a day off, not a day on aka Martin Luther King Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger

we're gonna kick off this blog entry with a game of "What is it?". here's how you play.....
guess what this is:


if you guessed "Tim's gross slobber", you're right. congratulations!


on with the show.

April 19th, 2011 found us with a day off. we drove our van halfway across new york, from jamestown to ithaca to cut the driving in half for the next show. ithaca is a magic place, full of adventure. let me tell you about it....


the first thing we did upon entering ithaca was find the nearest record shop so zac could get his fix from the old five-finger-discount-bin (he's a kleptominerac) and lay off our stuff for a change. we have to stop by a place of business every couple of days so he can get it out of his system, otherwise we just end up with a bunch of pairs of bryant's underpants missing, or Tim's mustache trimmer, which you can tell zac stole a long time ago.


this is what it looks like when zac's trying to decide whether or not to steal. devils on one side, angels on the other. zac always chooses devils.


after chowing down on some phoney baloney mexican food we settled into this sweet hotel room and watched that new Sherlock Holmes movie until we fell asleep. it was decent, but he should have said "elementary my dear watson" more.


the next day we woke up early and headed for our 4:20 show in CT. BUT, the stoners dropped the ball and we found out halfway there that the show was canceled. luckily we found out about another show we could jump and headed for danbury, CT. the first thing we did there was get in a staring contest with this dude. he lost.

oh geez, i just realized it's 2:30am and we need to get up early, so here's a bunch of pictures. make up your own captions. the best entry gets a free husband&wife tour poster. submissions can be mailed to hell@xrarecords.com, subject "caption contest":







A, B, C ya!

i need attention, 24 hours a day

first off, check this out!


this is husband&wife doin' it's thing. thanks to travis for the sweet photo.

on with the show...

we woke up yesterday in Indiana, PA, which was Jimmy Stewart's hometown. We stayed with the sweetest imaginable babes, who were very kind to us and made us breakfast and everything. it was a great sendoff, and we can't wait to get back there.


after we left their place, we had a little time to kill, so we got started right away on building this quick barn. Zac drew up the blueprints on this Apple Macbook computer, i documented the whole process with photos, and bryant got cracking on the actual construction work. Tim was going to help, but it took him like 5 hours just to write one email.

after the barn was done, we headed for Jamestown, NY, Lucille Ball's hometown. We got there just in time to check out Townhouse Records and grab some Vitameatavegamin at the Labyrinth before the show started. here's what that show looked like:

that's us loading equipment in.

bryant was getting really jealous of zac and his concentraton-blackmagick loading technique, so he decided to give it a try. he concentrated really hard, and groaned and strained and held his eyes shut as tight as he could, but none of his gear budged. however, this DID happen..............

The Hoosiers of Pennsylvania

Day 3, fool. We left Indiana and 7 hours later, we were in.....Indiana. Indiana, PA, that is. Being the long drive that is was, one has ample time to get done what one needed to do, such as this:



.....and this:



.....and this:



All that doin' works up an appetite. So we went to Cici's for lunch. You should have Cici'n the crap I took that night.

We also found the time to film our scene for Heavy Metal Parking Lot 2011. Here are Bryant and Zac talking about why Rust in Peace is the most supreme thrash album of all time- a "Thrashterpiece", if you will:



We finally arrive to Indiana, PA. Shortly after the second band started, the neighbors threatened to call the cops if the noise didn't cease immediately. These kids brought the ruckus. Not what I expected for a Body Count cover band:



They were only able to make it through Evil Dick, Smoked Pork and Bowels of the Devil before the show was shut down. Luckily, a few Good Samaritans offered their basement and we were able to get the show moved at the last minute.



Basement shows rule. Through the kindness of strangers a potentially disappointing night turned out to be a success and a total blast!

Space Race

i know you think this looks like fun, but it's not. it's dangerous. and it's serious.

back in the saddle....

here we go again!
i am super exhausted...the main reason is because we're having fun, and we'll sleep when we're dead, but you know how it goes.
we're two days into the tour, and it's been a total blast so far with lots of belly-pressing with buddies, and no time to rest. i'm hanging here at T-Rex with some of our boys from Support The Troopz (be warned...NSFW, unless you work in a strip club, or a tattoo parlor) and i'm going to fall asleep here real soon...let's make this quick!


Team Ethic, our friends in Ypsilanti (or if you're Zae, "Ipzillanties"), who put on a great show for us at Woodruff's. We met some way-cool people at this show!


Zae got tired of packing his stuff up in the van night after night, so he came up with a new system where he uses magic, rather than brute force, to load and unload his stuff. basically, what he does is concentrate real hard, invoking the powers of baphomet - the goat of mendes - making his drums disappear into thin air, one-by-one. then, at the next show he just does the same in reverse to conjure the drums back up, no big whoop. after this scene you're seeing here, he also did these dishes using concentration magic, just to be nice.


after the show we went back to aaron's place (our favorite haunt) after a brief detour to jimmy john's. we were all pretty tired, except for Zae, because he didn't use any energy to load equipment, so we all sat there while he played every eagle eye cherry song he knew on this acoustic guitar.


bryant couldn't stand it, so he got out his PJs, slammed his suitcase closed and said "tomorrow I'LL be gone!" before he stormed out and slept in the van. we never saw him again...

we got approximately 4 hours of sleep before we had to get up and drive to marion for the Spotted Cow Festival. we played at 1pm, but it was great nonetheless.


here's a ticked-off bryant trying to steal our merch after he stormed off the night before. we talked him down, and he agreed to finish the tour, but i think we're on thin ice...


this is what the festival looked like. KeRaAaZy!! these are our buddies from Years tearing it up.


we saw this. it's a space-rocket-racecar-time-machine, duh. we passed this dude on our way from marion to muncie for show #2 of the day. here's john glenn giving us a wave right before he lifted off and flew off into the sunset.


Zae is colorblind, so he thought Dan was pulling his leg when he told him the truth about the wall behind him here. things got real confusing...


Chad Serhal w/ She Does Is Magic live at VGR. they slayed, for real.


Derek "No Shirt" Miller, being irresponsible.

after that, my camera died, but ITFOW played after the Troopz and it was great. Long Live VILLAGE GREEN RECORDS!!! We'll see you tomorrow...........................................

Bitter butter will make your batter bitter

Lansing, as usual, was a total bro-down. We rolled into town early and got to hang with John K for a little bit while we got some internet work done and grabbed some grub. I had a glass of chocolate milk and a no-bake. The show, which i have an unfortunate lack of photos from, was really off the chain. It's always nice to play in Lansing, and this time was exceptionally fun. It felt like we were really on, and the response was phenomenal. Great folks out there in Lansing, we'll be back soon, f'sho!


Part of the reason i don't have many photos from the show is because i spent most of the evening hanging with these babes. They were pretty cool, i guess, though they were lacking in the personality department. They let me kiss all over them without saying a word or screaming though, which is always a nice change of pace out here on the road.


Tim and I woke up this morning to Zac and Bryant snore-fighting. It was awful. Zac was louder and more consistent, but Bryant was a little nastier and more aggressive. We listened to them go at it for about 30 minutes before we each straddled one of them and choked them out until they were dead. Now we don't have to listen to that god-awful snoring anymore.....


We all sort of forgot that today was bryant's birthday....So, we woke up to this sad/adorable scene and caught him putting a party together for himself. We agreed to go outside and wait for him to finish so it still seemed like a surprise. we humored him and lit a rolled up newspaper on fire and stuck it in a hostess cupcake and sang happy birthday. he pretty much just bawled his eyes out the whole time, but we tried....






this was the next thing we found after the "party".....we felt bad, but what can you do, you know?

Cold in the D

After lunch, Zac and Bryant showed up and we packed the van and headed for Ferndale. That's near Detroit. We played in an old Massage Parlour turned Pool Hall called "The Loving Touch". here's a recap:


There was a lot of driving yesterday, so i'm afraid the report is a little bare-bones this time around. here's Bryant, looking cute, and taking a nap in the van.


...and here's Zac doing the same. only, he's looking less cute, and more like a corpse.


Secret Twins were great. They helped us out with this show and showed us a good time.


and here's carjack....imagine dylan ettinger, plus dan deacon, plus jimi mann and you've kind of got a taste for what carjack was like. part crazy, part art, part party, part angry. definitely interesting. and as a side note, there were a lot of people making-out at this show.

on to lansing to hang with some buddies!