The Middle East, America

The tour van has now been coined “One Armed Scissor” from “Moby Dick or, the whale” due to its newly malfunctioning windshield wipers. One is tied down with the string from Gregg’s hoodie, leaving one wiper to clear our way across the stormy Eastern seaboard. (Editor’s note: weather.com predicts rain for every tour date, in keeping with our trend dating back to every out of town show being riddled by rain.)

We made an all night drive to get to Pittsburgh and have a day to lounge around the South side shops. West Virginia met all expectations and shocked me out of even my Mississippi standards of hoosier excellence. Ohio provided one of the most beautiful sunrises I’ve ever experienced. It looked like smoke-filled wreckage painted by a Van Gogh acolyte, with a plane’s path marked by a trailing cloud (see photos).

We are more ready for this tour than ever. We’ve been playing really well, finally hitting our stride with Nate behind the kit and getting some out-of-town experience together so that we are finally comfortable improvising on stage again and know that we will give a strong performance every time out. This will be our first major-market jaunt, hitting up NYC, Philadelphia, DC, Pittsburgh, etc where it is harder to break through, but, honestly, more of a receptive market for our sound. We’ve been warned how hard the East coast can be on new bands, but have no doubt that we can expect good crowds and better shows. Keep up. We’ll add to it as we go…

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