on our way to the west coast

we had a show in Amarillo, Texas two days ago at this place called the 10Th street deli. When we rolled up it was a little sketchy at first. It was in a crappy neighborhood that apparently was a house but they used it as a venue to pay rent. We hung around out back for a while with a bunch of high school aged kids that were all drinking and partying before the show. We offered to play first because they had been waiting around for hours for the show to start. We skipped the solo songs and ran straight into our set. At the end of 'axed' a guy came up to james and told him that we should stop playing because the cops were there. After we finished the song the cops stood there and watched us play some more and then they left. I figured for sure it was going to get shut down with that much underage kids drinking. The PA setup was horrible, one speaker that you could barely hear the vocals through, but the kids seemed to really dig it regardless. Most of them approached us afterwards with kind things to say. We hung out around the show spending time with the new friends we'd made and had a blast. I remember brett giving someone a piggyback ride and fell RIGHT INTO A MUD PUDDLE. His hand got seriously hurt unfortunately, but it was funny. We left to go crash on someone floor, but i ended up being the only one in the house. The lady was a little weird so we didn't stick around for too long. We took the bus to a shop in the morning to get the gas line leak fixed, the mechanic was really nice and told us it would be about 6:00pm before it would be finished. We had a friend that offered us a place to shower and eat while we were in town so she came to pick us up from the shop. It was great to eat food that you would make at home. After we lounged around for a while she took us back to the shop and we began our trip to new mexico. We got in around 10 pm and the guys decided they wanted to play an open mic down on Central Ave. I had never seen this part of town before but it was incredible, apparently near the campus. We got to anna's (nicoles sister) who had let us stay in her house for the night. We took off in the afternoon after relaxing and eating up the food she had offered us. We are in Arizona right now on our way back to San Diego, and we'll probably be rolling in town about 4 am. It has been pouring down rain with lightening for the past few hours. TOMORROW we play a free house show in Alpine, CA with Nut Crackers (japandi/witt side project) and Snuffaluffagus.

Here's a video of "axed" from our show in Columbus, MS at the Princess Theater

Shining Through - Axed from Andrew Le on Vimeo.

back to memphis

We played two incredible shows the past few days. The first one in Memphis, TN at a club called the hi tone cafe. We arrived at the venue a little bit early and they fed us some delicious vegan pizza! the night had already seemed like a win. They also told us we had $40 on the bar tab so we all grabbed some drinks while we sat around. There were only two bands on the bill including us so we figured it would be pretty small. The stage was weird, it was like a third of a circle. We played at 10:15pm, a solid set again. The band after us were all really nice guys, they sounded great too. I think their name was Rainy Day Manual, if you ever get a chance to see them you won't be disappointed. The show paid out very fair for there being less than 100 through the door. We hung around the venue after with the people that came out. We ended up staying with a guy named adam who was kind enough to let us wash some clothes and stuff(score!). We got up in the morning and watched the office with them for a bit before we headed to Columbus.

After all of our goodbyes and thank yous were said we headed to Kroger's(similar to safeway/vons/randalls/etc.) grabbed some food before we hit the road. The drive was really quick, probably only about three hours. We arrived to 5th street with no address for the venue but continued to drive to find it about eight blocks off of the highway. As soon as we got out we noticed our name on the marque had to take some pictures and stuff of course. They also had a sweet poster for us, since this was the first show we actually have headlined this tour, it was rad. They gave us about $70 worth of amazing food, $30 in drinks and a very generous payout from the door. Not to mention we ended up selling out of the white small shirts that we just made before tour.

This venue was HUGE. All the bands were so nice and just wanted to chit chat with us while we were hanging out. We ended up signing one of the shirts for a young lady who immediately fell in love with trevor. We watched the bands before us play while we took turns sitting at the merch table. James opened the set with desert and you, then we took the stage with him to fly through our set. After we exited the stage james decided to play hangin' on a, which was a great closer for this set. We signed this little poster for them to frame and put in the lobby. Then we ended up staying at these apartments with a friend we'd made that night and crashed.

We woke up enjoyed a rad breakfast at this place called the waffle house. Got our oil changed in the bus, and mapped out the rest of our trip back to the coast. We're now our on way to memphis to hang out with the people we'd met the night before last. HERES SOME MORE PICTURES FOR YOUR VIEWING

MEMPHIS

We drove about 10 hours yesterday from Athens to get here and arrived at about 2 am, immediately went inside to this rad little studio apartment with our newly acquired friend. Then ventured to the top of the building to drink a little dry gin before bed. I am up now after a very minimal amount of sleep, and i thought with my time i could share some more of the past little while.

alex

We're in Palm Beach, Florida now.. what the fuck?

To sum it up it has been a crazy past little while, much like this whole tour has been. We Arrived to new orleans at about 2 am drove around for a while til we ran into the strip (bourbon street) we didn't have a show that night so the guys went to the bars and decided to experience the night life while kellen and i walked around the city and grabbed some fried chicken and fries from brothers chicken on the corner of bourbon street near the hotel we would end up at the end of the night. We rushed back to the bus to get filled by this junk food. After we relaxed for a bit we ended up playing some music on the stoop of this HUGE building. The guys returned a few hours later and made some friends with people that were vacationing to new orleans as well we all get a hotel and stayed up for a while before crashing.

We got up at about 11 am and headed to what i could assume was the industrial area of town to sleep for a bit. Everyone split up into groups and left after a bit besides trevor and i who kept resting til about 5 pm. We walked south for a while to get something to eat at a little cafe that ended up closing at 3. Then we headed back towards the strip area and went to a little restaurant next to the house of blues. I got a delicious chicken pita wrap thing with fries and trev got a little vegan wrap. The waitress kelly was extremely nice to us and talked for a bit before the rest of the guys met up with us. She asked us if we were in a band and we obviously said 'yes'. 'We had a show originally in New Orleans but it had gotten cancelled right before we left san diego'. She Immediately started on the phone to call around to venues in attempt to find us a place to play. We exchanged phone numbers and headed back to the bus to head down to the french quarter for a bit in hopes to talk to some venues to try and get on a last minute bill. It was EXTREMELY beautiful down there, all the buildings had so much character. We failed at the show quest, but it was still worth the experience. We headed to bourbon street to pick up james before we headed to the carolton station to do an open mic. Everyone played individual sets, it was a nice change of pace from our typical night of playing loud rock music. We headed to kelly's house who had offered us a comfortable place to stay.

In the morning we headed out to florida. We flew through four states within the course of 10 hours and grabbed a hotel just north of daytona beach. Luckily they hooked up a 1pm check out time so we could get a real night of sleep. We got up and started our trip towards pompano beach where we would play Solid Sound Studios. Which was a little recording studio/practice space for bands. Probably had about 20 people there, but the kids were all really nice. James opened with a few acoustic songs including 'you' and my personal favorite 'desert'. We got some live photos and did a little photo shoot after our set in the bus with our new friend jacquie. We got lucky with a place to stay after the show. The people were so nice to us and we stayed up late smoking hookah and talking about life.

We woke in the morning and headed to our next show in Fort Meyers. The venue was in this little strip mall at a church i think. Lots of little local kids hung out before the show. I just remember them playing the worst music i have ever heard before the show started through the PA. This time james started with desert on electric instead of the typical acoustic. The sound of the song had changed and you could hear the rock feel of it come out with just a touch of distortion. Theres not a more fitting opener to our rocking full band set. We played really good and quick this time. Began to load up our stuff after the set and we had two people want to take promos for us. They turned out good from what i could tell haha, i just don't get why people prefer to take them after we are all sweaty instead of before we play when we look a little more presentable. Anyways, we ended the night and went to sleep. Headed to Palm Beach to play at a place called swampgrass willys. It was a little restaurant/bar place with this tiny little stage and tables near the bar where everyone sat at. We played third with another successful set. It feels better everytime we do this. The energy is consistent and the songs get easier to play with time. We haven't been selling a lot of merch for the past few shows, maybe a shirt or two a night.

We headed towards fort lauderdale to enjoy our day off and swim in the Atlantic ocean for the first time!!!! We grabbed some food at this little burrito/pizza place and ate it near the sand. We got in the water and began to swim away from the shore immediately. The water was SO warm, it felt incredible! It was extremely salty water so it sucked pretty hard when it would get in your mouth while you dodged waves but it was more than worth it. We got a beach side hotel and would soon be asleep. Before we headed in i dared Brett to jump off the ledge into the pool. Obviously you can't turn down a dare like that so he was all for it, did it a few times before we headed inside to fall asleep.

In the morning Trevor woke up in a panic, he was late for signing up for his classes with UCLA. He ran and grabbed my laptop and the charger and spent the rest of the time we were in the hotel during the morning and straightened out that stuff out. We headed to Jacksonville where we were supposed to play a venue called jack rabbits that had recently gotten cancelled. We walked the beach strip and drank some beer on the beach, enjoyed the waves and cool air which we would soon miss, then slept in the bus for the first time all tour in a public parking area near the beach.

At about 8 am we got up and continued on to Athens, Georgia. We got out of Florida and grabbed a little subway ($5 foot long, obviously). When we were ALMOST there we totally got pulled over while kellen was driving, because we don't have working turn signals. The cop was really nice, asked kellen to get out and follow him back to the car. Trevor started to panic. James had bought some weed in Jacksonville and made an attempt to eat it before the officer returned to the car. With a few minutes of failed attempts, he took it out of his mouth and went to throw it in the back of the bus. Trevor grabbed it from his hands threw it in a jar of peanut butter smashed it down with a plastic cup and stirred it up with a spoon then threw it on the ground. The cop came back asked us a few vague questions then grabbed our IDs to make sure we weren't outlaws or anything like that. He gave us a warning ticket and we we're on our way.

We arrived to the Caledonia lounge where we were scheduled to play in a few hours. The sound man wouldn't be there til about 8:30 so we had a few hours to kill around the town. Immediately we ran into the nicest couple who stopped to talk to us for a bit, they were out around the town walking their dog and offered to take us out to get a beer and show us around. While we were headed towards the bar kellen and I found a nice little hookah bar that we stopped at to look at the tobacco supplies and such. We ended up talking to danny who i would assume owns/runs the business. He told us all sorts of stories about his life in Athens, how the city has changed,the music scene and history behind everything. After about 30 minutes we headed towards a little record shop we saw while we pulled into town. We still had about 90 minutes til we needed to be at the venue so we set out to find a grocery store in the bus and ended up at a place called piggly wiggly. When we got out of the bus to head inside we ran into this Father who was with his daughter talking in the parking lot approached us to chit chat for a bit, asked us all about what we were doing and stuff. They seemed so interested in it, it kind of reminds you how lucky you are to be in this position. We went inside real quick and got some food. We arrived back at the venue and hung out for a little while. The bar was nice enough to give us a free 12 pack of PBR which was a plus to our night, we haven't gotten that lucky so far this tour. We set up and i had some problems with my amp that were quickly figured out. My tuner is semi broken now, which sucks. This was the perfect size of club for us. The kids in the front row were all screaming the lyrics to the songs! how cool? In GEORGIA of all places. This town started to remind me of being back in Eugene all the sudden. We finished started to pack our stuff up and did a quick promo picture in front of the bus. We made a friend that had offered to take us out to karaoke, but we were all exhausted and just wanted to get a good night of sleep. Shannon had offered us a nice place to stay in her living room. When we arrived everyone was asleep so we went straight to bed. Woke up around 1 pm to coffee(YES!) and an open shower. We all took rotations of use of the bathroom to clean up and stuff. Sat around for a bit to chit chat with the roommate i could assume, they were all EXTREMELY nice. We wandered down the street to a little vegan restaurant called The Gritz i believe and got veggie burgers and chips. Headed back to the house and gathered our things and took off.

We are on our way to MEMPHIS TENNESSEE right now, to hopefully meet people equally as cool as the people we have had the privilege to meet. HERE'S A TON OF PICTURES OF THE PAST LITTLE BIT

houston

We arrived to the venue at about 5pm and drove around looking for a liquor store for about 40 minutes. I have a bunch of pictures from our trip so far that i haven't been able to upload on here , there's talk about us starting some sort of flickr or photobucket so that you can see them all in a whole sense instead of little clips here and there on this blog.

After we returned to upload our gear we grabbed out the little $6 barbecue and grilled up a Delicious meal of veggie dogs/chicken burgers/turkey dogs. Super Happy Fun Land was incredible! It was this little collective in the heart of downtown from what i could assume. As our meal was finished cooking we could see these dark clouds coming towards us and kind of see lightening out in the distance. Trevor's brother Andy and some other relatives that i can't remember the names of came to hang out with us for the night and check out the show.

Kellen and I found a merch table inside and set up all of our stuff to hopefully make some gas money to get us to florida since we had a few days off coming up soon. We sat and watched the jam bands while burning/decorating some copies of our CDs until it was our turn to play. I saw james drinking some whiskey before hand and asked brett to grab some before we started playing so we could sip on it a little while we were on stage. Set up went smoothly and james opened doing a cover of 'Cemetary' by Say Anything on Electric. Towards the end of the song we headed to the stage and kellen and I have been working on doing some rad filler sound effects with the DL4. We played really well minus a few mistakes. We ended up selling some shirts and CDs (Score!) and broke down all of our gear to head out to Andy's house who so graciously offered to put us up in a sweet apartment outside of his house for the next few days. As we started to pull out we ran over our sweet little $6 Barbecue.

We arrived at Andy's house and walked to the back through the door into the apartment, there was a bedroom, a bathroom and a sweet living area with three couches with an upstairs office area. With a fridge full of beer and a nice little snack collection we were set! We've fully enjoyed all the nice home cooked meals, use of a shower and laundry machines. On Friday (july 25th) Brett landed us a RAD show at this place called Fitzgeralds downtown. By the time they had set it was okay for us to be down there in 45 minutes, none of our gear was packed up or loaded in the bus. We hurried and brushed our teeth, got dressed and got all our stuff (including our newest shirts) in and we were on our way!

This place was right down with a bunch of bars in a cool area from what i got to see. It was all ages with two different stages, one of which was in 'the lounge' area and the other ridiculously awesome stage was upstairs. They let you just walk around anywhere with you drinks if your 21 in these places, its nuts. We got everything loaded onto the stage and setup to get ready to do our sound check. Trevor found a local that we ended up putting on our guestlist which was cool because we haven't had a chance to use them before this night. Andy and his friends ended up coming out to take some rad pictures too. We hung around and watched most of the bands, played a really solid set. Now we're headed to New Orleans in the morning


Here's a small clip of us playing The SMOKE and the sounds.








-a

headed to houston

The drive to Arlington took us about 20 hours, if you could imagine what a drive that long does to people. We were all exhausted, hungry, and 3 days over due for a shower. We arrived at the venue at about 6pm (central time) as we had driven through two time zone changes since the previous day. Taking turns in the bathroom to wash up a little made it a little better. Headed to subway to get some food then back to have something called a 'band meeting' with the sound guy. We were playing some sort of hardcore festival, being the only pop band we could naturally assume our crowd would be minimal.

Kellen and I watched the first band Jubilee do their sound check. Their drummer (tommy) was incredible. One of the best I have seen in my entire life now that i'm thinking about it. They played a nice mix of screamo with some really pretty soft stuff. After they played we went outside and talked with them for a while, it was so refreshing to see people in texas of all places having very similar views as us. Their bassist Justin offered us a nice place to crash for the night after we played. Each night the set is sounding tighter, and the chemistry is coming out on stage. This is the first time i've really felt like a band, like there's some kind of bond with all of us keeping us striving for the same goal. After the show we all went back to Justin's apartment took showers, drank lots of ice water, and enjoyed the air conditioning. When we woke up he took us all into Fort Worth to eat at this amazing vegan restaurant called The Shiner Diner. Then we were back on the road headed to austin for the night.

We had no show to play, so we split up into two groups. James, Brett and Trevor decided to go to the bars and experience the night life the 6th street in austin had to offer. So Kellen and I decided to head out and walk around the town and get some food. They had a Pita Pit right near where we parked. Totally reminded me of being home and how i miss everything that beautiful oregon has to offer. We continued on to a starbucks on the corner of lavaca and 4th st i believe. austin has the same vibe you get when you're walking down the streets of Portland. Immediately we all knew we were going to love it.

We grabbed a guitar and kellen played some Bearcub songs while i sat on the steps near this fountain in the heart of downtown. We met people as they passed by and stopped to talk for a few seconds. Even got money from one of them who came with what i could assume was his lady. They were so nice. Its encouraging to have that kind of support from just random people that want to help out. Hunger had started to get to us so we set out on foot to find a grocery store. We headed straight down Lavaca St for blocks until we saw a Valet attendant who pointed us in the direction of a place called Whole Foods. We got inside and immediately were blown away, this place was incredible. A lot like Market of Choice (for anyone from oregon who will know what that is) extremely organic foods and products everywhere. We rushed to the water section and each grabbed one then started to wander around to find what we would soon feast on. They had Rogue! We were excited to see something from our little state all the way down here in the middle of the country. We stepped out to the patio and started eating grapes, hummus with crackers, a freshly baked loaf of bread and veggie sticks. This was the best we had eaten all tour.

We headed back to the bus to meet up with the guys and headed to stay with a guy named dylan. He lived in the student apartments and there was literally a million. We got inside and unloaded our bags. He lived in this huge four bedroom apartment all by himself for the summer so it was nice to kind of have some space. Within the first five minutes brett had managed to unlock one of the extra bedrooms with credit card! it was the funniest thing. We crashed then woke up in the morning feeling refreshed. He bought us some really good texas beer called Shiner before we left for the show that night.

We were downtown again on the corners of 8th and red river road at head hunters. I played some guitar outside as the other band walked over and started to chit chat with us a little. They were called 10-4 Elenor from Colorado. We talked for a bit and they stayed at this girl liz's house who had come to the show to sell merch for them, offered to sell our merch that night too. She also offered to put us up for the night. We played the best we've played all tour! It was incredible, i feel each night it will just get better too. We drank some at her house after the show then headed out for the day to go barbecue at the Barton Springs.

We got there and saw a van and trailer parked near us as we set up our stuff to cook. They had just gone swimming were headed to San Antonio. They asked our name and james told them, then we asked who they were and they said 'Fear Before'. At first i didn't think much of it then said 'the march of flames?!' They were really nice guys and hung out for a little with us. Naturally they dug the cool bus setup. They asked for kellen's number and were going to try and get us on the show that night with them if the promoter was ok with the idea. We ate a huge meal of veggie dogs, boca burgers, chicken burgers, and turkey dogs.

Now we were back down at the bars, James and i walked around to each bar on 6th street to see if any bills had open spots. There was talk that we could get on a metal show at Head Hunter's again. We all hung out inside this place called The Side Bar on 8th street (me being 20 made it feel kind of cool hah) watched some Cash Cab and played a little game of cricket. Trevor, Kellen and I decided to head down to Veggie Heaven to get something to eat. This place was incredible, an all vegan restaurant that every band we ran into had ranted about. We placed our order and literally 2 minutes later our food was on our table. IT WAS INCREDIBLE.

We headed back downtown after no luck with shows we got some PBR and headed to the girls house that had offered to put us up for the night. we all drank A LOT, passed out. got up and showered then headed out to Houston. Which is where i am right now, on the bus we are about half way i would assume.

-a

texas

So after hours of working on the bus to get this part to work the shop ended up exchanging the working one for the defective one, so we were finally ready to head out from Tucson. Brent had taken care of us well while we were there and we had some good times already but we still have a long journey ahead of us.

The power steering ended up working out really well, no leak. Although the steering wheel does sit a little lopsided now hah. With the time we took to get this fixed it made it so we weren't able to head to Roswell and decided to just goes all the way from Tucson to Arlington, Texas over night.

We headed out after fueling up and getting some food and such. The open road was so nice after being stuck in that driveway for so long. The night was actually a really comfortable temperature making it that much more bearable. A few hours down the road we decided to stop at a truck stop to get some snacks and stuff. After wasting sometime inside we headed back out to the bus and james went to start it and who would have guessed it did not want to turn over. Again we were stuck, this time in the middle of no where on the 10. We decided not to sweat it too much and just give it some time and perhaps it was the head from the engine preventing it for starting.

While i was outside these army guys came walking by and one of them said "Does it do this often?" and i replied "Only when we're driving it long distances recently." They really liked the cool bus and came over to talk to us for a bit. We told them we were a band from San Diego on tour and they were stoked on it, and ended up buying one of our CDs for $5. We sat for a bit longer waiting for the engine to cool. They offered to pay james $10 to play them a song then in the parking lot of this gas station. We all piled out of the bus to watch james play this song for them and they loved it. They then offered him another $10 to play one more song, desert (off of the live at swing state cd). Afterwards they asked to take pictures with us (As you can see above) i also have a clip of desert posted below. It was really surprising, this whole tour we have just met the nicest people possible.

Finally, Trevor got the bus running and we were on our way. Since the drive was going to take us around 20 hours we decided to split the shifts up equally in three hour intervals so that no one was stuck driving the whole thing or anything like that. I took the 1:30 shift driving from east new mexico through el paso, Texas. Towards the end of my we got a boarder control check point. Awesome, right? We pull up to the stop sign and i roll the window down to talk to them. They ask all sorts of questions about where we're from, what we're doing, where we're going, what kind of music we play, etc. They end up asking me to pull over to the side and having us all get out of the bus. Of course they ask if we have any drugs or weapons, which we don't obviously. Then they bring in the drug dog to search our bus, check Trevor's pockets and ask me why my eyes are so dilated. Implying I was on drugs or something, really funny and scary at the same time. We end up getting let go and Trevor takes over at about 5 AM to continue on our drive.

A few hours later i woke up to see where we were and go to the front of the bus and its raining, the most beautiful sunrise i have ever seen in my life. There was a lightening storm in the distance and this red sun was radiating through the clouds. It was surreal. I decided to stay awake and talk to Trevor for a bit about how incredible that exact moment was. For the first time on this tour it was actually cold. Now here we are about an hour away from Arlington to play at Dreamworld tonight, and no idea what to expect next.

alex