Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Back on the east coast for a hot second

Come to our show this Saturday in DC!


And boy is it hot. The humidity here makes it FEEL hotter than the Arizona desert! I can't stand the humidity. I step outside and I'm instantly drenched in sweat.







We're crashing in the DC area right now recuperating from our harrowing trip across the country. After the we got a new (rebuilt) transmission put in the van and got out of Arizona we had to book it to make it to our show in Columbus, Ohio. Along the way, we ran out of gas in between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. We hit this terrible traffic and were sitting in stop and go nonsense for hours when we noticed we were out of fuel and the nearest gas station was 10 miles up the highway! It was also over 100 degrees and we were out of water, but luckily a car in front of us got a flat tire and then broke their jack trying to change the tire so I jumped out and used our jack to get the car back up and help them change it and then they gave us a few bottles of water to tide us over.

A few hours later we ran into another fellow who'd run out of gas but was filling his tank with some spare canisters. He told us about a gas station on the other side of the highway and gave us an empty gas canister. I was able to hop the median and cross several lanes of traffic to walk to this gas station and fill the canister and then we finally made it out of there. When we pulled into the next station 10 miles down the road I was the ecstatic. Absolutely the happiest I'd ever been pulling into a gas station.

We found a motel, slept for 4 hours and then got up to keep driving. Three days of this... driving nonstop, hitting terrible traffic at some point in the day, sleeping for a few hours in some crummy motel, then waking up to do it all over again, just so we could make it to this show in Ohio where we played for like, 6 people. But we met a nice guy who let us crash at his mom's place and demonstrated his newly rebuilt Fender Twin with tremolo at 3am on a weeknight.

"Aren't we going to wake up your mom?"
"Naw, she LOVES it!"



It was a rough stretch, for sure but we survived and our shows up in New England ended up being pretty sweet.

We played in Providence at the 201 with a great bunch of guys and gals called The Loom.



Outside the 201 in Providence

Then we got a slice of late night pizza and got back in the car that night and drove to my family reunion in the Berkshires. Slapping my face the whole way until our arrival at 5am. Sleep for a few hours then BAM! Meet the Ushers.

But after that we had really awesome shows in Boston/Cambridge and Brooklyn, NY.

Whoa! this band we played with in Brooklyn was totally mind blowing!

no link :(

They were called Pocketknife but recently got a cease and desist from the lawyer of a DJ who also calls himself Pocketknife so they will be changing their name. BUT they are recording a new album with Chris Keup near Charlottesville so I'm sure you will be hearing about them soon.

We also played with our friends This Frontier Needs Heroes and had fun hanging out with them after the show, where we met and stayed with Noah from Naked Hearts.


Then we raced back home to hand make 100 limited edition copies of our new Emanations / Powerlines double EP and then to Charlottesville to play at the Southern with two fantastic bands, Red Rattles from Charlottesville and Eternal Summers from Roanoke.


All in all, good times. And after a string of depressing setbacks and exhausting drives we have now had a few days to sleep and get ready for a killer show this Saturday at the Gibson Guitar Showroom in Chinatown with Matt Hemerlein. (Flier at top) See ya there!