Chance that Morningbell drives BACK to Atlanta a mere 5 days after leaving to see Wilco in concert - 100%

Chance that it would rain (according to weather.com) - 80%

Chance that it did rain - 100%

Chance that we’d end up parking next to Jake (who left Gainesville 2.5 hours before us) - 2%

Reality that we’d end up parking next to Jake - 100%

Chance that we were pleasantly surprised/amused - 100%

Chance that the opening act “Low” would suck - 60%

Reality that the opening act “Low” was boring and depressing and actually caused the rain to start falling harder - 100%

Chance that Wilco would rock - 100%

Chance that the crowd would be noisy and distracting from the show - 75%

Reality that the crowd would be noisy and distracting - 100%

Chance that Eric would yell at at least 2 groups of people talking - 100%

Reality that Eric would yell at at least 2 groups of people talking - 100%

Chance that the mix would suck - 30%

Reality that the mix would suck - 100%

Currently listening : Yankee Hotel Foxtrot By Wilco Release date: By 23 April, 2002

We’d like to thank Evan Garfield for filling in on the skins for a few of our summer shows until we find a permanent replacement for Jake.

It’s weird. It feels like we broke up with jake. We still want to play with him, and are secretly hoping he’ll come back to us, but he won’t. Why won’t he?!

If anyone is interested in taking out the rest of the Umoja Orchestra, perhaps we could have Evan on full time.

Seriously, though. don’t try to take out the Umoja Orchestra. there are like 45 of those fuckers, and they all carry knives.

Jake in “The Cave” - Chapel Hill, NC

High security merry-go-round in Charlottesville, VA

Thomas Jefferson’s architecture - UVA - Charlottesville, VA

Pre Show at the Starr Hill Tavern - Charlottesville, VA

Gadget Man - Washington, DC

Soon…

In a New York Minute - NYC - Empire State Building

Tourists!

What a ’stache! - New Hope, PA

Another tour necessity

John and Peter’s - New Hope, PA

Arlington, VA

Subway of the Future - Washington, DC

Busted! - location self evident

After Party at the Lincoln Memorial

Stacie and Olivia

It looked bigger in real life

Awesome

Those crazy liberal kids

Conchita! She’s been standing here since 1981 (her sign says she’s been there 24/7)

The law firm of kick and ass.

here’s the link to stacie’s alternate tour blog www.myspace.com/staciethrushman

Day 9
New York City to New Hope, PA

We left Travis in the city last nite. We did it on purpose, though. Both cars, once loaded up, were surely to not park upon the NYC streets twice in the same night. So, Stacie, Jake, and I left for the hotel, while Travis stayed with the Oh No group to collect our money.

The place had absoutely no one in charge when it came to the show, so Travis had to keep checking in to make sure we got paid. Evidently, each time he went back, it looked less and less likely that we’d get anything at all, but we ended up getting paid well. (think I already wrote about this).

So, basically, we had to go into the city from Newark to get Travis. I’ve never slept so comfortably in a hotel as I did the previous night. After a hotel shuttle and a train ride to the city, we arrived with about an hour and a half to “sight-see.” By the time Travis made it into town (his subway got stuck), we had about 20 minutes until we had to leave back for Newark. We took our one touristy photo under the Empire State Building, grabbed a slice of not-so authentic NYC pizza, and headed back to Penn Station. Upon arrival, we realized that the next train didn’t leave for almost an hour!! It seemed like we’d never get out of this damn city.

Finally, the train was departing, and we all ran for the gate. I realized that I lost my ticket somehow and was freaking out. I miraculously ended up finding it by tracing my steps back from the gate to where we were sitting. It was right there laying on the ground.

On to Pennsylvania. Today was by far the nicest drive we’ve made yet. Parts of New Jersey are actually quite scenic, and the portion just before we got to PA near the Delaware river was just beautiful.

New Hope is a little art community right on the PA side of the Delaware that was extremely charming. It looked like St. Augustine or Key West, but without all the crap T shirt shops and dildo stores. The venue was this tiny little place with an extremely low roof (what’s up wtih this damn theme?). It had a huge wooden door that rolled away to let people in the venue side, which was extremely intimate. The stage was situated in such a way that tables and benches surrounded it and there was very little standing room. It was almost like a dinner show. They had a bunch of old flyers of obscure folky acts that had played there between 1988 and 1992, but nothing after that. The most notable names were Louden Wainwright and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, but other than that, no one has heard of these people.

The whole show was my favorite so far, we played well, the room was full and the crowd responded really well. We couldnt’ use our strobes b/c one of the bartenders was epileptic. That was a first for us. I’m glad someone told us before it was too late.

We played with an old college friend of mine (Mike Wexler) and his band “Mike Pfeiffer and the Associates.” They were really good, but played for 3 solid hours after us!!! My god, what a marathon set. It was a really all around good night. Very laid back town/venue, responsive crowd, just what we needed after NYC. We got some PA native Yuengling, which was even more delicious than usual.

After the show, our caravan split 3 different ways, with Stacie and I going to Wexler’s house about 35 minutes away. We didn’t go to bed until 4:30 and his damn cat was the craziest, most annoying thing in the world. It wouldn’t let us sleep. If the door was closed, it would claw and scratch at it until I opened it, but then when it came in, it would mess with our clothes on the ground or sit on top of us and bite us.

Day 10
New Hope, PA to Arlington, VA

Decent drive into DC. We headed straight for Arlington, as we were planning on spending Monday in DC.

The venue was in a newly re-developed area of Arlington called Clarendon. Evidently, this is where all the white people live. They had a whole foods and a mac store and a Cheesecake Factory, and everything else that wealthy white people love. It was very clean but had little original charm. The venue was a really cool place that has actually been around for years, long before the gentrification of the area. They had great beers on tap and a great overall vibe. We met up with another set of old friends (Mike Verille from my old band Monroe Lee, and two of our dad’s friends - Chris Malin [former co-worker] and Andrew Preziosi [who my dad went to high school with]).

The venue was really intimate and the show went over really well. Jake even tried his hand at the wise-cracks, since he could be heard w/o a microphone. Since this was the last night of the 6 show run, we all felt a little like celebrating and ended up drinking a bit too much. Stacie and I woke up with terrible hangovers (which I think I still have 2 days later).

Day 11
Exploring Washington DC

A well deserved day off, but it was hardly a rest. We took the train from Arlington to DC to spend the day walking around. The DC subway system is amazingly clean. I think one could sum the whole transit system up by noting that the subway cars are carpeted. This takes some serious gall. We saw the Watergate building, the memorials, white house, capital, supreme court, supreme food court, etc etc. It was a mega-day of photo ops. Walking many miles on a hot day from noon till 5:30 while being very hungover is not fun in any way, but I’m glad we did it.

This day in the city was a very different experience than Thursday. We were directly interwtined with the true nature of DC. You could taste the politics in the air. Also, the central part of town is like a police state complete with cops, soldiers, barricades, fences, and security checkpoints everywhere. Jake accidentally raised the terror alert to Chartreuse by putting our camera bag down on the ground for a second while he took a picture of us in front of the Supreme Court. The two cops out front quickly approached and yelled at him I mean, I guess that’s what you want in an anti-terror police force, but it was still a bit weird. Also, a side gate to the white house was opening to let a car out, and all these armored guards came out to watch it as it closed. I was fairly certain they wouldn’t find it funny if I yelled “NOW” when the gate opened. In fact, I was fairly certain they would shoot me.

I guess they get constant, legitimate security threats (it is the Capital), so they have to be a bunch of hard asses all the time. Our friend Mike works in the building right next to the White House and he was telling us a story about how a plastic CVS bag blew onto the White House lawn one day and the police had the bomb robot out to investigate it. When you think bomb robot, you probably think of a high-tech remote control gadget that can detect bombs in some sophisticated manner. Wrong. He told us it rolled up to the bag and just started poking it repeatedly with a long metal rod. Then, it picked the bag up and dropped it a few times. Pretty brilliant.

Evidently Bono was in our friend Mike’s office building today also. We all envisioned him walking around the halls going “ooo oooooh ahhhh haaaaa” (think vocal ad-lib at the end of One) all day long.

Stacie spent the day with her friend Olivia and we all met up around 6:30 at an Irish Pub in Chinatown (!) to eat and play trivia with her parents, Mike and Sam (friend from Tally). Our team was unstoppable. Except for when we had to stop so we could leave town.

We decided to stay south of Richmond, VA tonight so as to reduce future driving days (Richmond is 160 miles south of DC), but the drive was a real pain in the ass and we didnt’ get into the hotel until about 1:30. Exhaustion has clearly set in, mostly b/c of the drinking and long walk around town. It’s very nice to have a few days off in a row.

Day 6
Charlottesville to Norfolk

Further proof that I have an innate ability to look at a map and think that a place looks cool based on its cartography alone, but then realize that in real life it is a piece of crap.

If Charlottesville was the infra-red end of Virginia living, then Norfolk, would certainly be bathed in ultra-violet frequencies. Keep in mind, I am already saying this even though we have just arrived. As I sit and type this, however, we are in a cool independent coffee shop using their free internet and talking to their baristas about record stores and what not.

So, Norfolk is first and foremost a port town. It is second and secondmost a Navy town. That’s all you need to know right there. It is gristled. It has endured the tests of time. And it has emerged, apparrently, worse for the wear.

We’re not trying to sweat it though, the show must go on. We headed out from the womb-like coffee shop and went to downtown Norfolk. It looked kinda like a little big city downtown, except there was a battleship parked at the end of the street we stopped on. The record store was cool i guess (what exactly makes a record store cool?). The dude who worked there was nice too (gave us free bottled water) but I always hate having to pretend to know some bullshit random bands like “Disco Teeth” or “Blue Steve Contraption” or “The Drapes.”

This town is just creepy!

On to the venue. Again, we’re playing in a restaurant/venue for the 2nd night in a row. The good thing is that they hooked us up with food and wine. The bad thing is that we were playing in a restaurant/venue. I mean, you gotta respect anyone who’s trying to carve a new market for quality live shows and managing to keep their doors open by alternate sources of income (a swanky italian restaurant), but you never look cool playing in a swanky Italian restaurant. They did have a bunch of good beers, which we got hooked up with too. Evidently, bands on the road don’t pay for stuff. I can dig that.

Just as we were ready to leave, Stacie and I were propositioned by a guy at the bar. For more details, read her alternate tour blog (you’ll have to friend her to read it).

Have I mentioned that this town is creepy?

Random thought : The necessities of being on tour are the same necessities of being a baby : Eating, sleeping, playing, and shitting. They are the only 4 things you ever think about.

We got a hotel out by the naval base. When I booked it, they said it was a Comfort Inn. When we pulled up, we noticed that it had been changed to a Quality Inn. This led to the debate over which was better, Comfort or Quality. We decided that Quality encompassed Comfort, so the change must be better. Wrong.

The hotel was pretty nasty. Well, it wasn’t dirty per se, it was just CREEPY. Have I mentioned that this town is creepy? I’m sure Stacie’s alternate tour blog will mock my discomfort in the creepy hotel, but whatever. The whole room smelled like some caustic orange disinfectant spray.

Can’t wait to get out of this place.

Day 7
Norfolk to DC

Thank god we can get the F’ out of Norfolk. Boring drive to DC. Boring, until we made one last turn and saw a mini cardboard cutout of Washington DC. There was the capital, the monuments, etc. (it wasn’t a cardboard cutout. Please take a moment to observe my not-so-subtle use of figurative language to describe seeing DC for the first time from a distance).

Driving into town was a spindly random mix of curves and turns that drove us thru a big park/nature area bordering the city. We drove past the Watergate and the monuments, it was pretty cool.

We’re staying with Stacie’s friend, Olivia, who lives in a sweet apartment in what she described with ire as the “hipster neighborhood.” We met our friend Steve’s old friend Sam for dinner at a sweet little Greek hole in the wall. Delicious!! Vegetarian Gyros w/ meat substitue?? AMAZING!!

Load in time. The venue is up a treacherous flight of stairs. Thankfully, we shared gear with the last band (Olivia’s side-project, who was flippin sweet), so the transitions were quite easy.

Evidently, one of Olivia’s bandmates is friends with all these bike couriers, who are all crazy drunk loud assholes. They seemed to have their own bizarre sub-culture cult and they were heckling us the whole time. I felt like we gave it back to them just enough to not get our asses kicked. Also, they all had weird names. One dude was called Gadget Man and he was covered entirely with random metal shit (photo to follow soon).

I made the faux pas of mentioning how good it was to be out of the south and above the Mason-Dixon line. Apparently, this isn’t true, and the entire crowd made me aware of this immediately. I got them back, though, by telling them to make sure they write their congressman about the show (DC doesn’t get congressmen).

DC was a real experienc.e The area we were in seemed to have all these great quiet neighborhoods right off of major thoroughfares. It was really cool.

One last thing. I noticed all the planes were landing at the DC airport (which is right next to the Pentagon for some reason) in a really bizarre pattern. Turns out all planes now have to follow this erratic procedure as part of FAA regulations. This way, the F-16s in the area will know which planes are piloted by terrorists (they clearly won’t either know or be able to perform these maneuvers). Not sure if it will really work, but hey, who knows.

Day 8
DC to New York City

Mindfuck! 7 hour drive from DC to NY. It’s only 220 miles. 7 hours!~!!! The traffic was horrendous. We did get to cross the Delaware River, though. We’re having an oil painting commissioned of Morningbell crossing the Delaware for our next record. Once we arrived, we had to fight our way thru the cluster fuck that was the entrance to the holland tunnel. One thru, we had to hustle and bustle our way thru the NYC streets. It’s amazing how fast you switch from your usual polite driver to a total horn honking, middle finger flaunting asshole. Not to mention that we had a caravan of 2 cars that had to stay together. One minor stroke of luck came when the venue we were playing at had a huge construction dumpster right out front, blocking the entire right lane of traffic for us. We simply pulled up, unloaded, and weren’t in anyone’s way.

Parking. How do you park 2 cars in New York City? Well, it takes about an hour. After a literal hour of driving around the blocks surrounding the bar, I managed to find two sweet spots (one a block away, one 5 blocks away). Yes, I parked both cars. Jake tried valliantly for about 35 minutes, but gave up so he could help set up his kit.

This club had a bar on the ground floor and put the bands downstairs. So, it was the opposite of last nite, however, it had an even more treacherous flight of stairs.

We met up with the Oh No group and ate at the Thai restaurant next door. It was quite delicious. Then, it was time to set up and play. Please note that these last few senteces describing our nite have periods and spaces between them. The events that transpired, however had absolutely no pauses in between. It was a first class whilrwind.

The set was loud and sweaty, and the room was full. It was actually excatly what any band could hope for in a NYC show. Also, about 15-25 GVL friends have moved up here in the last month or so, so we brought a big crowd for ourselves. Additionally, Steve’s old roomate Beau actually drove frcm Connecticut and our Dad and cousin Johnny actually FLEW up!!!! The club owner was impressed, and the pay was more than triple what we’ve been getting all the other nights.

As with any big city experience, we met a whole cast of insane characters.
1. Random bar worker who appeared out of a secret door that our gear was blocking as we were actively moving it around. Upon seeing him, we said, hey man, we’ll get this out of your way in just a minute. His reply “How bout in like 10 seconds.”
2. The sound guy looked exactly like Izzy Straddlin (the other guitarrist in Guns ‘n’ Roses). It’s good to see Izzy still in the music biz. He was actually really nice.
3. Other band’s singer. “I was singing Sade at “trendy club name” when I saw “trendy girl’s name” making out with “trendy guy’s name” and I got so mad.” I dont’ know what that means or how it translates online, but it sounded like the biggest pile of crap i’ve ever heard. He also was aggressively protecting his amp whenever we’d walk anywhere near it.
4. Random wasted bum who aptly pointed out that there were 5 of us standing outside together and then asked for change. What happened to playing the harmonica?

Seriously, my god. This city is too much. I don’t know how people can fall in love with it. I mean, it wasn’t horrific, but it was really stressful. Also, we were working, so there was no leisure to be had. The hotel we’re staying at is next to the Newark Airport. Evidently, Newark smells like crap.

The train rolls on.

by Paul Zimmerman
First Coast News

Gainesville’s psychedelic pop masters, Morningbell, have returned yet again. This time the band has done something really cool for their third album, Through the Belly of the Sea; they’ve gone interactive! Yes, it’s true…you are now part of the album. Scary thought as that may be it actually makes Through the Belly of the Sea a lot of fun.

What Morningbell have done is taken their pop and made it so that you can partake in the fun by playing a game as you listen to the album. Imagine taking all those Choose Your Own Adventure books you read as a kid and putting them to music and you have the gist of what Through the Belly of the Sea is like. You determine the order of the album by choosing your path throughout the liner notes. The result is a completely customized listening experience that probably sounds like it would be a jumbled mess but thankfully it is not. The album works both as a Choose Your Own Adventure book or a stand alone album, so even if you feel like being un-motivated and un-interactive you can still enjoy Through the Belly of the Sea.

Interactivity aside, the album is an enjoyable listen. It’s a bit different than their past efforts in that they seemed to have toned down some of the quirkiness that made this band so special. Now, that’s not to say that this album is not good because it is good, it’s just more mature, more developed, and far mellower than I would have ever expected. Don’t let this toning down fool you though. The band is still most definitely psychedelic. In fact so much of Through the Belly of the Sea sounds like Pink Floyd on hallucinogens it’s almost illegal. It’s trippy goodness that’s as adventurous as the Flaming Lips-ish and as spacey as NASA.

From the opener, “The Speed of God,” to the closing notes of “Epilogue,” Through the Belly of the Sea is a tale of sea faring fun and psychedelic wispiness. It’s well thought out, well played, and multicolored pop that gives Of Montreal a run for their money. Easily one of Florida’s best kept secrets, Morningbell quietly continues to get better and better. Whether it’s rock n’ roll, indie pop sea shanties, or psychedelic pop, Morningbell rise up to the challenge and do so with stellar results. Through the Belly of the Sea is an interactive treat that’s fun to listen to and fun to partake in. Let’s hope that our intrepid adventures undersea continue with album number four!

Day 4
Raleigh to Charlottesville

Today is a day off. We’re actually kinda bummed that it’s off, because we’re ready to play again. It’s weird, I figured after 3 straight days of playing shows, we’d want a day off, but it really hasn’t been bad. Woke up for some of Lamar’s banana pancakes and then hit the road for Virginia. Almost out of the south.

Pulled into Charlottesville, which is neighbored by the Blue Ridge Mountains. We checked out their downtown night spot, which was a big outdoor mall. It seemed very WASPy all over the place. We had some Indian food that promised to be delish, but ended up being just OK. Travis managed to spill an entire bowl of steaming hot sauce all over his legs. I thought we were going to get into a Good Will Hunting-esque fight with this future business leader of America who wouldn’t put his cigar out at the restaurant. Who smokes a cigar at a restaurant?

Evidently, the Rutgers baseball team is staying at our hotel. They lost their tournament yesterday. There were a bunch of sad, drunk dudes at the pool last nite. Maybe they were just sad because they go to Rutgers.

Day 5
Charlottesville
Random thoughts: The halls in our hotel smell like a big dump. I try to judge a town’s populace by who is at it’s Panera at 12:45.

Today, we went to Panera, Best Buy and Old Navy. They are 3 historic mid-Virginia Jeffersonian boutiques. In all fairness, I needed a cable for my camera and a belt. Panera was for cheap, corporate, quality assured bagels.

We spent the afternoon on the historic campus of UVA. We saw the quad and the rotunda and any other stereotypical college common area descriptor word place. Actually, we saw the dorm where Edgar Allen Poe lived in, which was kinda cool. There were also a few very awesome, small, traditional Virginian gardens around the area.

Load in time. Turns out they’re feeding us! We get a special band menu, from which we can each select an entree and a beverage. The place had their own home-brews too, which weren’t that bad. I somehow ordered a plank of nachos. There were 8 billion nachos and I ate them all.

The upstairs of the venue is like Charlottesville’s Common Grounds. They get all the big acts.

We played downstairs in the restaurant/bar portion of the venue.

The first act was real mellow and quiet. Then, we were really loud. Loud. But it was still good. Tonight was probably the best put together set so far. After “Faster” (first song), the manager yelled, “That song was like a movie!” So, I guess we got that going for us.

Travis noted that someone wrote “Titties=Freedom” on the bathroom wall and astutely attributed the quote to Thomas Jefferson.

Speaking of titties, we stopped off at Dick Tiddy’s (see Blog 1) for some healthy groceries and went back to the hotel.

One final score, they didn’t lock the hot tub room door.

Day 1 : Gainesvlile to Athens

We left town right on schedule and had a pleasant drive up to Athens. Evidently, Macon is the erotic massage capital of the USA. There were billboards for at least 6 different “friendly massage” parlours. Some advertised the fact that their staff was friendly and asian. Others, advertised that you could get your massage from an Asian, an American, or a Latin. Also, the pictures on all the billboards were of these Asian women with slightly orgasmic looking faces on them. I mean, how blatant can you be? There must be some sort of loophole in the Macon municipal statutes where these “parlours” can exist legally.

45 minutes later, we got back on the road and headed north to Athens.

Upon arrival, we walked to our fav Athens eatery, The Grit, and had some delish veg cuisine. Then, back to Tasty World for load in/set up. After getting all set up, I turned my amp on and played 2 notes to adjust the volume while Jake hit his snare lightly 2 times to tune it up. Immediately, the bartender came up to us and asked us to stop and wait till the sound guy got there. There wasn’t one other person in the bar besides us and him! Ridiculous!

The most remarkable thing happened during our stay in Georgia. I managed to break my theremin the night before our tour. Desparately trying to figure out how to get a replacement, I managed to track down the guy who built my original one. Lo and behold, he lives in Georgia!!! A few emails later, he offered to have a brand new one delivered to me at the venue in Athens. In fact, his own wife was the one who made the delivery, and she drove all the way from Atlanta. How about some generosity to kick off our tour!

The show went well and we got a veg-dog from JB, Athens famous Polish Sausage Man. He makes a special “come back sauce” to go on his dogs and it was pretty delish. He said it’s called “come back sauce” because it makes you come back for more. It was so damn spicy this time, though, we were worried that it might in fact come back later on. But it didn’t.

We spent the night with 3 of the guys from King of Prussia (the band we played with). This was our first experience crashing at another band’s place after a show. At first, we were a bit apprehensive, as they didn’t leave the venue till well after 2, but once we got there, their place was pretty kickass and very hospitable. It evidently was an old chapel that the owners bought and MOVED from somewhere else to this hill in the middle of a new development neighborhood. It was a cool place.

Day 2:
Athens to Chapel Hill
Air mattresses really don’t do much in the comfort department. I (Eric) managed to get the only couch since my back is so screwy. Poor Jake had the bare floor with only a sleeping bag. He ended up grabbing cushions off the band’s porch couch to sleep on. A hot shower and bagel later, we were on the road to Chapel Hill.

Just 10 miles out of Athens, we got stopped by the Georgia Highway Patrol for doing 60 in a 45. We didn’t see that the speed limit had changed. I can say that this was the only time in my life when I could identify with Sammy Hagar. Without more than a few yes sirs and other nervous pleasantries, the officer gave us a warning and sent us on our way. Generosity number 2!

After a second jaunt of 300+ miles, we arrived in Chapel Hill, a charming little college town area. We loaded into the venue (The Cave), which had a roof overhead height of 5.5 feet. The bar had all sorts of plaster and crap on the roof to make it look like it was really inside of a cave. Kinda cool. They also had a bunch of good local brews. It was a really intimate venue and the show was good fun. We also ate at an amazing mediterranean restaurant down the way.

So far, a common theme of this trip (and apparently of this country in general) is that you have to drive through alot of crap to get to anything worthwhile.

Another common theme is that each state has it’s own bizarre laws when it comes to alcohol. For example, North Carolina bars have to be registered as “private clubs” in order to sell alcohol. This requires all patrons to be members in order to gain access. However, every single bar is a private club, and everyone can become a member, thus kinda negating the whole privacy element. At the door, when you pay the cover, they have membership applications that you have to fill out unless you already have a membership card. Weird. Also, South Carolina has to serve alcohol from the mini single serve bottles at bars/clubs. Stupid redneck blue laws.

Later on in the evening, we were standing out on the sidewalk on the main drag and some dude came up to us and offered us 35 cents for a cigarette. The transaction went like this:

Dude: Can I offer you 35 cents for a cigarette that you may or may not smoke.

Us: Ummm.

Dude: Come on, that’s 150% of the market value of a single cigarette.

Jake: I have one, but the pack was 6.50

Dude: We’re in NORTH CAROLINA, there’s no way it could cost that much.

Jake: They’re organic.

Dude: Ok, how about 60 cents.

Jake: I’ll take 50.

Maybe it was funnier to be there. I wish I had the camera running.

We stayed with the guy we played with at his house in Carborro. His name was Vince and he was the 3rd blessing of generosity on the tour. He let us use his master bedroom and king size bed, cooked us breakfast, and was all around great company. It’s really amazing how we keep finding these great people along our route.

Day 3
Chapel Hill to Raleigh

After a great breakfast, we left Chapel Hill for a very brief drive to Raleigh. We stopped off at Stacie’s cousin Shannon’s place and laid low for a while. Then, it was on to Jake’s friend Lamar’s place in Raleigh for dinner. We were going to cook, so we stopped off at the NC Grocery chain, Harris Teeter. For some reason, I decided to keep calling it Dick Tiddy (after the Inuit Jargon song). Lamar’s house was literally down the road from NC State, which was also really close to the downtown area and the venue. It had a great southern porch complete with rocking chairs (which is where I am sitting as I type this).

So, on to the venue. The Pour House was a bit of a dive, but they seemed to be the city’s major live music venue. They had all sorts of great shows coming thru there. The way they run their Sunday-Tuesday shows is by having the bands bring their own PA, doing their own sound, and doing all their own promotion. Sounds like a winner of a night, right? So, as the night went on, we realized that there was absolutely no one in downtown Raleigh on this Sunday night except for some bums. Whatever. We’re on tour, right? But still, I know I was a bit weirded out by the fact that we might play to no one.

Miraculously, a good amount of people came in, and it ended up being our best show yet. We sold a crap load of merch and the bar hooked us up with free beer from their 30 taps all night long. Youngs Double Chocolate Stout on draft??? Amazing.

The place had this grizzled sound guy who was breaking down the house gear when we got there. He was a bit gruff, but as he hung out and had a few beers, he became the funniest, nicest guy. He was even singing backing vocals for Vince’s band (who went on before us) at the top of his lungs from the back bar.

Good times.

More to come in 3 days.

Currently reading : Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas By Chuck Klosterman Release date: By 23 August, 2006

Hey!

We’re playing tonight at The Cave in Chapel Hill, NC!

http://www.caverntavern.com/

Follow the link and click on “Cave TV” on the right hand side of the screen.  We’ll be playing at 8:30pm, so watch us.  Or else.

-Eric

Currently listening : On the 6 By Jennifer Lopez Release date: By 01 June, 1999