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Atlanta, Georgia

Mans Trash played the first set of the night at 529. Mans Trash is the brainchild of Mercer West, an Athens/Atlanta savant who is well-known across the country as a fixture of the American DIY music scene. People we meet on tour who run house venues in various cities always know Mercer and have a funny and/or nightmarish story about him.

The first time I met Mercer was 2013 in Austin, Texas. He had asked Ryan to add his band Bubbly Mommy Gun to the bill of a SXSW ranch show that Jason Stollsteimer had set up. The show, no offense to Jason, was disorganized and mostly just a group of Detroit friends hanging out, since not a lot of people came out. Also, nobody knew how to run the huge complex sound system Jason rented for the show. Mercer showed up, assessed the situation, and quickly took matters into his own hands, gracefully setting up a schedule for the bands’ sets and adjusting the mixing board. Within minutes he had dialed in the sound system for Bubbly Mommy Gun. After they finished playing, he ran sound for us. That day, I gained respect for Mercer for being this strange DIY renaissance man with a strong punk ethos.

I might have missed the start of his set last night had he not come to the patio to ask Ryan to sing on the first song, which was the theme to Friends. Thankfully, I didn’t miss it. Mans Trash played the best set of our entire 6-week tour.

Projections covered the back wall of the stage. To the left of the projections, Mercer stood in the shadow wearing shades, playing an electronic drum set and singing into an auto-tuned microphone. When Ryan sang the first song, he started strong, but Mercer had the auto-tune set to a key that wasn’t quite the key of the backing track. This made Ryan inadvertently hit wrong notes and burst into laughter, while the cast of Friends projected onto his body and the wall behind him. I like to think that Mercer decided to cover the Friends theme with Ryan as a silly and surreal demonstration of their friendship.

Throughout the set, the artfulness and comedy of Mans Trash continued to reveal itself. The music was hilarious, but brilliant. Most of the sounds he utilized seemed to come from the MIDI sound bank of my family’s Windows 95 desktop computer that I grew up using. Only now, these retro sounds blasted through 529’s pristine PA and subwoofers, pumping the nostalgia into the context of a smokey rock bar. Mercer sang and drummed along to his backing tracks sloppily. Just when I thought he was making the drums up as he went along, he’d go into an intricate drum fill that lined up perfectly with the backing tracks. These weren’t improvised messes, they were intricate art-pop songs. His insane projections were a perfect compliment to his computer carnival music. One song featured a rapid slideshow of a Snickers bar traveling the world, meeting people, and going to the beach. Another song was apparently a Lynyrd Skynyrd cover, and the accompanying projection was simply the image of the song’s karaoke screen lyrics. iPhone videos of Mercer enthusiastically singing in sync with the real live Mercer would pop up on the wall. This was another subtle reminder that what we observed was no accident.

Mercer’s last song was a grand finale. He was unhappy with the song that came next in his video playlist, so he went to his computer to change it. This was projected for everyone to see. He found a folder of ten .mov files that were all selected and accidentally opened all of them simultaneously. We watched as he exited QuickTime window after QuickTime window, while the original incorrect song continued to loudly play deep at the bottom of QuickTime windows. This played out like accidental but fitting performance art. He finally put on the correct .mov file. It was a collage of scenes from one of the Grand Theft Auto games glitching out. The main character faced the audience, running at full speed while cars behind him rolled around and crashed into each other, flying into the air, defying Earthly laws of gravity. Cars collided into food stands and people. During one of the scenes, the main character got hit by a car and went flying way up above the city for about ten seconds. [You can actually watch this here]. It played out like fireworks on the wall while Mercer drummed and sang along, staring at the projections through his sunglasses.

Watching Mercer’s set was the most I had laughed in a long time. In fact, the only time I wasn’t laughing was when I made a conscious effort not to– when I realized I might be the only person in the audience laughing. At one point, I turned my attention from the projections back to Mercer and he had actually become an avatar of himself. An 8-bit animated GIF of a smiling drummer wearing shades.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VxK4zKVey4)

Athens, Georgia

Last night we played the Go Bar in Athens.

The bar has a deep blue ambience. Its mood is one of the best in the country, possibly matched only by that of Double Happiness in Columbus, Ohio. Walking through the Go Bar’s patio toward the front door, there are bushes on either side of you decorated with blue Christmas lights. Inside is a small barroom big enough to hold 15 people comfortably, and a band room only slightly larger. There’s a small TV screen behind the bar. I usually hate to see TV’s in bars, but this one is always playing something visually arresting. Our first time at the venue, Clancy and I watched a good chunk of the classic porno Emmanuelle. This time, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis was playing. Many of the scenes in this 20′s silent film are shaded blue. The TV illuminated the Go Bar. All lights in and outside of the bar are also blue, except for the mirror ball in the band room.

Rebecca, my Athens friend, told me that the building is owned by Michael Stipe of REM, and that he rents it out to the people who run Go Bar. We’ve taken to sometimes playing a tongue-in-cheek rendition of REM’s Everybody Hurts on this tour ever since Ryan spontaneously started playing it during our sound check in Wichita. It actually goes pretty smoothly into our song You Can Fall In Love With Anyone. Both songs are at the same tempo, and in the same key and time signature.

Charles and I were watching the opener, Wild of Night, when I got a text from Rebecca who was standing nearby: “don’t look now but stipe is here.” I looked and there he was watching the show, five feet away from me. I’m not a very big REM fan, but it was still exciting to see a celebrity of his stature just standing there watching a young band play a small show. Michael Stipe. From the sepia-toned Losing My Religion video, or from an MTV news brief with a blue eye shadow unibrow. Just standing there at a show with me and 20 other people, drinking a beer, paying sharp attention to an unknown electronic duo.

I knew I couldn’t tell Ryan the news, because he is a big fan of REM and the knowledge would affect his performance. (He thanked me later). While we set up, I thought about whether or not Ryan might play Everybody Hurts. Ultimately, I decided that I wanted him to do it, because it would make for an interesting experience. I told Clancy the news, and I told him not to tell Ryan. “Of course,” he said.

Sure enough, Ryan went into Everybody Hurts as we finished our sound check. After a couple of bars, Clancy commanded him to stop. Unknowingly, he stopped, and we played as good a set as any.

When we finished packing our gear, I found Michael Stipe standing on the patio by himself. I walked up and introduced myself and nervously told him that I was a big fan. This was an exaggeration, but when I said it, it felt true. He thanked me. I told him that I was in the band that had just performed. "Yeah your set was incredible,“ he said, “we used to tour with a band called Gang of Four and you have a similar energy to them.” I told him that we had just listened to Crush With Eyeliner on our way to Athens. "That’s a great song,“ he said.

Later while walking past a group of people talking to Michael Stipe, I heard him say it again, "That’s a great song.” I assume that that is his automated response when someone compliments his music. I can relate. Almost every show we play, someone in another band playing the show will tell me that they enjoyed our set, perhaps out of politeness. I don’t even think before giving my auto-reply: “Thanks, likewise!” You can only hear so many subtle variations on the same compliment before your replies lose all sincerity.

It’s crazy to me that we have been playing an REM song throughout this tour and we ended up meeting Michael Stipe. Similarly, on our 2013 tour, Ryan joked on Facebook that Bonnie “Prince” Billy was at our Lexington, Kentucky show and I wound up meeting him the next day in a Louisville, Kentucky coffee shop.

Charles and Ryan both wound up talking to Michael Stipe for a long time. He bought Ryan a beer. He said he wasn’t around when Ryan played Everybody Hurts.

https://youtu.be/CuObEg9A2Ew

Asheville, North Carolina

I’m at Battlecat Coffee. Their wifi is down, so I’m typing this in TextEdit instead. I pulled a muscle in my back sleeping on a couch in Knoxville two nights ago. It was a couch that led Ryan and I to argue on a previous tour, so obviously this is karma payback for ending up getting the couch that night.

The excitement from being in new places every night is waring thin, and I’m partially just going through the motions at this point. I still enjoy performing, walking around cities, writing at coffee shops, and driving every day, but it also feels monotonous. I don’t feel very guilty about this, considering that we’ve been on tour for over five weeks. I’m allowed to be a little burnt out after that much touring. Even though I’m burnt out, the idea of being home again sounds weird. The day we get home, I go straight back to the grind, working my Sunday karaoke gig. Speaking of working, I am for hire: http://adampressley.com/hireme1.html

Clancy said that he saw people on Facebook talking about Summer like it’s almost over. For us, that’s surprising because it feels like we missed the whole Summer working this tour, even though we probably had a more eventful Summer than most people. We haven’t had that chilling at Belle Isle without a care in the world summer feeling very much on this tour, though. Even when we have a day off, we are preoccupied with making sure our plans are convenient for everyone else in the band. "I’m going to a bookstore in Portland, but I need to be ready to leave at any given second because I have the van.“

Last night I walked around Asheville listening to PJ Harvey’s White Chalk. It seems like a lot of its lyrics are about pregnancy, childbirth, and maybe abortion. That album’s sound is so dire that it’s a challenging listen for me- and I prefer depressing music. It made for a nice sad walk around Asheville.

Nashville, Tennessee

We all just woke up. We’re at Bill & Morgan’s beautiful home watching a VHS mixtape that Bill made. It’s comprised of obscure promotional music videos for things like French psychedelia and some Kraftwerk-y electronic group I’ve never heard of, as well as classic staples like David Bowie and T-Rex.

It’s obvious just from looking around their house that Bill & Morgan have a keen eye for visual aesthetics. The room that we all hung out in last night was reminiscent of how I remember my uncle Bob’s taxidermy studio. Wood panel walls, colorful flannel blankets covering the couches, and a southern combination of warm colors. Before bed, Bill, Charles, and I stayed up and watched Eraserhead on VHS together. It was a worn-out tape, but the experience reinvigorated my love for the movie. Especially the “meet the parents” scene. Now that I know a lot of David Lynch’s movies, I was impressed by how fully formed his idiosyncratic style was from the very beginning.

Tulsa, OK was OK. We played at a dive bar where we ran our own sound on a blown-out PA, but managed to get it to sound half decent. The bar’s patio was separated from the bar next-door’s patio by a tall fence. On the patio next door, there was a cool-sounding hip hop show going on.

While I was hanging out on the patio, I got into conversation with a Tulsa local who was very excited to see us play. He told me that he was going to buy a lot of our merch, so be ready. He seemed like a nice guy if a bit abrasive. The conversation somehow led to him making a very offensive joke: “white lives matter.” A play on the current anti-police brutality slogan #blacklivesmatter. He said it with a big ‘ain’t I clever’ grin on his face. Right after he said it, he could tell he fucked up and said he hoped he didn’t offend me. I told him that he did, and that nobody in my band would appreciate him saying that. He went into a bullheaded spiel about Bernie Sanders and I told him this had nothing to do with the joke he made. I told him that he seemed like the type of guy who liked to stir the pot, but that joke was too far, plain and simple. He said that he's always felt like an outcast, and he likes to take sides with less popular opinions. I could tell he wasn’t just trying to gain my sympathy, but that he genuinely felt regret. This made me feel sad for him. I told him that JQ’s a bunch of outcasts, too. He said he didn’t want me to leave the show thinking that he was a racist and I told him that I didn’t want him to leave the show thinking we disliked him, but I can’t just let him say that and act like it doesn’t offend me.

When he initially made the joke, I was tempted to just walk away. Had I been a little more pissed off, I think that would have been a reasonable response, but I’m glad I stuck around to talk to the guy. I think we might have gotten somewhere, and at least it’s in his mind that this band he appreciates doesn’t appreciate racist jokes.

While hanging out with show promoter Johan in Springfield, Missouri, a friend of Johan’s came up to talk to us. The guy had moved away from Springfield, but was back for a funeral. His friend took his life by diving with his arms behind his back from the top of a two-story Salvation Army. He worked at a hospital, so he knew how to effectively kill himself. This shocking tragic story was punctuated for me by a classic response from Johan who wasn’t sure if he knew the guy, so he looked him up on Facebook: “Wow, he wasn’t just some fuckboy neither.”

I had a great time walking around alone in Springfield, listening to music. Walking around is one of my favorite parts of tour. Everything you see is new. Some cities, like Springfield, go to sleep early and it feels like you’re walking through a ghost town. Sometimes I just end up walking through a residential area, maybe walking through a park. It helps to get a feel for the city. I also just get to be an invisible spy floating around, observing.

Today, we drive to Knoxville. We only have a week left of tour. The countdown begins…

Dallas, Texas

I’m at Union Coffee drinking a strawberry banana smoothie, made from concentrate. It sucks. This place has the ambience of an office building, complete with fluorescent white tube lights on the ceiling. This is what I get for being dropped off by the band at a Christian college library, on a Sunday. In Texas. It was closed, contrary to the hours listed on Yelp!, so I walked to the closest coffee shop I could find. It’s 105 degrees outside and that coffee shop was over a mile away, so my shirt is still cold with sweat. I imagine I looked like a crazy man with wild sweaty dude hair when I ordered my drink.

On Wednesday, we drove from the Tuscon Westin to the 502 Bar in San Antonio. We made it in 13 hours. We didn’t realize we would be losing two hours on the drive, so I floored it at 95 mph almost the entire way there, in order to arrive in time for our set.

Dr. Dre released Compton when we were two hours away. Charles appropriately called it Andrew Lloyd Weber Presents Compton. I don’t want to say I dislike what I heard, I’m just not looking for an overblown cinematic listening experience right now. Maybe someday.

We got to the venue for the last 30 minutes of opener Xes Xes’s set. The 502 Bar’s staff were eager to get us fucked up, feeding us shots all night even when we didn’t order them.

We played Stubb’s BBQ in Austin the next night. We went over well, but our set was riddled with technical difficulties. The volume knob on Ryan’s sampler got stuck at a low volume. We got a little flustered while trying to diagnose and fix the problem in front of the audience. It’s weird when things like that happen. Your instrument is unplayable, but you’re supposed to perform like nothing is wrong. Because, ten times out of ten, nobody can tell that there is a problem. Meanwhile, you’re on stage with an entire room of people watching as you play what feels like a terrible version of your music. And then when you get off stage, you end up talking to a lot of people, and you have to pretend nothing went wrong, when you’d actually rather apologize to every person you talk to and explain why it sounded like shit. If you do that, nobody ever knows what you’re talking about and you run the risk of sounding like a diva. Plus, you won’t even get the satisfaction of the person’s sympathy because they don’t know what you’re talking about.

Anyway.

Our third Texas show was in Dallas last night. We played outdoors at an enormous restaurant bar called The Foundry. I had a great encounter with a man at the merch table after our set. He looked like the muscular blonde dad from the Incredibles. He was wearing a tight-fitting Tool shirt. He shook my hand and told me that he loved our performance. "It’s great to see someone from Michigan play that well. I’m from Michigan. Your vocals are really great. You need to sing out more. It was great.“ I asked him if he was referring to me in particular or if he thought that Ryan and I both need to sing out more. "Yeah just you. You have a nice voice but if you push it more you’ll hit harder with the lead singer and it’ll sound really good.” It was really nice to get some specific constructive criticism, especially fed to me in a compliment sandwich. I don’t hate my voice, but now I know of a way I can improve on it. Good dude, I’m glad I got to talk to him.

Our friend Morgan let us sleep at the apartment she’s house-sitting. We invited our friend Mike along and we all went swimming in the apartment pool. We found a small ball in the pool and played keep-away with three on the outside and three in the middle. There was some pretty vicious splashing in the face. Everyone had a lot of fun.

After breakfast with Morgan today, we were left to fend for ourselves in this enormous city. We drove to a few different places at different corners of the city looking for a one-hitter. Nobody had one. We even went to a smoke shop called Up In Smoke. They only sold cigars. "I don’t think those guys have ever even heard of Cheech and Chong,“ Clancy noted. Finally, we gave up and took Ryan to a record shop while the rest of us went to a shitty thrift store. I was itching to get some alone time and write this blog post, so I dropped myself off at the library, which brings us back to the start of this story.

[For maximum effect, go back to the start of this post and re-read it as an endless loop, until infinity.]

Tuscon, Arizona

We’re at the Westin in Tuscon, Arizona, living the Gatsby lifestyle. Everything here is pastel- tan building walls, baby blue pool water, light green cacti, enormous picturesque mountain range in the distance made hazy and pastel by the air between us and it.

In San Diego, we basically played in the ocean waves for two days straight.

Our hosts RJ and Addison, of San Diego art collective Ship In the Woods, went to the beach with us the first day. Clancy and I went to breakfast with them and we all got to know each other.

Addison has tourettes syndrome which informs a lot of the content of his art. He was very open to discuss his tourettes. His form of it is very subtle, so much so that you wouldn’t even notice it if he didn’t tell you. I didn’t. He said tourettes gives his him a hyperawareness that helps him pick up on people’s timing. This allows him to intuit when to tic without anyone noticing. He said that having tourette’s is a positive part of his life. His artwork can be found at addisonstonestreet.com

Ryan and Charles met up with us later to go to the beach. We found a spot that wasn’t very crowded- maybe 5 or 6 other people in a ¼ mile stretch. When we got in the ocean, we instantly became children, laughing and colliding with the current. Ryan and Addison were the most audacious, pointing at the tallest waves and shouting for us all to swim in that direction.

I took a beating from the ocean. Salt water in my nose and ears, down my throat. At one point, I got pretty far in and couldn’t touch. I was pretty sure that I couldn’t swim fast enough to beat the current that was pulling me out to sea. I realized that there was no lifeguard, and all my friends were high and might not notice if I, say, went missing for a few minutes (drowned). Obviously I survived. Ryan proclaimed that our time in the ocean was the best time he’s had all year.

The next day was more of the same. I really wanted to check out this nude beach, but I seemed to be the only pervert in the band who wanted to.

We drove through the desert all day yesterday. We all listened to Marc Maron interview Harmony Korine– maybe the first episode of WTF that all four of us were happy to listen to. It’s a good listen. Harmony goes into his method, details about working on his movies, and his opinions on film, music, and art in general. He’s a wise artist.

When we finally got to the paradise that is the Tuscon Westin Resort last night, we went straight to the pools. There are five of them and three hot tubs, all right by eachother like a water park. Two of the pools are warm salt water pools. There’s one super-cold pool right by a hot tub. And there’s a water slide that I’ve only seen small children use since I started writing this, but I plan on going down it regardless.

I can’t believe how lucky we’ve gotten on this tour. This is hands down the most vacation-like tour I’ve ever been on, and we’ve still got a ways to go. Nevertheless, I’d like to reflect: we’ve gotten to hike through a cave in South Dakota, swim at a lake house in Lincoln, Nebraska, stay at a beautiful beach(ish) house in San Diego and now we’re at the Westin in Tuscon. And those are just the places that sound good on paper. I’ve also gotten to see so many of my good friends that I don’t get to see that often… hoping not to jinx the rest of our tour, just feeling pretty grateful right now.

We’re at a beach house in Del Rey, California just outside of San Diego. One of the guys who lives here is listening to Beach House in his room. The house is really nice, like the one Don Draper throws parties at in Mad Men. Glass panels for exterior walls, beach plants outside with big leaves. Except, they’re in the process of moving, so the place is in shambles. Still, it’s an ideal spot to stay at, especially when on tour. Starting today, we have three days off. We’re going to stay here for another day and then make our way to Marfa, Texas to see what all the hubbub is about. Suki warned us that Marfa is “boring as fuck” and tiny, but I still want to go. She’s the only person with anything bad to say about the town. Since I last blogged… In Oakland, I went to ‘Secret Beach’ with Ryan, Clancy, and Clancy’s friend Julia, who brought us there. It was also refered to as “the punk beach” by Clancy– a more telling title. There was some litter and it wreaked faintly of dead fish. At one point when Ryan and Clancy were playing frisbee in the bay, a dead stingray washed ashore on its back. Ryan poked it with his finger and posed for photos with it. Later at Joni D’s house I joked that we tagged a Jamaican Queens logo on it. Joni replied that that’s such an awful thing to say, but you still can’t repeat it with a straight face. We hung out at Joni’s later for a bit before walking to a Korean bar restaurant where we all had flavored Soju the green color of Ecto Cooler. The bar was dark with bright florescent lights like an arcade. There was dubstep playing too loud for me to talk over. I ended up in a daze at the table with everyone, staring at a disturbing UFC fight on the TV. One man with another man in a chokehold, repeatedly bludgeoning the man’s face with his fist while the other man seemed to be unconscious. There’s a dark part of me that finds this entertaining on a primal level and had to exert a lot of effort just to look away. In LA, we loaded out gear into the venue and then I walked to meet up with my friends Suki and Sarah at Sarah’s nearby house. We had a lot of fun talking and joking around for like 15 minutes before I had to go back to the venue to perform. I wanted to spend more time in LA to hang with them, which we had originally planned on doing, but we all just came to the decision to stay here in San Diego. This plan seems more sensible; nobody in LA is able to put us up, and these dudes living in this San Diego dream house are able to. I’m speed typing to finish this up because we’re about to head to a San Diego beach. You’ll hear from me soon enough.

I'm in a bedroom at Joni D's Oakland, CA apartment. Pinned to the wall is a 3.5″ floppy disk with “Anarchist Cookbook” written on it in Sharpie.

It's starting to get hot in here, I should probably change into shorts. I just listened to Molly Soda's All Things Considered interview about selfies. It's a short but interesting interview. Molly's a smart lady. It's nice to see her celebrity continue to grow.

On tour, we often get to see America's cities in a very attractive light. The negative attributes of a city that cause locals to eventually complain about it don't reveal themselves right away to tourists like us. That being said, the people living in Portland that I talked to all seem to still be in love with it-- not cynical about it.

Now we get a day off in San Francisco/Oakland. After I finish this post I'm gonna go out into the city and find things to do.

I read this article this morning:

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/850-op-ed-white-privilege-and-black-lives-in-the-baltimore-music-scene/

Sounds like Detroit and Baltimore have a lot in common.

All in all, I thought this was a valuable read. I found this paragraph to be problematic, though:

"At the intersection of the roads to both relief from societal pressures and personal accountability to the wellbeing of African-Americans, amongst others, is an answer in the form of simple ritual: think about others all of the time. Every time your mind begins to turn to your worries, turn it back to others. Who around you, stranger or familiar, is in need of something you can provide? This is the "trick" to end all tricks. It isn’t selfless, nor does it does [sic] feel like a burden. It works, and it feels right and good. It leads away from the pretense of public discourse that is social media, toward substantive human interaction, and ultimately to concrete human action."

While this sentiment is well-intentioned, it's a lot easier to say than to do because people are self-obsessed. I know I am. So, even if a person has an in-depth understanding of racism, it's a lot to ask of that person to stop their endless selfish thought cycle and turn it toward other people's strife "all the time" as Jana suggests. Again, I think that this plea for compassion is necessary, but to call it a 'simple ritual' is to downplay the effort needed in order to make yourself think this way. I feel like in lyrics and interviews, Kendrick Lamar often discusses the missing component to Jana's suggestion: self-love. One needs a healthy relationship with their self in order to more effectively help others.

White people taking a stand against systemic racism is something that I've been fairly uninvolved with. Jana's article inspired me to finally get involved in the conversation, even if it means fumbling and getting called out for saying something dumb. In fact, please do call me out if you take issue with anything I've said regarding the matter. These conversations can only help.

I’m hanging out with my friend Suzette in her Portland studio apartment.

I’m geeking out to her about how much I love my new dumb phone. It doesn’t know how to get on the Internet. It uses T9 and I have to add words to its memory. I just had to add the word “Tetris” when I texted Ryan that the only game I have is Tetris. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it doesn’t seem capable of messaging my friend Laura who sends texts through her iCloud account. Other than that, I’m pretty stoked to be back in 2003 and present in the world again. Without Apple Maps, I had to ask a Whole Foods employee for directions. This caused me to meditate on the reality that people sometimes can’t even put words to their coordinates. That people literally DON’T KNOW WHERE THEY ARE anymore. I knew I was at the Stumptown Coffee on Stark St. That’s something. Other drawbacks are pleasant, too. It takes me a lot longer to type a text message using T9. I’ve already been on the phone twice when I normally would’ve just had a text conversation. I felt a jolt of anxiety when I went to the bathroom with no Twitter to read. I ended up instead reading some of Suzette’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 33 1/3 that she had laying around. Look at me go, I’m talking on the phone again, reading books again, committing street names to memory again... All I really expected to gain was to focus more on the present, but now I’m actually using my brain in ways I didn’t even realize I was neglecting to. We’ll see how I feel in a week or so when the honeymoon period fades away... Fingers crossed emoji. Oh yeah, I tried to send a smilie face text today, but I don’t have parentheses anymore. The best I can do is :/

For the record, I still have my iPhone and I still plan on using it occasionally. Probably when I’m driving from city to city on tour and I need Siri to guide me along, or when I need to answer band e-mails. What I did was I took the nano sim card out of my iphone, bought a SIM card adapter kit and used that to put the SIM card in my $15 dumbphone I bought at Best Buy. If you are interested in doing this, it’s important to make sure that your SIM card is compatible with your new phone (hence the adapter kit), and that your dumbphone is compatible with your carrier. My dumbphone and carrier are both AT&T so I’m set, but there are “unlocked” phones you can also use that work with any carrier, such as the Nokia 106.

I’m in the basement of the Eddy House in Missoula, Montana. I’m sitting on a bare twin mattress with some kind of bug flying around my head, the room illuminated by my iphone camera light shining at the ceiling. The air smells like mildew and candy.

We couldn't have asked for a better Missoula show. The crowd was one of the most enthusiastic we’ve had, the sound was excellent, and people were extremely generous. So much so that I didn’t even get to use the small tab the bar provided for band drinks because a sweet lady named Ingrid was supplying us with drinks all night. I even saw her hand Swol a PBR on stage, walk away, and come right back with another PBR for him.

After we played, I could tell everyone in the band wanted to keep the party going, but knowing that we have to get up early and drive to Seattle, and being the square I am, I put it in the air that I wanted to sleep. Kile came through and made sure I got to the Eddy house right away. Kile’s band opened the show and were great, but I didn’t catch their name. If you’re in the band and you read this, hit me up and I’ll change this in order to give you props.

I gotta go back in time a bit to talk about how awesome yesterday was--

Due to a logistical error, we were booked to play both Saint Mary, Montana and Rapid City, South Dakota yesterday. We decided to go with the 13-hour drive to Saint Mary to see our friend Thor. We were half-way there when we got a call from Thor explaining that the town of Saint Mary was being evacuated due to a forest fire. I hope that the people of Saint Mary are okay and their valued possessions are, too.

So, we ended up at The Cave in South Dakota. The venue is called The Cave because beneath the venue is a real, huge ass cave. It’s located on Nameless Cave Road. There are stairs and lights to guide you deep down into the cave. Supposedly, it goes on for a mile. I didn’t make it even a quarter mile in. After we played, I went in there to just sit and chill for about half an hour and take this selfie.

A noise punk band called An Atomic Whirl performed last. I listened from the bed of an RV that venue-runner Natasha offered up as a sleep spot. Atomic Whirl’s music reverberated from far in the distance, adding a dreaminess to their alert style. I later found out the band was actually comprised of only a bassist/vocalist and a drummer, but they sounded like four or five alien punks playing to the tempo of anarchy, in the key of panic.

Swol and I are at Cultiva Coffee in Lincoln, Nebraska awaiting our buds. Swol is drawing in his book that has PEOPLE TO KILL etched in the cover, while I'm paying the bills back home, online. I am waiting for Comcast to call back so I can inform them that, "I'd like to extend my promotional internet service period." This is a sentence that I deliberated over for a few minutes in hopes to prevent them from trying to act like they don't know what I'm talking about.

Kansas City was a sweat lodge of a fun messy drunk show. I saw a lot of people dancing, a girl with a XXL football jersey grinding on her friend, and people generally seemed into it regardless of the heat in the room. The venue, FOKL, is a small room covered in graffiti. You could fit 150 people if you crammed them in there. They have one of the nicest PA's of any DIY venue I've played. We usually sleep at FOKL, but the heat made us opt for my friend Jesse's air-conditioned apartment instead.

Stiff Little Fingers were added to our show in Lincoln, NE about a week before it happened. Their joining the bill caused the ticket price to triple. There were some fans of ours who didn't want to come out because of that. Stiff Little Fingers are a 70's Irish punk band. That's all I know about them. So, it's kind of ironic that the venue added them at the last second and charged more for the show. Not very punk of them. Still, I don't blame the bar for wanting to take the opportunity. We would draw a quarter of the crowd a legendary punk band would draw. Business is business.

Afterwards, Charles drove us out to a lake house a few miles outside of the city. Shouts out to Annie for arranging this incredible experience for us. The owners left Annie's friend Erin to watch over their lake house while they were out of town. They are an older artist couple, or perhaps just art appreciators.. I didn't really catch their story. Every wall was covered with a painting or a print. The water in the lake was luke warm. It felt amazing. Ryan dj'ed a cinematic song by The Tornadoes I had never heard through one of those little bluetooth Bose speakers, perfectly enhancing the joy I felt while finally swimming in the lake. After our swim, most of us ended up in the hot tub.

We had the next day off, so I went with Annie to see the latest Pixar movie, get some pizza, and play some ping pong. When we got back to her house, the rest of the homies were serving dinner. Ryan made a delicious avocado and chickpea salad. Charles served up some kind of sausage dish and a side of green beans with almonds, I think? It was also delicious. Charles and Clancy watched What Happened, Miss Simone? on Netflix while Ryan and I hung with Annie and a couple of her neighbors on her porch, talking about the Ghostface Killah/Action Bronson feud and numerous other topics. Annie's neighbor is a librarian and a bartender. She said that the clientele of both jobs is surprisingly similar, that people at both places just want to talk. She also said that people are allowed to view and print pornography on the library computers, so long as they don't masturbate at the library.

When I layed down to go to sleep, I saw a glowing green light coming in through the window. The light was alien-colored-- the shade of green of your typical alien head google image or Spencer's Gifts poster. I scanned the livingroom we were all laying down in to see if anyone still awake. I hoped that I wasn't the only person awake for this because the light was making me anxious, and I thought I might need someone to talk to in case I had a panic attack. Nobody was awake. I closed my eyes and tried to go to sleep. But, I felt my heart racing so fast that my anxiety gave way to a full-blown panic attack. I opened my eyes. I was no longer in Annie's apartment, but in a large room with shiny metal walls. The panic attack had ended and I felt an unexpected calmness. I walked over to the window and looked down at planet Earth. "It's true, you really can see the great wall of China," I thought.

I'm locked inside the loft building we slept at. I tried to go to a St Louis coffee shop, but the doorway out only opens by key, and everyone else is still asleep. So instead, I'm writing this from inside an extremely spacious jail cell. Last night we played The Demo in St. Louis. My mom, her girlfriend, my mom's girlfriend's daughter, and my mom's girlfriend's daughter's girlfriend all came out to watch. I was faced with the dilemma of either hanging out with my mom in the 93-degree outdoors or going inside where a loud band was playing. We got to catch up for a few minutes outside before the heat became too much and we went in. Later, I hung out with Katrina all night. She's one of my best friends and she's sober, and I don't really like to drink while I'm hanging out with a sober person. So instead we drove to a grocery store and bought Kombuchas and snacks, then drove back to the bar that the rest of the band was hanging out, taking long intermissions in her parked car, talking about deeply personal stuff. I did have one beer at the bar, where my friend Seaby was at. It became Seaby's storytelling hour. He told Katrina and I about his downstairs neighbor who overdosed on heroin and after days of being left alone, his body bloated to the point of exploding. Then Katrina brought me to Danielle's, the amazing loft-turned-jail cell I'm currently writing from. Before I went in, we talked in her car about how scary and terrible America can be. She focuses on the horrors of the world, particularly America. I can't blame her. Perhaps I'm an optimist or I just stupidly choose to remain in blissful ignorance. A lot of the people I am close to share Katrina's sentiment, maybe that's why we're drawn to eachother. Nick Offerman's stand-up comedy special where he talks about oral sex and tells people how wrong they're living was playing when I came in. I found him kind of annoying, occasionally mildly amusing. That uncomfortable feeling when everyone’s laughing at a something that you don't find funny. He was mostly too preachy. I dedicate this post to Jen David who said my last post reads like a Facebook post.

It’s been a little dull the past few days. We’re in Iowa/Minnesota-land, where the freaks are a rarer breed, but we met some young ones in Minneapolis last night, and the Ryans went to party while Charles and I stayed back and watched Crybaby on VHS.

^this is a text I just sent Doc Waffles. Listen to this interview about his album, it's great, even if you haven't heard the album: https://soundcloud.com/doc-waffles/last-week-in-baseball

Shouts out to

...the two ladies who stood outside our van after our show in Milwaukee and belted Alicia Keys' "Fallin," acapella.

...Megan Zarnott who gave us a place to stay in Milwaukee and also takes photos:

...The only two guys who came to our show in Des Moines, Iowa. Side note: I defy anyone reading this to throw an event in Des Moines, Iowa with more than two people in attendance.

...Chicago's Bailiff for apparently covering a Jamaican Queens song in Des Moines, causing those two guys to seek us out and eventually end up at our show.

Hung over on a porch right now. Went hard with some old friends in Chicago, starting right after our afternoon set until about 4am. Not how I typically party. We'll see how I fare today. This tour started a lil fucked. Charles had a flight delay that cause him to miss our first couple shows. We were able to cut just one song from the set and still get by without his much-missed synth playing. However, it didn't help that our most utilized instrument, Clancy's drum pads, had a major malfunction, causing it to play the wrong samples and arbitrarily stop important loops, rendering us a disjointed sloppy punk version of what we aim for. Still, the crowd at Bell's Brewery in Kzoo didn't rub it in our faces that we were fucking up, so we had a good time, and so did they. I spent the next morning swapping the samples from Clancy's drum pads into my drum pads, and vice versa, as a quick temporary fix, and so we were able to play fairly well in Fort Wayne. When we were tearing down our gear, Collective Soul were playing over the venue PA and Clancy and I call-and-response rapped Eminem's "Without Me" to each other. I drove us overnight to Chicago so I could spend some time with my first love / close friend Kelley before our 4pm set at West Fest. After our set, my other old friend Justin met up with us and we got really nasty drunk all day at numerous places. I had trouble keeping up with my friends, running on such little sleep from driving all night and not being used to such heavy drinking. Now I'm going to get some pizza with our booking agent. Here’s me and my buds:

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