Crooklyn, New Dork. Bitchmond, Vagina.

I woke up this morning to Mr. Joshua Russell shaking me to life like a spray-paint bottle but before I could spray out a stream of insults, I noticed something. He had the crazy eye. He had that look on his face like he had a plan… a plan of the most importance.

“I want to record,” he said to me.

“Ok,” I replied, “How the hell are we going to do that? I don’t have any of my gear.”

“Well,” he stumbled, “If I had had some forethought, I would have brought my 4-track and we could have set up here at Dan’s and recorded.”

A fine plan Josh. I broke the crick out of my back from the hardwood floor bed and mulled it over for a moment. Garage Band recording with the internal microphone? No, my computer’s fan spins like a tornado and probably does the same amount of damage to my carefully planted innards of my computer as it would a finely planted crop. Or could it give it a little bit of a new age tape effect? Wurring instead of tape hiss? Then comes the problem of loading in all the gear and tearing it down in time to head down to NYC. What time was it, anyway? Time to go apparently. Typical, Josh, typical. Get me all excited just to leave me hanging at the very end. It was invariably something that she probably would have said if she had been there at that moment.

We loaded up the cars and took off out of the starting gate with every intention of finding the cheap gasoline station that we had seen the night before while circling around Providence. Which, unfortunately put us into the same situation that we were in the night before… circling around Providence having no idea where we were going. I proclaimed that this was going to be the last time I followed Josh around a city.

With our automotive’s tummy sufficiently filled, we hit the long and desolated stretch of I-95 that winds between Providence and New York known as Connecticut: the void that some are ashamed to part of New England. Intricate skylines built to drag you into a city that is more likely filled with factories and crime than your typical tourist attractions. I’ve had my fare share of good times in Connecticut but I rather not spend any time there.

I’m going to be honest with you, the New York City gig was probably the gig I was not looking forward to. Not for the venue but just getting in and out without incident. After living there for a year, I can surely say that my lack of trust for portions of the human race stem from some of the people that I met there but this trip changed me a little bit. The traffic wasn’t nearly as bad as I anticipated it to be and we found a parking spot right next to Matchless.




We were greeted by the very indifferent bar tender who was confused out or friendliness and willingness to give him information about the other bands and their whereabouts. Whatever, I was hungry and had to take a piss.

Look ma, one hand!

We walked across the street where I ate a fried chicken sandwich with a side of homemade mac n cheese for $12 and listened to the sweet sounds of Dinosaur Jr. doing Cure covers over the PA system. Only in Williamsburg.

Krista, putting on her best indifferent face.

We hung out on the corner of Driggs and Manhattan Ave. trying to catch a glimpse of the big city hustle and bustle but failed miserably. The only thing even close to that was two kids riding on their BMX bike, down the wrong way of the street, one of them steering and pedaling while the other one had a big cardboard tube around his arm trying to use it as a jousting stick. Cute but they wouldn’t stop and I was too slow to run after them to try and give them a good talkin’ to.

The show was a special one… not only did I get to do an impromptu solo set at the beginning but we had a couple of special people in the crowd. First and foremost, we had Williamsburg renown electronic duo The Ken Burns Effect hanging out (on member is a friend of mine from way back when from Kindergarden-Highschool Graduation). We also had (sharing the bill) the Vermont band Hungrytown… they’re a lovely couple with great songs with matched personalities/harmonies. It was also the final show with the Loblolly Boys (sad face). Josh had a very touching speak at the beginning of our set which I promptly destroyed with a little “one cheek sneak” into the microphone (Krista beat me with phrases that you’ve never heard with that one).

We rocked some faces off (I tried to keep my onstage banter away from NYC bashing… just a couple of words about their expensive transit system [New York, you’re alright afterall]) until it was time for the Johnson Boys to come up and close out the night with another great set. I really have completely fallen in love with those guys…

We loaded up our shit and had a bit of a melancholy goodbye with Dan and Josh while sitting in the truck bed… and after some attempts in vein to get us to come have a drink with them, we jumped in the loaded car and headed south to my Aunt Hannah’s house place in New Jersey (but not without paying 10 dollars for the toll over the Staten Island bridge) where we settled down for a goodnight’s sleep.

Now I’m in passenger side of the Colbalt, stomach full of an enormous omelet that my Aunt mad this morning, on our way to Richmond (getting mildly car sick from staring at this screen, I might vomit out the window [its raining outside, don’t worry, it’ll wash away]) to play our first duo gig in a week with a band that my uncle found on craigslist. Next blog will be interesting… I promise.

........................... 14 hours later.

Last nights gig in Richmond was surprisingly fun. The drive to Richmond... not so fun. We were stuck in traffic around D.C. for about 2 hours (which I guess is fairly typical) and I was mildly car-sick from writing the New York blog (as you've seen above) in the car. Then, of course, it start to rain... like... tropical storm kind of rain... so the going was slow for a while there. We found some ways to entertain ourselves though. We found a fellow band from Texas who was also on tour... we tried to flag them down but the traffic was a little too heavy (like... heavy, man) and we couldn't get up next to them without givin' them (or someone else) the ol' rear end.

How were they driving? Terribly, I think I saw them almost die 12 times.

We also ran into a pink tractor-trailer truck that had the unfortunate name of "Quiet Storm" but it was still cute.

Its the little things that keep you from puking while your car-sick.

The whole thing was rather last minute. We played with a straight up rock band called the Superglue Ghandis, who are some of the coolest guys you could ever meet. Immediately as we walked into the bar they were so personable and just altogether nice guys. And not to mention great sports... my uncle asked them to play the show the day BEFORE the gig. Amazing. Thanks Tim, James and Gene (especially Gene, he was sick as a dog) for playing last night... we really enjoyed listening and hanging out with you guys. It was good fun!

Left to right: Gene "you might not want to use my mic after me" Roland, James "I have to work at 8am tomorrow morning but I'm still going to stick around because I'm an awesome guy" Applebach and Tim "I'm a badass Irishman" Crews

We had a nice little sing/dance along with the bra-less ladies in the front to their song "Dude, I'm on the Guest-List", an ode to all of those groupy girls with loose vagina's and usually drop things (like names) farely often.

We couldn't find a place to stay that night so we just trucked it overnight to Chapel Hill (which was only three hours away) where we arrived at around four in the morning and nothing was open... except a grocery store where we used the bathroom and probably made the woman working think we were incredibly stoned because of our sleep deprived nature. We then had some speakerphone bonding time with Bearkat (who are also on tour) who were driving from Chicago to St. Louis that night. "Boner" and "Cooter" (which apparently was supposed to be short for "computer") were thrown around quite a bit and a plethora of "that's what she said" jokes. We drove around Chapel Hill (where I have now dubbed myself the U-turn King... since driving in Mass. Krista has counted 15 million times that I've pulled a U-y in the past couple of states) for a bit trying to find all of the old haunts that I used to hang at when I was here for a summer and finally found ourselves parked back in the 24 hour Grocery parking lot... doin' a little car sleeping. Here I am now... at the cafe we are to play tonight... nice space... I haven't had the coffee yet... I'm hungry as shit. I should stop writing before I ramble anymore.

Cheers,
Luke