make sure to find her one more time. "It was very nice meeting you. Thank you so much for the nice things you said to me tonight." She gives me a new-friend hug, and i say to her, "keep playing, and take care of yourself."
"Thanks. You too."
I'll be home soon, Dad.
We Fiddle/Arson/Black Holes/Magnets/Imp. Walker/Telescope/NMM
I'm at the bar after both my bands have gone over big time at Small's. Sure, we somehow managed to blow the second bass speaker of the tour, but throw all the HiFi feedback into the mix, and no one really noticed the flappy flap that much. We're selling some CDs and hearing killer compliments. One dude is adamant that he being us back in the Spring to play with his band and Child Bite. The bartender is pouring me my third whiskey & coke and a cup of water when the cute brunette in the oversized Descendents t-shirt next to me makes eye contact.
"The drummer." It's a statement, but she's squinting, looking for confirmation, as she has been drinking. I confirm her suspicion.
"Your talent...rises...above. Really." She's being exceedingly complimentary, almost fawning. She's a piano player who is trying to learn drums, and she's asking question after question about my ability to sing and play drums at the same time. I give her my usual boilerplate when it comes to the whole singing drummer thing: it was tough as hell to learn, i used to listen to The Pop Machine sound board recordings and hear my tempo accellerate out of control on the songs that i sung, i've been drumming for over 20 years, practice, practice, practice. All the while, the girl is getting more intense and more inquisitive, and i can see this conversation is leading to something that she needs to get off her chest. It's been on her mind, and she's been waiting for the right person to unload on--the person who'll understand the story she needs to tell. And i'm not sure how much she's had to drink tonight, but suffice to say it was enough to guarantee that this story will be told tonight, because apparently the singing drummer in the touring band, it has been decided, qualifies as the sympathetic ear she needs tonight.
"Have you ever had anything in your life that has kept you from doing this?"
I'm not sure where she's going with this, but i've never been considered an under-sharer, so i'm not uncomfortable telling her that i once had a relationship that ended because of the distance that resulted from me not moving to another state and choosing to remain with the band. But essentially, no, i've chosen jobs that enable me to tour and make music, and i've always made it a top priority.
The dam breaks, and my new friend, fueled by a night of rock n roll and lots of alcohol, let's 'er rip. You see, she wants to do what i'm doing--touring the country and rocking out, but her father is incredibly sick and it has fallen to her to take care of him. It takes up nearly all her time and she can't dedicate the time to her music that she wants. She's on the verge of tears several times during her story, and while i'm a little uncomfortable--after all, i've known this girl for ten minutes at this point--my heart is breaking for her.
I'm thinking of, and i tell her about, my grandma, who lost most of her adult life to a combination of single motherhood and caring for a parent (my great-grandma) who was unable to care for herself after my great-grandpa died, for various reasons including her health. I've at times, on my grandma's behalf, resented her immediate relatives, who never bothered to help with her mom. I most assuredly feel for this girl.
What i don't tell her is that as we're speaking, my father is in a hospital recovering from an infection and dealing with the fact that his cancer has returned and he will soon be losing his jaw and may never eat solid food again. I don't tell her this because this conversation is about her, and all she needs to know is what my mentioning my grandma accomplished--that i empathize.
Every child has to face the possibility at some point that the tables may turn and that they may become their parents' caretaker. Perhaps selfishly, i've always been a little thankful that since i live in Milwaukee, that responsibility may fall to siblings of mine that live closer to my ever-aging parents. But faced with it now, with this sweet, sad-eyed girl living out my worst-case scenario, thinking about how my own father is fighting right now, there's little i want more than to drop everything and be at his side.
She's wondering aloud how she can possibly have her own life, to the fullest that she wants to live it, when she has this stifling responsibility. I manage to say something trite about how important finding balance in life is--figuring out how to reconcile life's responsibilities with finding a way to live life to its fullest--but i have no idea how she should go about this. I don't know her life, and as much as i'd like to dole out a magic, cure-all answer to life, the universe, and anything, i don't have it. So all i say is all i can: "you've gotta keep playing."
She's said all that she wants to say. She asks me my name because she wants to remember our conversation. I tell it to her but i'm skeptical that the beers will allow her to remember it. I thank her for her truly flattering compliments and i adjourn to the performance room to watch the last band of the evening play, our conversation spinning around in my head.
I guess that was really all i could say to her, right? "Keep playing." "What happens if he finally dies, and suddenly i'm 40? I've already lost so much time." You've gotta keep playing, for yourself at the very least, or else, in her words, you'll explode. Would my dad be happy that i bailed on tour to be with him? I'm sure he'd appreciate the gesture, but ultimately he'd want me to finish my shows. Does my new friend's father know that she's put her music on hold for him? I have no idea, but if he's a good dad, i can't imagine he'd be happy about it.
So at the end of the night, i make sure to find her one more time. "It was very nice meeting you. Thank you so much for the nice things you said to me tonight." She gives me a new-friend hug, and i say to her, "keep playing, and take care of yourself."
"Thanks. You too."
I'll be home soon, Dad.
8/25/11
"You Look Like You Need a Giant Lollipop" Tour '11, Part 8: "I feel like I'm in Dayton in 1994"
The following is the Yelp review i plan to post when i get home regarding the Newport, KY Johnny Rocket's Family Fun Diner of the Apocalypse:
By the way, tonight we played at Southgate House for the first time ever. The fact that the best conversations of the evening involved discussing Brainiac with the sound guy and our new awesome friends in the Jesus Lizardy Swear Jar should tell you all you need to know about how awesome the evening was. While only 11 people paid, which wasn't enough to garner any gas money from the door, the combination of band dudes and audience members filled out the room to the point where, after a night of playing for three people in Pittsburgh, it looked like a packed party house. I personally played the best sets i've played in days; not sure why, since i only got three hours of sleep the night before. But my wrists were more relaxed than they've been all tour, and my fills benefited from whatever zen trance i managed to put my body into.
HiFi Southgate Set: Tunguska/Paulding/Imp. Walker/Black Holes/X-13D/Pot. Energy/Arson/Success
Tunguska was played as a special request for our pal Dale Freeman, who's been following us since the old Pop Machine days, but man, was it sloppy. Everything else sounded great, though, and based on the CDs we sold, most of the people there agreed.
But most definitely, the best part of the night was yet another example of Why Bands Tour--to find link-minded people in different cities. One such dude was Shane from Swear Jar, who shares my love for noisy punk rock, snark, and calling bullshit on most of the lightweight, MOR nonsense that passes for "indie rock" these days. We were instant pals and i can't wait to drag these guys up to Wisconsin to play and hang out.
We had a minor designated driver incident tonight, as everyone thought someone else was the DD, which resulted in Yale willing himself sober enough to drive us to our friend Jonathan's house to stay the night. The designated driving--hell, the driving all tour--has been very unevenly distributed, and my resentment is starting to bubble out in all sorts of passive-aggressive ways. In Brooklyn as we were led to our friend Patrick's house, i cranked Reign in Blood in order to drown out the distracting, drunken jabber going on in the van. Because i've been trying to keep my body from wearing down while drumming two sets per night, i haven't been doing a lot of drinking on this tour, which suits me just fine, but results in the DD position defaulting to me a little more often than it should. It's been irritating, but so it goes.
Tonight, though, was not one of those nights, as the Southgate House parlour's bartender does not fuck around with the whiskey. The Jameson shots Dale bought us all were clearly doubles; still, i slammed mine in one go, much to the protestation of my gag reflex. Screw you, body, you're going to take this rapid-fire inebriation and like it. For once on this tour, anyway. After all, writing Yelp reviews is the most fun when drunk, i have just decided right now.
I feel bad for the waitstaff at Johnny Rocket's. Not only are they required to shout mass salutations at every customer who enters the establishment, which personally makes me feel extremely self-conscious, but our poor waitress, a lovely woman who kept her energy up as much as could be expected while drawing ketchup smiley faces in cardboard bowls for no discernible reason other than that maybe toddlers would find it cute?, performed her job with the thinly-coated veneer of an employee who just under the surface very obviously wants to shoot herself in the damn face.
It's easy to see why. Early on in our Johnny Rocket's experience, it was pointed out by our server that gratuity is automatically added to the bill. We thought nothing of it initially, but after receiving our food, it was obvious that the tip is automatically added on to prevent what had to have been a rash of tip stiffings resulting from wide-spread dissatisfaction with what initially seems like a reasonable menu. How many waiters and waitresses have ventured in and out of this place after the thirty-second tip consisting of three pennies and a loose button? The "help wanted" sign was prominently displayed in the bay windows. I can't imagine they ever come down.
A quick note about pricing: if your sandwiches are going to float in the $8-$9 range, industry average dictates that this is a price that includes a side. The fact that your fries come in a "darling" little metal deep-fry basket does not justify charging an extra $2.75. And let's not even get into your cheese fries. Nah, fuck it--let's get into them. If they're gonna be $7, shouldn't the pile of nacho cheese, jalapenos and sour cream have more than 10 fries underneath them?
No chorus of hellos, no army of corn-syrupy ketchup smiley faces, can conceal the fact that your food is the saddest joke since the final scene of Solondz's Storytelling. The difference here is that no one should feel remotely bad for laughing at your cluelessly misguided "product."
By the way, tonight we played at Southgate House for the first time ever. The fact that the best conversations of the evening involved discussing Brainiac with the sound guy and our new awesome friends in the Jesus Lizardy Swear Jar should tell you all you need to know about how awesome the evening was. While only 11 people paid, which wasn't enough to garner any gas money from the door, the combination of band dudes and audience members filled out the room to the point where, after a night of playing for three people in Pittsburgh, it looked like a packed party house. I personally played the best sets i've played in days; not sure why, since i only got three hours of sleep the night before. But my wrists were more relaxed than they've been all tour, and my fills benefited from whatever zen trance i managed to put my body into.
HiFi Southgate Set: Tunguska/Paulding/Imp. Walker/Black Holes/X-13D/Pot. Energy/Arson/Success
Tunguska was played as a special request for our pal Dale Freeman, who's been following us since the old Pop Machine days, but man, was it sloppy. Everything else sounded great, though, and based on the CDs we sold, most of the people there agreed.
But most definitely, the best part of the night was yet another example of Why Bands Tour--to find link-minded people in different cities. One such dude was Shane from Swear Jar, who shares my love for noisy punk rock, snark, and calling bullshit on most of the lightweight, MOR nonsense that passes for "indie rock" these days. We were instant pals and i can't wait to drag these guys up to Wisconsin to play and hang out.
We had a minor designated driver incident tonight, as everyone thought someone else was the DD, which resulted in Yale willing himself sober enough to drive us to our friend Jonathan's house to stay the night. The designated driving--hell, the driving all tour--has been very unevenly distributed, and my resentment is starting to bubble out in all sorts of passive-aggressive ways. In Brooklyn as we were led to our friend Patrick's house, i cranked Reign in Blood in order to drown out the distracting, drunken jabber going on in the van. Because i've been trying to keep my body from wearing down while drumming two sets per night, i haven't been doing a lot of drinking on this tour, which suits me just fine, but results in the DD position defaulting to me a little more often than it should. It's been irritating, but so it goes.
Tonight, though, was not one of those nights, as the Southgate House parlour's bartender does not fuck around with the whiskey. The Jameson shots Dale bought us all were clearly doubles; still, i slammed mine in one go, much to the protestation of my gag reflex. Screw you, body, you're going to take this rapid-fire inebriation and like it. For once on this tour, anyway. After all, writing Yelp reviews is the most fun when drunk, i have just decided right now.
8/24/11
"Work is Overrated" Tour '11, Part 7: "Dude, when did the X Games become 'Nam?"
It's a rule with our band (and probably with others as well) that the shows that involve the longest drive end up being the strangest and most sparsely attended. You may guess that with an intro like that, one of those shows will be recounted now. Well, i won't be giving you credit for that educated guess, because frankly it was a pretty obvious lead-in.
The drive from New Brunswick to Pittsburgh was supposed to be six hours, but tack on an hour waiting to get through a Pennsylvania toll booth where the lanes dropped down to one immediately after, then another half hour navigating construction in Pittsburgh, and we ended up rolling into Gooski's Bar around 8:15 after leaving at noon. This place was one of those charming dumps: writing adorned loads of square footage on the black walls, band stickers everywhere in the performance room, cheap greasy food, and the Milwaukee Brewers pounding the tar out of the Pirates on the television. I briefly pondered saying something about the Super Bowl or wearing my Packer NFC Championship t-shirt on stage, but think better of it after some online friends warn me that the van may be set on fire if i pull the trigger on my shit-talking scheme.
Band number one was named "Lightweight," and as it happened, it wasn't just a clever name, as their singer was mad slop-nuts wasted. He threw guitar picks at Yale, yelled at the audience, flailed into his band members, and whipped out his penis at least twice--once to drape its limpness (hey, some dudes are showers and some are growers) over his guitar and hump it at the end of the set. Despite how uncomfortable his bandmates and friends were rendered by the spectacle, the actual band sounded really good! Unfortunately, GG Allin Jr.'s antics broke a microphone, leaving the room with two working ones, limiting the HiFi's choice of songs. Ah well.
Sloppy McStaggerstein continued to impress during the Zebras set, resting his chin on Lacey's Moog and grabbing Vince's mic during "Diablo Blanco" and yelling into it, earning him a swift ejection from the premises. The exit from the show of Flashy McWiener and the friend who guided him out the door reduced the audience by 40%, dropping the number of people watching us from five to three (John from Microwaves, who set up the show; Vince's brother Dan; and the drummer from the second band). The HiFi set was a simple, bang-it-out six-song affair with the same number of people watching (like in Nashville, a bunch of people watched the locals and bailed for the touring bands--way to get the most value for your five dollars, numbskulls).
We Fiddle/Arson/Sleeperhold/Take the $/Imp. Walker/NMM (half tempo)
Yes, half tempo. Before we played "No More Music" John yelled out a request: "whatever song you're going to play, play it REALLY SLOW." We acquiesced and proceeded to crack ourselves up rocking out on "No More Music" in half time, complete with Yale and me singing the lyrics at 33 RPM. I'm pretty sure i saw John do a legit spit take with his beer while The Wizard and i would half laugh, half yell (a yaff?) at Yale for constantly wanting to change to the next part early. I'm really bummed that there was no video.
As we tore down our gear, Vince wandered over to us and said, "watch out--things are starting to get tense." A tat-sleeved dudebro was having a very quiet, but very intense conversation with John while the rest of us looked on, confused. When he finally wandered off, John explained, "i've never met that guy before in my life! But he's all, 'you know me. YOU KNOW ME. I know you from 16 years ago. You don't remember me? I was a pro skater. I was on MTV, man.'" What any of this had to do with the guy wanting to kick John's ass, we're not sure, but before the dude wandered away, he had turned to Vince while John had gone to talk to the owner.
"WHAT'S THAT GUY'S NAME?" he asked Vince.
"Uh, i don't really know him that well..."
"HIS NAME'S SHITBAG."
"Uh, ok?"
Things kept poor Vince's blood pressure sky-high when the dude walked to his truck to drive away (wisely, given his drunken state)--a truck that coincidentally was right behind our van, and that he needed to walk to as i was walking to our van. After he muttered something about "follow [my] honky ass," i kept glancing back at him until his stopped, threw his arms in the air, and said, "WHAT?" "Nothing, dude!" He staggered past me as Vince nearly had an aneurysm, but we had successfully navigated the "washed up and sad" level of Skate or Die for the Band Wii.
The crowd wasn't quite as thin for Sunday's show at Don Pedro in Brooklyn, but a similar scenario played out in that we got to endure the most white-knuckle drive of the tour in exchange for playing in front of a handful of people (who, unlike Pittsburgh, actually paid attention and enjoyed both bands thoroughly). A two-hour trip from Philadelphia to Brooklyn was stretched to four and a half hours by torrential rain and gasket-blowing traffic that had me convinced that this was my last tour ever as i gritted my way over the Gorgonzola Bridge (or whatever the fuck it's called) in one of two narrow, precarious-as-hell lanes of bumper-to-bumper.
The entire drive on Sunday, as my senses worked at peak efficiency to avoid hydroplaning and colliding with the semis that would pass mere inches from my head, i resolved that the fun parts of touring were no longer worth the aggravation, and this was it. No more after i get home. I quit. Fuck this for eternity.
Of course, as soon as we saw our friends Patrick Walsh and the late, lamented Mount Vicious' Bri Bri and Alli, my resolve to give the fuck up melted away with the rest of my bad mood. Both bands played killer sets and we were treated to some badass Hot Snakes-tinged screamy punk courtesy our friend Steve and his band We Ride. If we hadn't played with Maple Stave in Durham i'd say We Ride were the best band we've played with on tour.
Brookyln: Paulding/Ratings/Pot. Energy/Sleeperhold/Arson/Grace/Telescope/NMM
The only real drag of the Brooklyn show was that way more of our friends promised to make it out than actually showed up, but whatever. We'll see 'em in three years, maybe!
Just as the long drives resulted in low attendance, the shortest drive of tour, Brooklyn to New Brunswick, resulted in one of the most packed and fun. Our friend and PRFer Kelli's basement hosted a birthday party for her bassist Colleen (she turned 23, and i immediately re-evaluated why i was hanging out with a bunch of kids 13 years younger than me), and their band kicked things off, setting the tone for Zebras and HiFi to burn through a pair of high-energy, brief sets with an eye on getting the noise done by 10 PM in order to avoid noise ordinances.
New Brunswick: Paulding/Arson/Imp Walker/Pot. Energy/Telescope/NMM
The basement show may not have had a blasted guitar player waving his dick around and humping his guitar, but it did have lots of excited kids, awesome vegetarian food for us to nosh on, $75 in donations, and quiet time by 11 PM. Perfection in basement show form.
We have four shows left now. The end of this tour honestly can't come fast enough. I've finally started feeling the effects of playing two sets on a nightly basis, and i'm frankly starting to get tired. Goofy facial expressions are now at a premium, and my shoulder is starting to demand detachment from the rest of my body about halfway through Zebras every night. Gotta fight through it now. But at least i know that i can finish the tour, because i got an update on Dad's condition today. While his condition is improving and he's eating soft foods and his infection is clearing, we have confirmation that his cancer has returned to his jaw. Once his infection has totally cleared up, he'll be moved to either Madison or Milwaukee to have another huge chunk of his jaw removed and replaced with a graft of bone from his leg.
While i'm relieved to at least know what's going on, and am relieved that i can finish the tour, i know that in the back of my mind there's a paralyzing fear that i'm not letting myself feel until i get home. The night before my dad went into surgery in 2000 ranks a solid #1 with a bullet on the list of the worst days of my life. I don't want to have to deal with this. I really don't.
But like a raging thunderstorm on the New Jersey Turnpike, i'll fight through this shit, because i have to. Because making it to the next show is sometimes all we have.
The drive from New Brunswick to Pittsburgh was supposed to be six hours, but tack on an hour waiting to get through a Pennsylvania toll booth where the lanes dropped down to one immediately after, then another half hour navigating construction in Pittsburgh, and we ended up rolling into Gooski's Bar around 8:15 after leaving at noon. This place was one of those charming dumps: writing adorned loads of square footage on the black walls, band stickers everywhere in the performance room, cheap greasy food, and the Milwaukee Brewers pounding the tar out of the Pirates on the television. I briefly pondered saying something about the Super Bowl or wearing my Packer NFC Championship t-shirt on stage, but think better of it after some online friends warn me that the van may be set on fire if i pull the trigger on my shit-talking scheme.
Band number one was named "Lightweight," and as it happened, it wasn't just a clever name, as their singer was mad slop-nuts wasted. He threw guitar picks at Yale, yelled at the audience, flailed into his band members, and whipped out his penis at least twice--once to drape its limpness (hey, some dudes are showers and some are growers) over his guitar and hump it at the end of the set. Despite how uncomfortable his bandmates and friends were rendered by the spectacle, the actual band sounded really good! Unfortunately, GG Allin Jr.'s antics broke a microphone, leaving the room with two working ones, limiting the HiFi's choice of songs. Ah well.
Sloppy McStaggerstein continued to impress during the Zebras set, resting his chin on Lacey's Moog and grabbing Vince's mic during "Diablo Blanco" and yelling into it, earning him a swift ejection from the premises. The exit from the show of Flashy McWiener and the friend who guided him out the door reduced the audience by 40%, dropping the number of people watching us from five to three (John from Microwaves, who set up the show; Vince's brother Dan; and the drummer from the second band). The HiFi set was a simple, bang-it-out six-song affair with the same number of people watching (like in Nashville, a bunch of people watched the locals and bailed for the touring bands--way to get the most value for your five dollars, numbskulls).
We Fiddle/Arson/Sleeperhold/Take the $/Imp. Walker/NMM (half tempo)
Yes, half tempo. Before we played "No More Music" John yelled out a request: "whatever song you're going to play, play it REALLY SLOW." We acquiesced and proceeded to crack ourselves up rocking out on "No More Music" in half time, complete with Yale and me singing the lyrics at 33 RPM. I'm pretty sure i saw John do a legit spit take with his beer while The Wizard and i would half laugh, half yell (a yaff?) at Yale for constantly wanting to change to the next part early. I'm really bummed that there was no video.
As we tore down our gear, Vince wandered over to us and said, "watch out--things are starting to get tense." A tat-sleeved dudebro was having a very quiet, but very intense conversation with John while the rest of us looked on, confused. When he finally wandered off, John explained, "i've never met that guy before in my life! But he's all, 'you know me. YOU KNOW ME. I know you from 16 years ago. You don't remember me? I was a pro skater. I was on MTV, man.'" What any of this had to do with the guy wanting to kick John's ass, we're not sure, but before the dude wandered away, he had turned to Vince while John had gone to talk to the owner.
"WHAT'S THAT GUY'S NAME?" he asked Vince.
"Uh, i don't really know him that well..."
"HIS NAME'S SHITBAG."
"Uh, ok?"
Things kept poor Vince's blood pressure sky-high when the dude walked to his truck to drive away (wisely, given his drunken state)--a truck that coincidentally was right behind our van, and that he needed to walk to as i was walking to our van. After he muttered something about "follow [my] honky ass," i kept glancing back at him until his stopped, threw his arms in the air, and said, "WHAT?" "Nothing, dude!" He staggered past me as Vince nearly had an aneurysm, but we had successfully navigated the "washed up and sad" level of Skate or Die for the Band Wii.
The crowd wasn't quite as thin for Sunday's show at Don Pedro in Brooklyn, but a similar scenario played out in that we got to endure the most white-knuckle drive of the tour in exchange for playing in front of a handful of people (who, unlike Pittsburgh, actually paid attention and enjoyed both bands thoroughly). A two-hour trip from Philadelphia to Brooklyn was stretched to four and a half hours by torrential rain and gasket-blowing traffic that had me convinced that this was my last tour ever as i gritted my way over the Gorgonzola Bridge (or whatever the fuck it's called) in one of two narrow, precarious-as-hell lanes of bumper-to-bumper.
The entire drive on Sunday, as my senses worked at peak efficiency to avoid hydroplaning and colliding with the semis that would pass mere inches from my head, i resolved that the fun parts of touring were no longer worth the aggravation, and this was it. No more after i get home. I quit. Fuck this for eternity.
Of course, as soon as we saw our friends Patrick Walsh and the late, lamented Mount Vicious' Bri Bri and Alli, my resolve to give the fuck up melted away with the rest of my bad mood. Both bands played killer sets and we were treated to some badass Hot Snakes-tinged screamy punk courtesy our friend Steve and his band We Ride. If we hadn't played with Maple Stave in Durham i'd say We Ride were the best band we've played with on tour.
Brookyln: Paulding/Ratings/Pot. Energy/Sleeperhold/Arson/Grace/Telescope/NMM
The only real drag of the Brooklyn show was that way more of our friends promised to make it out than actually showed up, but whatever. We'll see 'em in three years, maybe!
Just as the long drives resulted in low attendance, the shortest drive of tour, Brooklyn to New Brunswick, resulted in one of the most packed and fun. Our friend and PRFer Kelli's basement hosted a birthday party for her bassist Colleen (she turned 23, and i immediately re-evaluated why i was hanging out with a bunch of kids 13 years younger than me), and their band kicked things off, setting the tone for Zebras and HiFi to burn through a pair of high-energy, brief sets with an eye on getting the noise done by 10 PM in order to avoid noise ordinances.
New Brunswick: Paulding/Arson/Imp Walker/Pot. Energy/Telescope/NMM
The basement show may not have had a blasted guitar player waving his dick around and humping his guitar, but it did have lots of excited kids, awesome vegetarian food for us to nosh on, $75 in donations, and quiet time by 11 PM. Perfection in basement show form.
We have four shows left now. The end of this tour honestly can't come fast enough. I've finally started feeling the effects of playing two sets on a nightly basis, and i'm frankly starting to get tired. Goofy facial expressions are now at a premium, and my shoulder is starting to demand detachment from the rest of my body about halfway through Zebras every night. Gotta fight through it now. But at least i know that i can finish the tour, because i got an update on Dad's condition today. While his condition is improving and he's eating soft foods and his infection is clearing, we have confirmation that his cancer has returned to his jaw. Once his infection has totally cleared up, he'll be moved to either Madison or Milwaukee to have another huge chunk of his jaw removed and replaced with a graft of bone from his leg.
While i'm relieved to at least know what's going on, and am relieved that i can finish the tour, i know that in the back of my mind there's a paralyzing fear that i'm not letting myself feel until i get home. The night before my dad went into surgery in 2000 ranks a solid #1 with a bullet on the list of the worst days of my life. I don't want to have to deal with this. I really don't.
But like a raging thunderstorm on the New Jersey Turnpike, i'll fight through this shit, because i have to. Because making it to the next show is sometimes all we have.
8/21/11
"Thunderstorms and Car Accidents" Tour '11: Part 6 - Philly Redeemed
No, but seriously, thunderstorms and car accidents have been following us everywhere on this tour. We drove past the worst wreck we've seen yet on our way to the Danger Danger Gallery in Philly: car completely flipped; telephone pole cracked in half about 20 feet in the air, top half dangling in wires; 35 MPH zone. Someone needs to do an expose on city drag racing, i think--that shit's making a crazy mad comeback.
PREVIOUSLY ON "IFIHADAHIFI VS. PHILADELPHIA:"
We had an OK show in Philly in 2006 when we played a house venue called The Big Pink House (although we severely dropped the ball that night when, after two weeks of making John Mellencamp jokes, we opted for MotownPhilly jokes EVEN THOUGH WE WERE IN A PINK HOUSE), but our 2008 show in Philly with White Wrench Conservatory was a nightmare. Not only did we get to sit in a bar called The Fire and watch CC Sabathia get positively shelled by the Phillies during the Brewers' first playoff series since 1982, but then no one in the bar hopped across to the band room to watch us. We ended up playing in front of two of Dixie's friends, and that was it.
So we weren't all that thrilled to have to try to book a Philly show on this tour, and did all we could to avoid it. But our friend in Lancaster wasn't able to close a deal for us, and so, out of desperation, i emailed Danger Danger, a gallery that had never returned my emails in years previous. This time, however, they responded (!), and invited us to play their big anniversary benefit party to raise money for the gallery. Unfortunately, it being a benefit, it meant that touring bands would get no money out of the door, and we'd have to rely on merch sales. Having no other options and realizing that probably most all-ages kids in the area would be there, we agreed and decided to hope for the best.
Amazingly, we got pretty close. After a pair of, shell we say, more "sensitive" musical sets in the basement room of the gallery, HiFi set up and prepared to give these kids a good old-fashioned punk rock kick in the teeth. The venue did a great job of herding the audience into the room where the next band was playing, and--TAKE A LESSON FROM THIS, NASHVILLE--the kids were actively engaged with what was going on, which was excellent. I opened our set with a "We're IfIHadAHiFi from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We're a dance band. That's a hint, and you should take it," and launched into "Paulding Light." Yale kicked his stage antics into overdrive and we blasted those kids to the back of the room, much to their delight based on the loud, enthusiastic response. As all sets were limited to 25 minutes, we made sure to pack them with only the most crucial party jamz.
SET LIST: Paulding/Arson/Imperial Walker/Pot. Energy/Black Holes/Success
Zebras had an equally exuberant audience, including the occasional three-person circle pit during the more speedy numbers like "Me U God" and "Wiener Kids." All in all, these kids redeemed Philly in our eyes as a town where the kids know what's up.
HiFi managed to sell about $18 in merch, of which we proceeded to spend $12 upon our return to the previously lamented Fire. Our labelmates Trophy Wives were playing there and we not only wanted to see some solid bros in the middle of tour, but we wanted to help fill the room for them, because of course, based on our sample data of one weeknight show with no local band, shows at The Fire never draw. As it turns out, they had a few people there ("about...twelve?" their singer Billy estimated outside the venue), but we did a solid job of beefing up the attendance with our seven bodies (six of us and one Marissa Berlin). The TWives blasted through an as-usual killer set of tunes from their just-out-now-on-Latest-Flame record Old Scratch and handily dealt with a drunk Yale screaming at them to play a Wipers cover that they've forgotten. Post-show, Yale spied Billy by the side entrance and said "I'm gonna go punch him," to which i responded, "yes, that's a great idea. Punch Billy," knowing that Billy, being a man-mountain cross between an Appalachian pro wrestler and a bear, would be more than capable of ending that encounter like it was one of those "Messin' with Sasquatch" beef jerky ads. All Billy did, though, was ignore Yale and calmly walk into the bar, letting the door slam shut behind him while Yale drunkenly bellowed "BILLY I'M GOING TO PUNCH YOU!" Hilarity.
A recount of this evening would not be complete without a salutation to the fabulous Michael Markowski, who bought us all dinner at a killer pizza place/brewery across from Danger Danger, and filmed our performance. Another above and beyond gesture of graciousness from another awesome tour pal.
We are currently chilling in Marissa's parents' palatial estate, which is large enough to have me convinced that they are Hank Scorpio-level supervillains. A Jacuzzi tub? A shower with two heads? COME ON! Our hotel room at the Marriott was less luxurious.
PREVIOUSLY ON "IFIHADAHIFI VS. PHILADELPHIA:"
We had an OK show in Philly in 2006 when we played a house venue called The Big Pink House (although we severely dropped the ball that night when, after two weeks of making John Mellencamp jokes, we opted for MotownPhilly jokes EVEN THOUGH WE WERE IN A PINK HOUSE), but our 2008 show in Philly with White Wrench Conservatory was a nightmare. Not only did we get to sit in a bar called The Fire and watch CC Sabathia get positively shelled by the Phillies during the Brewers' first playoff series since 1982, but then no one in the bar hopped across to the band room to watch us. We ended up playing in front of two of Dixie's friends, and that was it.
So we weren't all that thrilled to have to try to book a Philly show on this tour, and did all we could to avoid it. But our friend in Lancaster wasn't able to close a deal for us, and so, out of desperation, i emailed Danger Danger, a gallery that had never returned my emails in years previous. This time, however, they responded (!), and invited us to play their big anniversary benefit party to raise money for the gallery. Unfortunately, it being a benefit, it meant that touring bands would get no money out of the door, and we'd have to rely on merch sales. Having no other options and realizing that probably most all-ages kids in the area would be there, we agreed and decided to hope for the best.
Amazingly, we got pretty close. After a pair of, shell we say, more "sensitive" musical sets in the basement room of the gallery, HiFi set up and prepared to give these kids a good old-fashioned punk rock kick in the teeth. The venue did a great job of herding the audience into the room where the next band was playing, and--TAKE A LESSON FROM THIS, NASHVILLE--the kids were actively engaged with what was going on, which was excellent. I opened our set with a "We're IfIHadAHiFi from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We're a dance band. That's a hint, and you should take it," and launched into "Paulding Light." Yale kicked his stage antics into overdrive and we blasted those kids to the back of the room, much to their delight based on the loud, enthusiastic response. As all sets were limited to 25 minutes, we made sure to pack them with only the most crucial party jamz.
SET LIST: Paulding/Arson/Imperial Walker/Pot. Energy/Black Holes/Success
Zebras had an equally exuberant audience, including the occasional three-person circle pit during the more speedy numbers like "Me U God" and "Wiener Kids." All in all, these kids redeemed Philly in our eyes as a town where the kids know what's up.
HiFi managed to sell about $18 in merch, of which we proceeded to spend $12 upon our return to the previously lamented Fire. Our labelmates Trophy Wives were playing there and we not only wanted to see some solid bros in the middle of tour, but we wanted to help fill the room for them, because of course, based on our sample data of one weeknight show with no local band, shows at The Fire never draw. As it turns out, they had a few people there ("about...twelve?" their singer Billy estimated outside the venue), but we did a solid job of beefing up the attendance with our seven bodies (six of us and one Marissa Berlin). The TWives blasted through an as-usual killer set of tunes from their just-out-now-on-Latest-Flame record Old Scratch and handily dealt with a drunk Yale screaming at them to play a Wipers cover that they've forgotten. Post-show, Yale spied Billy by the side entrance and said "I'm gonna go punch him," to which i responded, "yes, that's a great idea. Punch Billy," knowing that Billy, being a man-mountain cross between an Appalachian pro wrestler and a bear, would be more than capable of ending that encounter like it was one of those "Messin' with Sasquatch" beef jerky ads. All Billy did, though, was ignore Yale and calmly walk into the bar, letting the door slam shut behind him while Yale drunkenly bellowed "BILLY I'M GOING TO PUNCH YOU!" Hilarity.
A recount of this evening would not be complete without a salutation to the fabulous Michael Markowski, who bought us all dinner at a killer pizza place/brewery across from Danger Danger, and filmed our performance. Another above and beyond gesture of graciousness from another awesome tour pal.
We are currently chilling in Marissa's parents' palatial estate, which is large enough to have me convinced that they are Hank Scorpio-level supervillains. A Jacuzzi tub? A shower with two heads? COME ON! Our hotel room at the Marriott was less luxurious.
8/20/11
"Virginia is for Road Head" Tour '11: Parts 4 and 5
It occurred to me that i totally forgot to list off any of the set lists post-Nashville, so before we jump into it:
Knoxville: We Fiddle/Arson/Ratings Spike/X-13D/Black Holes/Take the $/Telescope/No MM
Athens: Ratings/Pot. Energy/We Fiddle/Black Holes/Arson/Take the $/No MM/Certain Fate
Wilmington: Paulding/Arson/Black Holes/X-13D/We Fiddle/Sleeperhold/Probalos/Success
Part 4: "Hey Man, Her Name's Kim"
Something we made sure we questioned on stage at both the Wilmington show and in Durham was what in the blue hell the deal is with a theme park we drove past on the SC side of the SC/NC border called South of the Border. We couldn't decide whether or not this place was the most casually racist theme part we've ever seen, but whenever we asked, audience members laughed and shrugged with slight expressions of embarrassment. I dunno, you tell me--are a giant sombrero drop and drunken Mexican caricatures ethnically sensitive?
Not pictured: dignity
The good vibes and generosity of North Carolina continued in Durham, thanks to our pals in the crushing Maple Stave. Their drummer Evan sprung for a hotel room at the downtown Marriott not two blocks from the Pinhook, the coffee-shop-vibed bar hosting us for the evening. It was here where i proceeded to play the sloppiest Zebras set of the tour thus far, questioning how my endurance has held up during week 1 of this two-shows-per-night escapade. Fortunately, when you play as fast as Zebras does, the drumming is such a blur that no one can tell when i'm fucking up, it seems, because Evan (one of the few drummers i'm legitimately self-conscious playing in front of, because he is dazzlingly incredible behind his kit) was totally into it.
I played better during the HiFi set, where the tempos are less insane and more geared toward dancing, and a decent-sized crowd at the Pinhook got into it enthusiastically, a few people even taking photos!
Durham set list: Paulding/Rating Spike/Fiddle/Imp Walker/Arson/Chance-Medley/Telescope/NMM
Zebras even officially outdrew HiFi in Durham, as a lovely lady by the name of Kim attended the show to see Zebras specifically. She attends a lot of Those Poor Bastards shows (Vince's other band, a synth-tinged country duo) and was psyched to see Zebras (which happens a lot with TPB fans, it seems, which is beyond cool. I still haven't explored a lot of TPB, but it seems that Zebras is nowhere near the TPB wheelhouse, so for their fans to come to Zebras shows and "get it" is pretty rad).
Vince, Lacey and Kim hung out quite a bit, which apparently cheesed off one of the bartenders (Vince suspects said bartender was trying to chat her up). In Vince words, "when i started talking to her the dude got really salty. I think he thought i was some sleazy creep, but then she walked away and the dude leaned over and said, 'hey, man, her name's Kim,' like he decided to help me out or something. It's cool, i know who she is, dude!"
Durham, North Carolina: gorgeous downtown, a cheap bistro with awesome salads and sandwiches (visit Toast when in Durham, for serious), and some seriously awesome rockers (honestly, Maple Stave threw down the best performance we've seen on this tour so far. Absolutely pummeling). This tour is officially good vibes all around now.
Part 5: DC Will Do That To You
One of my worst tour nightmares came close to coming true last night in Washington, DC. It still may.
We had loaded in to the Everlasting Life vegan cafe in Washington, DC and had just eaten some incredible mostaccioli when i got a text message from my brother Kris. "Call me at your earliest convenience."
As my parents and grandma get older, i occasionally feel mild pangs of guilt that i don't live closer to them and spend more time with them than i do. Granted, that would entail living closer to the Fox Valley and not in Milwaukee, which would kill my soul, but that doesn't stop me from feeling bad about geography cursing us by distance.
So when my little brother calls me while on tour to drop the bomb that Dad's back in the hospital in serious shape, it's a surreal, sobering thing. Dad is a throat cancer survivor, having had surgery in 2000, but he's fought health problems for years after, including problems with his teeth stemming from the radiation therapy (they've basically rotted out of his head and caused infections left and right). He's back in now, and the doctors are fearful that his cancer's returned.
My mind raced on the phone--do we need to bail? Do i need to be back in Wisconsin? My brother and mom talked before he called me and we all seem to agree that there's no reason for me to cut bait and bail on the tour, as there's nothing i could do if i were there while they do tests anyway. But if his condition worsens to a point that i can barely type without my throat going dry, i won't have a choice.
It was with all this hanging in the back of my head that i took the stage at this charming little vegan cafe and proceeded to thrash away in front of 20 paid attendees. Kris had ended our conversation with something he's heard me say before--"take it out on the songs." It's my personal demand of myself to never let personal shit get in the way of a good performance on stage. For one, it's selfish to let me shit ruin a show for the other guys in the band, and for two, it's the best therapy in the world.
I also had old friends in the audience to keep the dark thoughts from taking over--an old internet pal named Andy whom i hadn't seen since around 1996; and my best friend from childhood, Sean, who now is a hardcore Republican working for the US Chamber of Commerce. I dedicated "Imperial Walker" to him as "the song that got me in the National Review before him," which was his reaction when that hilariously misfired "review" hit. It's reassuring to me that two old pals on the opposite sides of the political aisle can remain good friends.
So i bashed away at my drums to entertain my old friends, and i bashed away to work through the stress of being 894 miles from my family in a legit time of need. As of now, i'm keeping myself optimistic that i'll be able to finish this tour, merely having to deal with the shadow of my dad's health as a ghost following us in the background. If you could do me a favor, dear person reading this, shoot a few positive thoughts our way to reinforce my positive thinking, won't you?
DC set list: Grace/We Fiddle/Imp Walker/Black Holes/Magnets/Arson/NMM
Knoxville: We Fiddle/Arson/Ratings Spike/X-13D/Black Holes/Take the $/Telescope/No MM
Athens: Ratings/Pot. Energy/We Fiddle/Black Holes/Arson/Take the $/No MM/Certain Fate
Wilmington: Paulding/Arson/Black Holes/X-13D/We Fiddle/Sleeperhold/Probalos/Success
Part 4: "Hey Man, Her Name's Kim"
Something we made sure we questioned on stage at both the Wilmington show and in Durham was what in the blue hell the deal is with a theme park we drove past on the SC side of the SC/NC border called South of the Border. We couldn't decide whether or not this place was the most casually racist theme part we've ever seen, but whenever we asked, audience members laughed and shrugged with slight expressions of embarrassment. I dunno, you tell me--are a giant sombrero drop and drunken Mexican caricatures ethnically sensitive?
Not pictured: dignity
The good vibes and generosity of North Carolina continued in Durham, thanks to our pals in the crushing Maple Stave. Their drummer Evan sprung for a hotel room at the downtown Marriott not two blocks from the Pinhook, the coffee-shop-vibed bar hosting us for the evening. It was here where i proceeded to play the sloppiest Zebras set of the tour thus far, questioning how my endurance has held up during week 1 of this two-shows-per-night escapade. Fortunately, when you play as fast as Zebras does, the drumming is such a blur that no one can tell when i'm fucking up, it seems, because Evan (one of the few drummers i'm legitimately self-conscious playing in front of, because he is dazzlingly incredible behind his kit) was totally into it.
I played better during the HiFi set, where the tempos are less insane and more geared toward dancing, and a decent-sized crowd at the Pinhook got into it enthusiastically, a few people even taking photos!
Durham set list: Paulding/Rating Spike/Fiddle/Imp Walker/Arson/Chance-Medley/Telescope/NMM
Zebras even officially outdrew HiFi in Durham, as a lovely lady by the name of Kim attended the show to see Zebras specifically. She attends a lot of Those Poor Bastards shows (Vince's other band, a synth-tinged country duo) and was psyched to see Zebras (which happens a lot with TPB fans, it seems, which is beyond cool. I still haven't explored a lot of TPB, but it seems that Zebras is nowhere near the TPB wheelhouse, so for their fans to come to Zebras shows and "get it" is pretty rad).
Vince, Lacey and Kim hung out quite a bit, which apparently cheesed off one of the bartenders (Vince suspects said bartender was trying to chat her up). In Vince words, "when i started talking to her the dude got really salty. I think he thought i was some sleazy creep, but then she walked away and the dude leaned over and said, 'hey, man, her name's Kim,' like he decided to help me out or something. It's cool, i know who she is, dude!"
Durham, North Carolina: gorgeous downtown, a cheap bistro with awesome salads and sandwiches (visit Toast when in Durham, for serious), and some seriously awesome rockers (honestly, Maple Stave threw down the best performance we've seen on this tour so far. Absolutely pummeling). This tour is officially good vibes all around now.
Part 5: DC Will Do That To You
One of my worst tour nightmares came close to coming true last night in Washington, DC. It still may.
We had loaded in to the Everlasting Life vegan cafe in Washington, DC and had just eaten some incredible mostaccioli when i got a text message from my brother Kris. "Call me at your earliest convenience."
As my parents and grandma get older, i occasionally feel mild pangs of guilt that i don't live closer to them and spend more time with them than i do. Granted, that would entail living closer to the Fox Valley and not in Milwaukee, which would kill my soul, but that doesn't stop me from feeling bad about geography cursing us by distance.
So when my little brother calls me while on tour to drop the bomb that Dad's back in the hospital in serious shape, it's a surreal, sobering thing. Dad is a throat cancer survivor, having had surgery in 2000, but he's fought health problems for years after, including problems with his teeth stemming from the radiation therapy (they've basically rotted out of his head and caused infections left and right). He's back in now, and the doctors are fearful that his cancer's returned.
My mind raced on the phone--do we need to bail? Do i need to be back in Wisconsin? My brother and mom talked before he called me and we all seem to agree that there's no reason for me to cut bait and bail on the tour, as there's nothing i could do if i were there while they do tests anyway. But if his condition worsens to a point that i can barely type without my throat going dry, i won't have a choice.
It was with all this hanging in the back of my head that i took the stage at this charming little vegan cafe and proceeded to thrash away in front of 20 paid attendees. Kris had ended our conversation with something he's heard me say before--"take it out on the songs." It's my personal demand of myself to never let personal shit get in the way of a good performance on stage. For one, it's selfish to let me shit ruin a show for the other guys in the band, and for two, it's the best therapy in the world.
I also had old friends in the audience to keep the dark thoughts from taking over--an old internet pal named Andy whom i hadn't seen since around 1996; and my best friend from childhood, Sean, who now is a hardcore Republican working for the US Chamber of Commerce. I dedicated "Imperial Walker" to him as "the song that got me in the National Review before him," which was his reaction when that hilariously misfired "review" hit. It's reassuring to me that two old pals on the opposite sides of the political aisle can remain good friends.
So i bashed away at my drums to entertain my old friends, and i bashed away to work through the stress of being 894 miles from my family in a legit time of need. As of now, i'm keeping myself optimistic that i'll be able to finish this tour, merely having to deal with the shadow of my dad's health as a ghost following us in the background. If you could do me a favor, dear person reading this, shoot a few positive thoughts our way to reinforce my positive thinking, won't you?
DC set list: Grace/We Fiddle/Imp Walker/Black Holes/Magnets/Arson/NMM
8/18/11
"Cool Story, Bro" Tour '11: Kindred Spirits
I needed a new head anyway
I am sitting in a hotel room hooked up by our hotel employee friend Steve in Wilmington, NC, after hanging out post-show in the moonlight at the beach, feeling the tide pull the sand out from beneath me. This is why i went on tour, for this moment: stepping into the ocean with tourmates and friends from far away places, letting the earth kiss us with its salty tongue like an animal claiming us as its own.
Only ten people showed up tonight, but that's not important. If the primary purpose of going on tour were to try to expose large numbers of people to our music in a way that encourages memorization of our band names, this would be a wholly inefficient method of doing it. Knoxville on Monday and Athens on Tuesday were delightful; enough people turned out for both shows to allow us to put enough gas in the tank to make it to the next city, and most of them responded positively to our tunes. But as i stood around at the Caledonia Lounge on Tuesday night watching everyone drink, chat, and completely ignore our merch table (save the bartender and Chris Dragon's friend Sarah, who accounted for our first CDs sold in four days), i thought about the hundreds--thousands?--of touring bands i've seen over the years from the Concert Cafe in Green Bay to the Cactus Club in Milwaukee, and i'm sure that many of the ones i've forgotten were damn fine. Do any of the attendees at the Longbranch in Knoxville even remember the name "IfIHadAHiFi?" Or are they more likely to say "oh, man, that band...I Wish I Had A HiFi? They were great," their memories of the bands they saw on a random Monday night in August 2011 already fading into a jumbled mash of beer and feedback? As in love with our self-constructed image of the band too crazy to ignore as i am, i realistically get the feeling that by tomorrow it'll be "those bands with the crazy drummer" and "yeah, that night our pals played with some touring bands" by September, if not Friday.
The hard truth is that bar patrons (or basement show kids, for that matter) do not value touring musicians. Sure, they appreciate that we drove for several hours to play for them, but put a price on that appreciation and you can bet it ranks below that next PBR. Tonight a member of the audience drunkenly told me, "i really like your band," after both the Zebras and HiFi sets (both of which, if i may say so, were the best performances of the tour thus far and featured the most dancing audience members of any show to date). When he said it again post-BLACKS set, i responded, "then you should buy some of our CDs!" He squinted at me and slurred "what you may not know is that i spent all day selling textbooks so i could come here tonight and get drunk."
"And you definitely achieved your goal!"
*squint* "I don't think you believe me."
"I believe that you're drunk!"
"At least i don't have a Jewfro."
"Uh..."
"At least i'm not...Jewish."
"Uh, neither am i?"
Puzzling racism aside, it's clear that this dude, whose dancing and rocking out was genuinely appreciated, will forget about us in no time. In an age where the supply of touring bands chokes the demand into a dazed submission, i'm not so sure that being a blistering live act is enough anymore, if it ever was.
But that's why, at 3:30 AM, i'm standing in the Atlantic Ocean with Steve, The Wizard and Lacey, staring at the sky and talking silly shit. I wanted to come to Wilmington and play with Steve and Keith, aka BLACKS, and rock them silly. And then i wanted to hang out with Steve on the beach.
Steve, incidentally, redefined "above and beyond" today. Not only are we sleeping in free hotel rooms tonight, but he used his corporate card to fill our gas tank and tossed an extra $50 from his own pocket on top of the $35 collected at the door. He sort of gets it, you see. He's in a band that his hometown doesn't quite understand, or maybe politely tolerates (not for long, as they're breaking up), but he lives for that moment where his music clicks with someone who's never heard anything like it before. Tonight we swapped tales of minds blown and expectations tweaked, and of hometown shows where no one turns out to see our friends. Wins and losses--we have similar tales of both.
Kindred spirits, connected across the country through music.
This is why i'm out here.
8/15/11
"I'm The King! What're You Into?" Tour '11: "Yep...Sunday in Nashville"
Pictured: the only photo i took in Nashville, because obviously
I've quite literally been to mass graves livelier than the audience of dead-eyed, apathetic kids at the Springwater Saloon in Nashville last night, but their overall indifference toward non-local bands was only part of what was so aggravating about this show (although it was the largest part). The show began with promise, as the sound guy, upon my introducing myself and explaining that we were the bands from Milwaukee, asked, "do you guys know Peter J. Woods?" Hey! Mutual pals! This is a good sign! He introduced himself, if my memory serves, as "Acme," which should have been a warning sign right off the bat--the name respected coyotes trust to fail spectacularly. We discussed the lineup for the night--two locals bookending three touring acts (HiFi, Zebras and Spelling bee from St. Louis, a dynamite little duo featuring a four-foot tall Asian shredder girl and a dazzling experimental/jazzy drummer dude). He set up two mics; when i asked about the availability of a third, he answered in the affirmative.
Things began to go south when we started setting up and i heard him defensively explaining to Yale and The Wizard that he only had two mics after all. The Wizard asked about a third stand, as he brought a spare mic along for situations like this. "This is all i have. people keep stealing our shit," spoken with a vindictiveness directed apparently at us for representing All Touring Bands Ever. Meanwhile, Rev.Ever struggled with his pedal board and lost. Either the power supply for half his pedals died, or the master strip of outlets did; we're not sure yet. OK, lovely.
Meanwhile, some anonymous girl (Lacey suggests she may have been the sound guy's girlfriend, but that's just speculation) storms up to Yale and Wizard and says, "you guys need to hurry up and start." Um, maybe blame the club for starting a five-band show at 11 PM, and don't blame the touring band? Sorry you need to get home to your DVR'd Jersey Shores.
So we set up and reconfigure our set to deal with our limitations. No more "Black Holes" because we only have two mics. No more "We Fiddle" because Rev.'s sound effects are out of commission. Gah. It only takes us through half of "Paulding Light" to get back into the pocket, but i'm already cheesed off, as the roughly ten kids who were standing around watching the first band, as well as most of the first band (save the guitarist), are nowhere to be seen. Outside talking, presumably.
I feel as though i should clarify things, as i overheard someone post-set being amused that anyone would be upset that a Sunday show drew nobody. Please. This ain't my first rodeo, Nash. Low attendance on a Sunday is expected. People liking our band is not expected or required, but if any of the kids at that show were to say "IfIHadAHiFi sucks," they wouldn't have a leg to stand on because none of them were in the room at any point while we played. C'mon, kids, we take pride in our room-clearing abilities; if you don't like our music, at least give us the satisfaction of being in the room when we start.
HiFi set: Paulding / Arson / Sleeperhold / Imperial Walker / Spy / Success
When Zebras plays some kids actually wander into the room; by a few songs in, they're all seated in booths, staring blankly ahead like they have yet to deduce that the flailing bodies on stage are powered by delicious brains. With about two or three songs to go, the microphones mysteriously shut off; by the time Spelling Bee play, they amazingly are working again. HMMMMM.
The last time HiFi played in Nashville, we played an overly-swank bar on a Sunday night with a pair of alt-country bands. The five people in the audience were driven out by our abrasive volume, but the alt-country bands were complimentary and the bartender was apologetic, loving our set and paying us in four Pabst tallboys because he had nothing else with which to pay us. As of August 2011, that 2006 trainwreck still stands as our best Nashville show to date.
We are currently chilling out in front of the Longbranch Saloon in Knoxville. The front door has our tour poster prominently displayed, and the local band tonight made a flyer that is also on the door. If five people are at the show tonight, it will still already rate as better than last night.
ANONYMOUS QUOTES FROM FRIENDS OF MINE SINCE I POSTED A "FUCK NASHVILLE" TWEET LAST NIGHT:
"I have never had a good experience playing in Nashville."
"Man, Nashville is just not friendly. I don't get it."
It's not just us, Nashville! Signs point to "Music City" being a crap town for touring DIY music!
8/14/11
"The Golden Girls' Rage: Kill Whitey" Tour '11, Part 1: FALSE START
It's always smart to kick off a tour at Quenchers: we're generally guaranteed a sweet turnout, they feed the touring bands, and they make sure there's money to go around. I pretty much don't care if i never play another Chicago venue other than Quenchers ever again (which is not to say that we hate the other ones; just that Quenchers is that far above the others).
What is not smart is blowing up the one bass cabinet we're taking on tour right before the HiFi set. After a pretty decent Zebras set and a fantastic set by Chicago's The Cell Phones (one curly-haired singer lady with golden pipes, one dude with an acoustic bass distorting it through a pair of fuzzy fuzz amps, and a speedy drummer--highly recommended), The Wizard plugged his bass into Lacey's amp and, after cranking up the signal, promptly blew the 18-inch woofer. Whoops. On the bright side, we suddenly realized we'd be crashing in our own beds after the show, since we'd have to drive back to Milwaukee to grab The Wizard's gear (bad news for any of the ladies in the audience who were looking to grab The Wizard's gear after the show...HEY-O).
Anywho, Keith the sound guy ran the bass direct and, while it severely cut down on The Wizard's feedback, it apparently fazed no one in the audience. We gutted out a spirited set and Yale apparently has decided that this is the "Yale moves his mic stand into the crowd for at least one song per show" Tour '11, which i'm totes fine with.
SETLIST: Ratings Spike / We Fiddle / Sleeperhold / In&Out of Grace / 99 Probalos / Defenestrate / Arson / No MM
We're in the middle of a run where we play Chicago once a month minimum, so i did my best to mix it up and play some stuff we never play. Of course, posting these set lists means that people are gonna start requesting all kinds of crazy shit. NO, WE HAVE NOT RE-LEARNED "YOU'RE NO PIRATE"...yet.
Three copies of the new CD sold and one each of the old stuff. Dolla dolla billz.
DAY TWO: BLOOMINGTON BASEMENT CHEAPSKATES
We now have (slightly) more room in the van, thanks to replacing Lacey's white-dwarf-powered three-ton bass amp and cab with The Wizard's setup. We left Milwaukee and proceeded to embark on the longest drive to Bloomington, IN in our long, storied history of Indiana drives. [Obligatory snark-ass remark about Chicago's consistently shit traffic goes here] After passing a billboard in Gary that advertised a strip club called "Polekatz" (which, sorry, but while i am pro strip-club, i will not be patronizing one called "Polekatz," no matter how hot that Looney Tunes skunk was), we drove head-first into what felt like Jesus' watery revenge on a state that abandoned him and voted Democrat in 2008 for the first time since Christ wished the state into the union. Waves of rain blew sideways across the road like Aragorn's ghost army or the animated broomsticks in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, while Yale white-knuckled us down the highway in a heroic effort to keep us on the road and upright. Meanwhile, i checked Weather.com: Severe Thunderstorm Watch. Uh, yeah, we're watching it right now, assholes.
Eventually we made it to Gay Dudes Annex, aka Rob Waxeater's house, where we were playing along with the band he just joined, Bad Creeps. The show was a blast; just enough people showed up to cram into the front of the "stage area" while Zebras blasted through a quick 25-minute set to an appreciative, mind-blown pack of kids. This was the first night where Zebras and HiFi played back-to-back sets, and thus, the first night that i essentially played nonstop for an hour, minus a set changeover. So far, no worries. No feelings of fatigue as we charged through a six-song set that expanded to eight when we opened with "We Got the Beat" to just play something in order to get the kids back downstairs for the start of our set.
We Got the Beat/We Fiddle/Arson/Imp. Walker/Paulding/Chance-Medley (Rob request)/Telescope/No MM
It being a basement show, naturally, the kids at the show, despite being totally into both bands and rocking the HELL out during both sets, managed to donate $13 and buy 0 pieces of merchandise from both bands. Yes, kids, we drove six hours just to donate our time for your entertainment. You're welcome!
Whatever--we drank whiskey, we watched Bad Creeps kill it, and Lacey and i stayed up until 5 AM watching Rob's Bad Creeps bandmates try to hump each other with little success. I'm not sure if they were trying to weird each other out, or if one of them was genuinely trying to get on the other. Either way, it was adorable. I guess it's not just a clever name--they really are bad at being creeps. At least they lived up to the venue's name!
I slept in the van last night. It was awesome in that it felt like camping and i got to do a crack-and-whiz (i.e. cracking the van door and peeing out of it onto Rob's lawn) twice. THE FREEDOM OF THE GREAT OUTDOORS.
What is not smart is blowing up the one bass cabinet we're taking on tour right before the HiFi set. After a pretty decent Zebras set and a fantastic set by Chicago's The Cell Phones (one curly-haired singer lady with golden pipes, one dude with an acoustic bass distorting it through a pair of fuzzy fuzz amps, and a speedy drummer--highly recommended), The Wizard plugged his bass into Lacey's amp and, after cranking up the signal, promptly blew the 18-inch woofer. Whoops. On the bright side, we suddenly realized we'd be crashing in our own beds after the show, since we'd have to drive back to Milwaukee to grab The Wizard's gear (bad news for any of the ladies in the audience who were looking to grab The Wizard's gear after the show...HEY-O).
Anywho, Keith the sound guy ran the bass direct and, while it severely cut down on The Wizard's feedback, it apparently fazed no one in the audience. We gutted out a spirited set and Yale apparently has decided that this is the "Yale moves his mic stand into the crowd for at least one song per show" Tour '11, which i'm totes fine with.
SETLIST: Ratings Spike / We Fiddle / Sleeperhold / In&Out of Grace / 99 Probalos / Defenestrate / Arson / No MM
We're in the middle of a run where we play Chicago once a month minimum, so i did my best to mix it up and play some stuff we never play. Of course, posting these set lists means that people are gonna start requesting all kinds of crazy shit. NO, WE HAVE NOT RE-LEARNED "YOU'RE NO PIRATE"...yet.
Three copies of the new CD sold and one each of the old stuff. Dolla dolla billz.
DAY TWO: BLOOMINGTON BASEMENT CHEAPSKATES
We now have (slightly) more room in the van, thanks to replacing Lacey's white-dwarf-powered three-ton bass amp and cab with The Wizard's setup. We left Milwaukee and proceeded to embark on the longest drive to Bloomington, IN in our long, storied history of Indiana drives. [Obligatory snark-ass remark about Chicago's consistently shit traffic goes here] After passing a billboard in Gary that advertised a strip club called "Polekatz" (which, sorry, but while i am pro strip-club, i will not be patronizing one called "Polekatz," no matter how hot that Looney Tunes skunk was), we drove head-first into what felt like Jesus' watery revenge on a state that abandoned him and voted Democrat in 2008 for the first time since Christ wished the state into the union. Waves of rain blew sideways across the road like Aragorn's ghost army or the animated broomsticks in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, while Yale white-knuckled us down the highway in a heroic effort to keep us on the road and upright. Meanwhile, i checked Weather.com: Severe Thunderstorm Watch. Uh, yeah, we're watching it right now, assholes.
Eventually we made it to Gay Dudes Annex, aka Rob Waxeater's house, where we were playing along with the band he just joined, Bad Creeps. The show was a blast; just enough people showed up to cram into the front of the "stage area" while Zebras blasted through a quick 25-minute set to an appreciative, mind-blown pack of kids. This was the first night where Zebras and HiFi played back-to-back sets, and thus, the first night that i essentially played nonstop for an hour, minus a set changeover. So far, no worries. No feelings of fatigue as we charged through a six-song set that expanded to eight when we opened with "We Got the Beat" to just play something in order to get the kids back downstairs for the start of our set.
We Got the Beat/We Fiddle/Arson/Imp. Walker/Paulding/Chance-Medley (Rob request)/Telescope/No MM
It being a basement show, naturally, the kids at the show, despite being totally into both bands and rocking the HELL out during both sets, managed to donate $13 and buy 0 pieces of merchandise from both bands. Yes, kids, we drove six hours just to donate our time for your entertainment. You're welcome!
Whatever--we drank whiskey, we watched Bad Creeps kill it, and Lacey and i stayed up until 5 AM watching Rob's Bad Creeps bandmates try to hump each other with little success. I'm not sure if they were trying to weird each other out, or if one of them was genuinely trying to get on the other. Either way, it was adorable. I guess it's not just a clever name--they really are bad at being creeps. At least they lived up to the venue's name!
I slept in the van last night. It was awesome in that it felt like camping and i got to do a crack-and-whiz (i.e. cracking the van door and peeing out of it onto Rob's lawn) twice. THE FREEDOM OF THE GREAT OUTDOORS.
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