1997

tour update

first day!

we kicked off this tour in good ol st louie! which is really great because we have really sweet friends and fans there. it was a small show, only about thirty kids paid, but we played last and pretty much everyone stayed to see us, and the venue was really cool. little place called the foxhole, i think it was in a gay part of town, so we fit right in! we ended up making enough money to turn a little profit because the promoter was a really nice guy. i hope we get to play there again soon.
after the show we went to our friend mitch and adam’s house and got sloppy drunk on good beers and bubble gum vodka(ew!). smoked some grass and watched this channel on tv that is a live satellite feed of the world as it turns… very weird…
we woke up this morning around 10 and started our trek to indianapolis, indiana, which is where we are now. its a really gnarly venue that is actually a practice and art space filled with really cool paintings and 3d art. i wish they had a place like this in chicago! but this is why we travel; to see the things we could never find at home.
today is our album’s release date, and theres no where else i would rather be than nowhere i know.
-caleb

update 10/14

we are in south bend indiana right now being proven wrong once again. we were all pretty firm a week ago on the fact that indiana was pretty much good for nothing. but a series of events has caused us to seriously rethink that mindset.
first off, our video (which came out yesterday!) was shot in gary. indiana. the town is a shithole from what we saw but this location couldnt have been cooler. a broken down, half-burnt, rotten old church that is so disgusting it is beautiful! perfect place for us! only in the ghost town of gary could there be such a neglected place for us to shoot in. i have a sort of respect for michael jackson’s hometown for being such a terrible mess. it is what this country looks like on the inside. leaving town i spotted an old hanging banner that said “gary dreams do come true!” sometimes our dreams turn out to be nightmares =)
secondly our show last night in indy was really fun and met only nice people followed by drinks downtown at a bar that had 1 dollar well drinks and a dj that took our ridiculous requests!
and now we are in south bend at a little coffee shop called ugly muggs where i just watched a dude play folk songs, he called himself small houses. its refreshing to see that some one still appreciates the way songs used to be written before music was completely commercialized.
so i think that those three reasons could be enough for us to say we are OK with indiana. we wont try to avoid you anymore but we aren’t looking into houses here or planning a vacation to the dunes anytime soon.

update 10/19

greetings from vineland, new jersey!
today was the first sunny day we have had basically all of tour, but we sat in the van all day! its all good though, we enjoy the van and we can enjoy the rain too.
last night we played a place in harlem called the shrine bar. there was an amazing jazz band playing for a couple hours before us and a really cute jamaican girl serving us drinks. i was in heaven! we were all pretty intimidated to go on stage after such an amazing group of musicians but we had a great time on stage and met some really awesome people! after the show we preceeded to ramble around new york city. first harlem and then onto east village. i imagined i was elliott smith.
tonight should be a great show, even though last time they shut the power off on us at the end of our set. we found out later it was just some confusion between the sound guys; they thought one of thier speakers blew but it was just my gnarly ass feedback. our great friends troy and matt are here so it wont matter what happens, just getting to be in new jersey hanging out is good enough.
this tour has been small, but really rewarding. the vibe between all the band members is totally positive and hopeful and the way we relate to the promoters and other people at our shows has taken a 180 since recent changes we have gone through. we are just happy to be able to travel and wake up every morning completely reborn. and we are so grateful that we have people that believe in us and want to listen to what we have to say and play.
we have also been making some huge plans for our future. we are going step outside of every conventional way of doing things as a band. we are no longer going to be a band in the traditional sense at all. we want to be a movement, a way of life. we want to transcend the rock band-audience division and start a revolution within ourselves and bring it to the rest of the world.
reading that back, i realize it sounds really dreamy and vaugue, but we truly feel we have a purpose that is great, and beautifully different than anything the world has ever seen.
watch out!