23/12/05 Limelight, Belfast
Wholly moly, it's Jan 3, 2006 and I've been informed that I totally forgot to write up this gig. The many perils of drinking every night over the christmas period can play frightfully with the synapses, and my diary keeping got trundled under the boozy weight. So, my memory of the gig is bound to be fitful, not helped by the fact that on the day we played I was in the throes of a pretty fierce cold, that had me worried I wouldn't be able to sing. Thankfully, some whiskey and a ton of pills got me through, and I think we did OK. We were absolutely shattered once we were finished playing and were pretty shocked at how much the three month break has eaten into our match fitness. The playing was definitely hairy in places, but somehow the more 'rocking out' tendencies we picked up touring the US this year seemed to pull us through. Playing Belfast is always tremendous fun anyhow and the good nature of the folks there were more than enough to carry us through. We had decided on pretty much playing no gigs in Ireland in 2005, but I'm glad we broke the rule to get up here.

So that wraps up our nuttiest year yet. Despite one member living on another continent, the band has never been so busy; 2 big US tours and the release over there of 'In Love With', very protracted sessions for the new album that saw us recording in Ireland, the US and France, and a whole heap of larks in between. Plus two of us got engaged! We reckon the pressure is on the The Boy Mark now!

Despite Joss moving to Japan in the latter half of 2006, it looks like shaping up to be an even crazier year. We'll finish and release the new record, and fling ourselves into more touring. Last year was definitely the most fun we've had so far so fingers crossed for the next one!

23/09/05 Beat Kitchen, Chicago IL
It's actually Tuesday the 27th, as I write this and it feels like this gig was a life time ago. A really fun night hanging out with loadsa pals and drinking fancy ales, courtesy of Dan Sullivan. Gig itself was sort of horrible courtesy of my amp blowing out in the first song and sounding horrific for the rest of it. Oh well. Discovered after the show that we may have been one of the last bands to record at Inner Ear with Don. Holy moley!
Mark and Joss were heading home on the Saturday, Mark had a 10 hour drive back to Canada on which he happily reported he broke the speed limit the whole way. Aer Lingus decided that this tour hasn't quite fleeced us enough and charged Joss a heap of money for excess baggage, despite him having the same amount of cases he travelled over with.

Rest of the weekend was spent eating great foods, hanging out with pals of the hairy and not so hairy variety and drinking chocolate stout into the wee small hours. At breakfast on Sunday morning Bob Weston happened to sit at the very next table and said that Shellac want us to play with them sometime soon, which is awesome. Our flight back to Dublin was awful though, 2 and a half hours of straight turbulence after take off. Bonus was turbulence was caused by insane tailwinds, which meant the flight was much shorter than usual. Been alseep ever since....

22/09/05 Kraftbrau, Kalamazoo MI
Amazing. If ever a band needs to play a show to pick up spirits and restore fun Kalamazoo is the place to do it. Since the idea of touring again was mooted Kalamazoo was the one place we wanted to make sure we got to, we had such an incredible time the last tour.
We weren't let down. The beer was just as good and we probably drank even more than last time. Actually, that may not be possible....
Playing was great fun too, more rocking out than ever, and we have never come off stage so disgustingly sweaty and smiley. Gerudo, who we played with in Detroit, were on the bill again and were superb, lotta Beefheart bits going on, always a good thing.
Kraftbrau is situated right beside some train tracks, so the rest of the evening was spent excitedly jumping up on chairs and waving at passing freight trains, they pass literally within 10 feet of the venue. At the end of the night Val, the promoter and bartender at Kraftbrau (amazing lady) filled up 2 'growlers' full o' booze and we headed back to her house to hang out with Maggie, her golden retriever, who has been added to the list of hairy pals. Maggie was insistent on shaking paws, all night long, and this morning. Favourite place to play in the US, this. Already can't wait to get back.

19/09/05 Mac's Bar, Lansing, 20/09/05 Lager House, Detroit and 21/09/05 Albion College, MI
Our great Michigan adventure concludes tonight in Kalamazoo, but I thought I ought to recap on the previous few days, been too lazy to keep up to date. So, Monday was great. Usually, they suck, and bands usually take it as the day off per week, but this was an exception. Nice wee venue, great promoter and a cool line up seemed to bring out the punters. Plus giant beers and free popcorn. I think we played well, I forget by now. The next days drive to Detroit was a torturous 2 hours. Not a place we came away with a great impression, very much a dying city it seems. The barman in Lager house was explaining how there are hardly any businesses left in the area and how the population has more than halved in the city. When we pulled in to town at 5pm we couldn't find a single store open. Gig was pretty dismal too, sadly, but we met some nice folk.
The next day we were playing in a college town called Albion, and had been warned it was a fairly tiny town, so we decided to spend the day in Ann Arbor, which is en route. And it ruled, I so wish we had a gig here again (we played here in 2002). It really is a gorgeous town, we spent the afternoon eating amazing food and spending far too much money in record shops and a Japanese toy shop. Barb got me a gorgeous t-shirt for me birthday. Ann Arbor then totally won us over by having A STORE WITH YOUNGS DOUBLE CHOCOLATE STOUT.......IN CANS!!!!!
Never been so pleased.
The gig last night then, in Albion, was great. Wee Coffee House in the heart of the college, with plenty of kids dancing around and having the fun. What was bizarre was the no booze rule, meaning that while we had a free bar it consisted of fancy coffees and teas. So while rocking I had a Mocha on my amp, and Mark had a Cranberry Blood Orange tea. Madness. Played a few oldie and slowey songs too. Each side of the stage area had a door leading into another room, so during "God Only Knows..." Mark and I walked out mid song, leaving a startled looking Joss playing away on stage by himself. Ah, you had to be there.
Joss has told me to add in a part about Donnys dog in DC. Milo is just about the best hairy pal on the planet, a photo shall be forthcoming. When we went out for burgers in DC, and he wasn't allowed to go he went straight to the window and looked so sad watching out. Milo also knows the best tricks ever, and according to Joss is conclusive proof that dogs are better than cats. This statement of fact is backed up by our friend Chris in Scotland (who plays on Corpo records) and his dog Bailey. Email chris @ sleekasounds.com for pictorial evidence.

18/09/05 Iota, Arlington VA
Iota is a really nice venue, just up the road from the Galaxy Hut, where I think we played about 3 years ago this week. Gig itself not up to much (headline band, The Billy Nayer Show, were amazingly nice), but we had a great weekend. We raced to DC late at night from Philly, got lost and rolled into our friend Donny's at about 3am, straight to bed with us. At 10am Donny roused us and we marched off to Inner Ear studios to record.
This place was something else, pretty much all the Dischord bands have recorded here, and its been home to all the Fugazi albums. Walking in and seeing all the record sleeves and photoes on the wall was fairly overwhelming. We're setting up gear and I borrow a guitar cab or two to try out. Get sickly excited when Fugazi written in red is spotted on the back of it. Sadly, the cab didn't really suit me and when Don Zientara, the house engineer, exclaimed that Guy Piccotto was going to be pissed I said his "amp wasn't warm enough sounding" I nearly had to run out of the building. In the end we ended up using a combination of gear belonging to The Delta 72, The Dismemberment Plan and Jawbox. The results, hopefully, sound amazing.

Don was wonderful, really funny man, everytime we screwed up a song he would always call the next attempt at it "take one", so whoever listens to the sessions is going to think we were totally on the money. Which, obviously, wasn't true. A combination of nerves and sorting out sounds meant it was a fast race to the post to get the 6 songs recorded in time, and we just about made it. Most of it will be fine, but we'll need to listen to the recordings when we get home to make sure they're all cool. All told, an amazing day, and it was great to get to record in a proper studio with Mark for the first time.
Also amazing was our friend Eric turning up at our show last night with a big grocery bag of treats to get us through the 10 hour drive today. So yum.

15/09/05 Mercury Lounge, NYC and 16/09/05 Tritone, PA
Writing this on late night dash to DC. Been a nutty couple of days, lets try and recap. We got into New York ridiculously late on wednesday night having got caught in a 3am traffic jam. We actually got lost a little outside the city and were stopped by police suspicious of us driving at a snails pace at 3am with our laptops open trying to steal WIFI to get directions. The next day we just wandered around being tired in the intense humidity and hanging out with pals. The show in Mercury Lounge was awesome, easily one of the best gigs we've ever played, packed room, atmosphere was amazing. Rob from Goblin Gock/Pinback was dressed as a guitar tech and everytime I disconnected or broke something he'd shout "I got it!" then run up and fix it.

Rick Fork of Hot Snakes/Drive Like Jehu was also down the front, which was something I never thought I'd see. So we had a grand old time, Goblin Cock were amazing and hanging out with Cory and all was the best fun. Me and Barb left before the night was over as she'd only flown over and was understandably pretty wrecked for jetlag at 1am.
So I wake up this morning in our scary hotel and see a text from Joss:
"Van has been towed".
Turns out that street parking outside the venue was over at 11pm. Van was ticketed at 11.01pm....
Mark and Joss spent the morning in a grim warehouse being fleeced for a couple of hundred dollars to get it back. Unpleasant.
We spent the rest of the afternoon eating ace food in a place called Kates Joint on the Lower East side, before setting off for Philadelphia. We were playing with some more labelmates, Bottom of the Hudson, and it was nice to meet them, but the show was fairly crappy. The bar had a fairly gloomy atmosphere, primarily compounded by the soundguy being just about the biggest asshole ever. He stood out on the street for each bands set, and threatened our friend Jeff when he was him trying to fix the vocals. We have had to set off for DC straight after playing (got early start for recording) and so sadly didn't get to say goodbye to the Bottom of the Hudson guys, which we feel bad about. Still, had an amazing Philly Cheesesteak.

14/09/05 AS220, Providence RI
Ugh, terribly trying day. As part of their uber hosting duties the awesome Brian and Nataly in Boston were force-feeding us their DVD collection and copying us tons of amazing things. Joss decided that in some small way we had to make up for their generosity by, at the very least, replacing their blank DVDs. So Joss and I hop in the van and don't make it to the end of the driveway. Brian comes out, we get a jumpstart from this van, and then sparks start flying, and the car shudders to a halt. After some ace phone advice from our pal Donny we manage to get the car to crawl to the nearest Sears autocentre, in search of a new $50 battery......
$450, and 5 hours of waiting in a mall later we finally get the car given back to us, with a brand new altenator and battery in tow. Good news is that now the car will run fine for the rest of the tour. Bad news is that we're totally fucked for money now, Joss had to pay towards it on his credit card. Pricey Jums.
By the time Joss and I got back to Brian and Nataly;s house, we were destroyed. A mall is not a particularly nice place to hang out in for 5 hours, when you are broke and despondent. That said, with a grand cup of tea fed into ye by our deadly hosts, it was hard to remain in a bad mood. Plus we'd spent the previous night demoing in the cool studio that Brian had built, which was tremendous fun.
So, we set off for Providence several hours behind schedule, and it was another washout gig. Sure, got to meet some lovely people, including Kris the promoter who was amazing, but no punters, other bands wanting runner order changed crap and us being utterly knackered led to a reasonably dismal evening. How and ever we decided to air a whole load of songs we haven't played in ages, things like "Painting Futures Red" and we unanimously loved the playing. On a frantic late night drive down to New York now, my girlfriend flew in to there tonight and I'm dying to see her.

12/09/05 The Lizard Lounge, Boston MA

The small, but appreciative, crowd were fantastic, and after a hairy start I think we played one of our best shows in ages. The energy was tremendous, and it was heartening to see a few folks in the crowd rocking out. Good long set with a healthy mix of newies and oldies. Sound guy, Mike, was amazing too, most attentive guy we've had in years, he was hopping about on the effects on the little fills and bits, totally sympathetic to the sound.

The hanging out in Boston has been luxurious to the max too. We arrived late at night on the 11th, and instantly had mountains of food thrown into us, plus pints and cups of Irish tea. 20 minutes after arriving we could barely move a muscle. Sleep was amazing, incredibly comfy beds, and no sooner had we woken up than a massive vegetarian fry was thrun into us. Could very easily get used to this. Today we are sitting around watching Family Guy dvd's and indulging in general lazing. S'deadly altogether.

Best bit of news is that Inner Ear is booked for this saturday, with Don Zientiera!!! Cannot fu@*ing wait!

10/09/05 The Underground, Pittsburgh PA
The definition of a fleeting visit this. From the very small impression we got of it Pittsburgh seems like an amazing town, loads of beautiful bridges and fountains and thingies and stuffies. The gig was in a college, and we ended up playing for hours, was fun. Sold tons of merch too, reckoning is that in these booze free college gigs, kids have money to burn. Fine by me! There was confusion over our accomodation for the night, but Matt, the promoter and a damned funny man, kindly sorted us out, but not before letting us wander around the college radio station salivating over rare records for hours, and robbing lots of caramel chewy sweets. Been a long drive today up to Boston, where we're going to hang out with our pal Brian and maybe do some recording in his home studio. Excited for the Boston show, gigs there are always brilliant for us.

08/09/05 Comet Bar, Cincinnatti OH
It's been a couple of days since this show, writing this on the drive to Pittsburgh. After the gig this real nice gentleman called Greg offered us a place to stay, rather than pay for a hotel. We usually approach such offers with trepidation, previous experience nearly leading to disastrous and scary situations, but Greg seemed the decent sort.

So decent, in fact, that we ended up hanging out in his house (not actually his house, he was housesitting this amazing house for his friends, so thanks to them!) for 2 days, and are all feeling pretty refreshened and cheery. Surprising seeing as the gig was fairly terrible, no people, mental sound buzzing problems. Joss was fit to get on a plane home afterwards. No offence to the guy who supported, and apologies if he reads this, but that was one of the worst things I've ever heard. Had to leave. The bar and people in it were actually dead nice, but we just had a bad night. We were hating Cincinnatti. Though Jill did manage to sell a t-shirt while we were loading in our gear before the show, to some lady who had been eating a burrito. Deadly.

Over the course of the next day and half though, we fell in love with the place. Amazing records shops, where we spent a fortune, and an ice cream store that Ben of Ben and Jerry's reputes to be the best in the world. I got a peanut butter/cookies and cream combo, and it was pretty extraordinary. Spent the rest of our time chilling out watching DVD's and listening to MacArthur Park, as you do. Saw this amazing program called Fishing with John, wherein each week, John takes a guest out fishing. The episode we saw had John and Tom Waits fishing on this wee boat in Jamaica, with Tom Waits storing the fish he caught in his underpants. Totally nuts, but really funny.

I forget if I mentioned this but theres a chance we will be recording in Inner Ear when we get to DC. You know, Inner Ear, the Fugazi studio.....We'll be recording with the legendary Don Zientara (sp) so fingers crossed it works out. Incredibly excited by the idea.....

06/09/05 Hi Dive, Denver CO
Another big long crazy drive, but beautiful again. We'd been hoping to go through the Rocky Mountains, but our routing took us through the Medicine Bow mountain range instead. I reckon the Rockies would have been truly breathtaking, but these were pretty great anyway.

Out of nowhere Denver suddenly appeared, and surprised us by being such a big, big city. We pulled up to the venue and were pleased to find it was a dead nice area, lots of cool shops and bars. Venue treated us brilliantly, amazing food and free drinks, and our moods were highly lifted. There was an early show on featuring Planes Mistaken for Stars and Bullet Train to Vegas, screamy types, not really my kind of thing, but it was a benefit show and the atmosphere was great. There is quite a peculiar mood amongst Americans at the moment, everyone we meet appears to be praying that the US governments appalling handling of the tragedy in New Orleans will topple Bush and his cronies. It'll never happen, but it's intriguing for us visitors to watch it all unfold. Even the media, usually totally uncritical of Bush since 9/11 is waging in and giving him hell.
As we drove into Denver yesterday we were passed by a convoy of army vehicles on their way down south, each emblazoned with "Katrina Bound". These soldiers probably wanted to get down their last week when everything was unfolding but the gov wouldn't give the orders. Sickening. Heard something about Kanye West on a awards show the other night giving Bush grief. Cool.

I digress. So the show was fun enough, room was loud as hell and sounded amazing. Met up with Skippy, an old pal from London and the gentlemang behind skippyscage.com. Cos of the benefit show thing though, we went on at 12.45 or something, so plenty of folks had had to go home. Annoying. Oh, we got this great review on popmatters.com of the first show of the tour, the Urbana one, which pleased us all greatly. Things like that make smiles. Smiles good.

Today we have embarked on our crazy big drive of the tour, 17 hours, so big we're splitting it over two days, and there is absolutely nothing to see out the van window. Our friends Jeff and Judy our still driving along with us, they're moving from San Francisco to Jersey whis week and so are tagging along to some of the shows on their way. The more time we spend with them, the bigger fans we become, truly deadly couple.

In the gas station this morning I was prepaying for the petrol, and the girl had to keep talking to Mark and Joss over the intercom cos there was some sort of confusion over the pump operation. Finally got it sorted, I said "Cheers!" and headed off to the loo. Just as I get there I hear her call out, "hey, did you just say cheers??"
"Um, yes?"
"Wow....cool....no-one *ever* says cheers around here!"

Might try and watch some movies on the computer. Exhausted already and feeling far, far away from home, missing the wan.

05/09/05 Urban Lounge, Salt Lake City UT
Weird day. The drive was lengthy and hellish, something like over 13 hours and we were all ill and grumpy, San Francisco having given us colds. The actual drive was pretty spectacular particularly when we descended out of the Nevada mountains into the salt lake plains of Utah. Oceans of white salt as far as your eyes could take you and a highway that disappeared hundreds of miles into the distance, nary a turn in sight. Wish we had all not been feeling to poorly to appreciate it a little better.

The gig itself was something of a disaster, we arrived very late in a panic only to discover the venue wasn't open, with some kids outside, and it looked like there was no gig at all. Thankfully, after some nutty behaviour by folks there, some people made some calls and got things sorted out, but it was still a fairly pointless endeavour. Next tour the rule is no monday night shows, waste of time. Plus all the beer is watered down there by law, utterly bizarre.

03/09/05 Rickshaw Stop, San Francisco CA
God, I'm tired. It's been a hectic couple of days. We made it to San Francisco in time for Pinback and to catch up with Cory from AK and our friends Jeff and Judy (Jeff has been making a video for Glance now for a wee while, the bits we've seen are astonishing, total hi-end MTV stuff). San Francisco is a very beautiful and strange town. On one side you have all this amazing architecture and beautiful vistas and landscapes, but we've also never seen so many homeless people. Seems cos of the good climate and the wealth and generosity of its inhabitants its something of a mecca for homeless people, and its more than a little disconcerting. Time was spent wandering around an area called the mission, drinking fine german beers and frequenting an ace burger joint called "Burger Joint".

The gig itself was great, gorgeous venue named the Rickshaw Stop with two, would you believe, Rickshaws in front of the stage. Amazing sound too. Rob came along after the Pinback show and was absolutely shitfaced, he got up with us for the last song like he used to on the European tour and it was fairly comical. The rest of the night was spent watching him grab various items to support himself as he flailed around the room. Everyone ended up getting pretty drunk on whiskeys and carbombs and what have ye. The next day was spent nursing sore heads, eating great vegan food and dropping tons of money in Amoeba records. I think I picked up the second Circus Lupus album for $3, amazing. Right now enconsed in one of the horrible drives of the tour, 11 hours across Nevada to get to Salt Lake City, we had to get up painfully early. We're considering making Mark and Jill get married in Reno, or during soundcheck.
"Check 1,2, I do.....Sorry, can I get some more vows in my monitors please"
Need to sleep, bye.

02/09/05 Howie and Sons, Visalia CA
So after Patti took us for some amazing breakfast sandwiches we hit the road to get out of LA, and get stuck in the worst traffic I've ever seen. In a city of over 11,000,000 people with every single one having a car, I suppose it was to be expected. The drive to Visalia, that was meant to take a little over 2 hours, stretched to over 4. Pretty unpleasant. Visalia is an odd wee town, from what we saw it seemed like a lot of department stores and food places built up alongside the motorway, very much like a lot of Irish towns. Howie and Sons is the main pizza place in the town, and every once in a while they clear the tables out and put on all ages shows. And they are fantastic. A couple of hundred kids show out, we get fed giant delicious pizzas that we can barely touch and are still in the boot of the car, plus massive beers, each pouring is a litre, aaaaaaand we got paid really well. The dream is alive and rocking. Easily the most fun show of the tour so far, understandably. Thanks to Aaron and Steph for being such good hosts and cooking us an awesome pancake breakfast. Now we rush to San Francisco to try and see Pinback play at open air show at 3pm. Odds are against us. Also, overnight the gas prices have shot up. When we left Chicago we were paying maybe $2.60 a gallon, now its averaging $3.20 in places. The better money that we are now making may count for nothing if the gas prices continue to inflate so rapidly.

01/09/05 Zen Sushi, Los Angeles CA
Gah, so today was kind of a wash out. We raced like mad early from San Diego, cutting short our valuable Crow hanging out time in order to get up to Ventura in time for a mid afternoon instore. 'Cept there'd been some sort of a booking error, and the record store had originally expecting us to show up on the saturday. A shame, especially as he was getting plenty of calls asking what we would be playing at on Saturday. To console ourselves we schlebbed down to the beach, Joss dorned his plum shorts and we all dipped our toes into the pacific. I'd been wearing my Goblin Cock shirt all day and got paranoid that I might get nabbed for offensive material or something. I went into an icecream shop with my hand over my chest at all times.
Then we drove back to LA via Malibu, which was cool, got to see loads of fancy houses and all the Baywatch huts. Gig itself was another washout. Bizarrely did our best merch of the tour, madness. Also annoying was getting lost for what seemed hours in LA trying to find the venue, the streets here seemed to bear nooo relation to what our maps and directions where telling us. Met some nice people though and stayed the night in our new friend Patti's utterly awesome apartment. Part of some big factory thats been overhauled, with some of the best things and stuffes in it I've ever seen, including one of them deadly Tomy plastic robots you always used to see in magazine ads when you were a kid, but could never afford, I want to nab it!!!

31/08/05 The Basement, San Diego CA
Todays drive was by far the most awe inspiring and daunting of the ones we've done. We hit proper desert, huge massive sand dunes, thousands of cactii, and the drive took us right to the Mexican border. We got stopped two or three times and had to convince the border police that we weren't Mexicans disguised as Irishers.
"Pleeez, to not be taking ze potatoes"
Actually the first border crossing agent was more interested in talking about how good the bread is at Subway.
Then the drive took us through ths strangest mountain scenery I've seen as we approached San Diego. Rather than mountains, they seemed like huge collections of giant pebbles that had been stacked mile high. At one point there was a sign warning to turn off air conditioning to prevent engine overheating. We did so, and it was got unbearably hot. It was at least 100 degrees outside before we hit the mountains, and I have no idea what it must have reached. It was pretty disconcerting to see plenty of trucks and cars that were either struggling or had seized up on the ascent.

We rolled into San Diego later than we had hoped, and our hanging out time with Pinback pals was severely curtailed. Goblin Cock were amazing, I think the record is great but the show was totally rocking. The theatricality (sp) of it was superb too, won't say why cos I don't want to spoil it. We each got given a Cock t-shirt that I think shall be proudly displayed for the rest of the tour.

Afterwards we drank gallons of Guinness, first in a bar then back in Rob and Victorias where we spent the night making Mark watch Captain Beefheart videos. Rob and Victoria have the two most amazing kitties, Chicken and Turkey. When I woke up this morning Chicken had nuzzled herself under my arm, and I sleepily stroked her for a bit, til she bit me, most likely cos I squished her in head in dozy rubbings.
Got taken for a Mexican dinner for breakfast too, which was great, best Mexican food ever. I had to buy a new powerpack for this laptop too, which worked out at $130, gah. Totally shafted. Currently flying through Los Angeles, mad late for an instore in Ventura. Doh.

30/08/05 Modified, Phoenix AZ
What a nutty day. The drive last night to the casino hotel was done under the cover of darkness, so we had no idea when we woke up this morning that we were in the actual desert. According to the maps it wasn't proper actual desert but it was good enough for us. Apparently the actual desert comes tomorrow on the Phoenix to San Diego drive, so expect to hear me get all excited again then.
So on enroute we pull into a Chevron gas station, where there are no prices advertised from the highway, which we think is illegal. Anyway, at the pump we were pretty pissed off to discover it was $3.09, when the last stop had been $2.70 or something. So we only put in $10 worth to avoid being ripped off too much. We set off and notice that pump gauge hasn't changed in the slightest. Assuming its a car malfunction we give the benefit of the doubt and stop at the next station and test the car by putting in another $5. The fuel guage goes up $5 worth. So, Mark is rightly incensed and we drive back to the original station to complain. The guy in the place was the most retarded and unpleasant prick. He just drawled over and over again that it was impossible for his pumps to be wrong, simply because the computer told him that we had payed him $10. Stupidhead.

So we drive on, and by now we are heading through the Arizona mountains and the views are simply breathtaking. We thought we were mad late for time so had to skip out on seeing this meteor site, that I bet would have been amazing.
Panic then started to set in again fuel wise. This van has a cool feature that it tells you how many miles of fuel you have left. The road signs would tell us that Phoenix was, say, 192 miles away and the car was saying we had 193 miles left in us. So we engaged in a retarded chase to see if we could just about make it. I have no idea why. I think its the retarded part of us. In Marks defense he wasn't so keen on the idea but he was watching TV in the back and remained mostly oblivious. Until he noticed the dial saying we had 10 miles left and that Joss and I were panicking ever so slightly. I heard a distinct "for f*cks sake" come from the back.
We managed to pull into a gas station with 4 miles left on the clock, phew. 'Cept they had just put up caution signs on the pumps, they'd just run out of the gas. We eeked our way towards the next station and as we crawled to the pump, the dial went to zero. So close. The delicious adventures of touring! Running out of petrol!

So, Phoenix. Bleedin' deadly place. Hot as hell, we were walking the streets at 6pm and it was 38 degrees. The street the venue was on was intriguing. Kind of an out of the way area, where lots of arty types had commandeered houses and turned them into art spaces/venues, with absolutely no government assistance.

Joss stopped to pet a dog on the street and we ended up talking to this cool girl called Jody, owner of one such space. She encouraged us to call back later for a beer before the show, and naturally we did. Out came her friend Llama, who was about the coolest guy I think we've ever met. Within two seconds of our introduction he starts giving Joss lessons on his love life and how to improve his 'boogie woogie', and moved on to berate our poor PR skills, seeing as we answered in the negative when asked if we had toured with either the Rolling Stones or Aerosmith. He was a total hustler and he had us in knots of laughter. He was impressed that we were drinking before the show.
"You like a taste before you play?! That's cool, I can dig it. A little sip, a little line, with the spike in your arm! Shit, you can OD and still play!! Hey, you ever see Sean Connery walking about?"
I wished we coulda taken him with us. If Llama, Jody and Scott read this, thanks for being great.

The venue itself was an all ages room, and was cracking. Run by this ace lady called Lesley, they've put on great shows over the years for the likes of Deerhoof and many others so it felt pretty great to get to play there. Show was great fun, though we played way too hard and utterly exhausted ourselves. Ridiculous behaviour considering the heat. The other bands were great too, and we get to play with one, Bring back the guns, in Visalia in a couple of days. Very much looking forward to seeing them. We stayed with the drummer from the 2nd band , Vin Fiz (prob spelt wrong, sorry guys!) in his amazing house in the suburbs. He had these two beautiful dogs, Jiggs and Choppo. Choppo was lovely, but there was no mistaking his purpose as family guard dog, a pitbull/German sheperd cross breed, he was very wary of us at first and could have easily have had any limb of ours he fancied. One bite would have done it.

So, Phoenix scores big points, even though at 9am this morning it was 42 degrees. Today we intend to find a Joshua Tree and recreate the U2 cover, though only if we can find the weediest wee plant possible, and then not even do it anyway.

29/08/05 Atomic Cantina, Albuquerque NM
The remit for this first part of the tour, considering it was booked so quickly after the last one, was just to find us all small, divey gigs til we got ourselves over to the west coast, cos the drives are so tortuous. The problem with this is that these first bunch of gigs have been booked with pretty much no time for prepublicity, and when you drive into somewhere like Albuquerque on a Monday night, its to be expected the gig will be pretty much a non event. Still, while we know this it is still pretty disheartening to play to a practically empty room, get paid a pittance, and watch your daily tour cash fritter away.

Driving here has gotten so expensive, almost $3 a gallon in some places, and coupled with hotel prices it makes things a little despondent. Things will totally turnaround once we hit San Diego, but its difficult.
Albuquerque itself seemed like a great town, and the venue was wonderful. Tons of rockers with coiffs and tattoos wandering about, though there were tons of homeless too. Getting there was a nuts drive, we drove through Texas, taking in things like Amarillo (a dump, what does Tony Christie see in the place) and stopped there for a minute to make sandwiches on the bonnet of the van.

Cheese insantly fried on the van (Phoenix tomorrow is gonna be 45 degrees apparently, holy oven!). Saw a bizarre accident too where a fairground truck had overturned on the freeway. After the show we hit the highway again to try and find a cheap motel, but as we get closer to the desert, things are starting to get very, very sparse indeed. The only things we passed by were these huge guady casinos in the middle of nowhere. Eventually we gave up and checked ourselves into SKYCITY CASINO HOTEL. An alcohol free resort. Madness. Tacky, tacky hotel. Joss took a swim in the lightbulb shaped swimming pool, which he said was very nice.

Mark and I are getting jealous of his swimming togged ways, thats the last three days in a row hes a had a swim and a jacuzzi.
Right, better get in the van and point ourselves towards Phoenix, I fear we may melt.

28/08/05 The Conservatory, Oklahoma
You know, I think it's fair to say that a city can have an off day. We rolled into Oklahoma at around 2pm, and there was literally nothing to see or do, the entire place was deserted. Granted it was a Sunday, but we were all pretty bemused. We walked around in intense heat, ate overpriced icecream and ended up practicing with a skipping rope outside the venue. Quiet, quiet town. That said the venue was next door to one of the most awesome record shops I've even been in. Joss picked up a copy of Jailbreak for $4, pretty deadly. I was too afraid to do much other than sit on the couch and stare at my feet. Saving my precious dollars for when we get into Amoeba in San Francisco.

Sadly the deadness of the Oklahoma day transferred to the show, and it was as empty as hell. Still fun to play though. We got to meet our label mates, the Jim Yoshii Pile Up, and they were really great. Terribly nice, and with a vistalite clear drum kit in tow, what more could one ask for in a band. Looking forward to meeting them in San Francisco again next week. Before the show Joss and I wandered around outside the venue in awe at this incredible thunderstorm that was taking place. The entire sky was bursting with shards of silver and a big wind was brewing up. News reports today of New Orleans and surrounding areas being declared a state of emergency, with a westard bound hurricane, maybe its chasing us! Mark thought it mad weird that with all this lightning there was nary a bucket of thunder to be heard rattling. All of a sudden there was the mightiest clap of noise ever, and shortly after the heavens opened. From 30 degrees in the daytime, to lashing rain at night. Mad place.
Currently speeding towards Amarillo, which we're led to believe is a shithole, probably will steal ourselves into another Comfort Inn before long. Marvelous life, this.

27/08/05 Drive day
So we've a couple of days between shows, neccessary just to get to grips with some of the drives. From Chicago to Oklahoma is over 12 hours, so we decided to leave today, do 6 or 7 seven hours, sleep in some motel, and continue tomorrow.
Leaving Chicago wasn't as easy as might have been imagined, thanks to some colossal hangovers. Yesterday started with me and Joss driving around town trying to rob some unwitting strangers wireless internet connection so Joss could do some online banking thingy. Eventually we found one, and settled in for a half hour of delicious free bandwith burglarly. When done the car wouldn't start. Battery was totally dead. We were just outside this mexican garage, so they jumpstarted us and all was well. When we got back Mark commandeered the van and disappeared for a while, returning with a gorgeous new guitar what he'd boughten in Midwestern Buy and Sell for very little money whatsoever. To celebrate Dan Sullivan took us drinking in this Irish bar. And drink we did. Over the course of the night and beers and tequila we ended up at this late night Mexican restaurant fairly shuttling the margueritas into ourselves. Well, mainly me. Dans eyes got all swollen like he'd been in a boxing match, they were practically closed, yet he was totally coherent and loquacious. Impressive.

So the next morning hell kicked in. Overnight our hosts neighbours had been making awful amounts of noise, cops were eventually called, so sleep was fitful. Woke up with what felt like 4 tons of war debris gunk swirling around in my head. Took hours and hours to get over it, and the van stint wasn't the best place for it. After 6 hours we stopped in St Louis, crazy looking town (nothing but sports stadiums and that huge arch thingy) and got ourselves a chinese after ages driving around trying to find somewhere that wasn't a steakhouse. They have a lot of steakhouses down here. Possibly a mistake as it was one of the dodgiest meals any of us have ever had. What was cool was this insane localised lightning storm that was going on overhead. It was taking place above cloud cover so we just this amazing light show, looked like explosions, so much so that we had to check the radio to make sure nothing was under attack. We drove on some and finally collapsed in a pricey Comfort Inn, being too afraid of the cheapy motels everywhere. Steve said the last motel he was in had stab marks in the sheets. Gotta stop spending money though, we've totally milled through our budget already. Uh oh.