matt wilson rules

Who am I kidding?

2012-01-08T14:00:00.000-08:00

I'm never going to update this thing. My life is busy and my mind is far too scattered to post regularly. I'm simply too unorganized, and besides, who still uses these things? Seems the entire world uses tumblr or wordpress these days. So, with that being said, here are links to a couple of the endeavors I spend most of my time on for those who wish to stay up-to-date with what I'm doing with my life:

setyourgoalsband.com

ethosclothing.tumblr.com

2012 is all about being realistic for me, and I gotta be honest...as much as I enjoy it, I see this as a time-consuming chore! hahahaha

So I guess this is goodbye. It's been real, blogspot.

Thanks for reading,

Matt
XXX

Life Update

2011-04-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

Well, we finally finished the ABR tour alive. I think we left White River on day four and drove some insane amount of time to pick up with the tour again at the Calgary date. Luckily the rest of the tour went swimmingly and all the shows on the way home were great. Got to hang with a ton of great friends as well: Jon from Grave Maker, Marshall from The Warriors, Greg from Amber Pacific...even super scene-celeb Timm from Trial/Wait In Vain/Panic Records came and hung out, ate some Po Dogs, and showed us around Panic HQ before the show in Seattle!

For the past three weeks we've all been hangin' at home and getting ready for our new record, "Burning at Both Ends" to drop. Scheduling press, photo shoots, and a video shoot for the first single which will be filmed in LA next week. If you're in the area, submit an email and come be a part of it! Here are the details:

Hey everyone, SYG is making a new video and we're asking YOU to come be a part of it! Here are the requirements of what we'll need for extras:

-Please have your own transportation to/from shoot (it will be in the LA area) on Wednesday, May 4th.

-Come dressed in "prom" attire: tux/suit or dress with alternate options, 80's looking clothes & accessories would be good to bring as well if you have them

-Send a picture of you in costume to sygcast@gmail.com. This will be how the director decides who he needs for the video and will also be how you receive info for the shoot.

-Please state whether you have any dancing skills or experience.

For example: "I am a skilled breakdancer and have performed in these videos/movies..." or "I am trained in salsa dancing. I took a class once." Any way for the director to learn more would be a huge help so please include a link to your portfolio or youtube video of you showing off said dance skills if possible. NOTE: dancing skills are NOT required, so don't feel like you need to do this if you don't have any! :)

-This will be an all day shoot so please plan on being available all day. Again, that's Wednesday, May 4th (subject to change)

...That's it, we'll see you there!

So that's what I've been up to. Dan, Jordan, Mikey and I leave Monday night to drive down to LA for the video, a photo shoot, and practice before we leave for our UK headliner with A Loss For Words & This Time Next Year, and a number of fests. Dates & tickets are available on our facebook page HERE (it takes a minute to load so please be patient!)

We so excited. We, we, we so excited.

Over and out.

XXX

August Burns Red Tour Update

2011-04-05T13:44:00.000-07:00

Here's the situation:

Van broke down again = stuck in the middle of nowhere = more free time = blog update!

Unfortunately, this equation also applies:

Van broke down again = everyone loses $ = we're bummed we don't get to play = people are bummed they don't get to see us play

Cost of repairs on this tour alone (before this one): >$2,000

One tank of diesel: $150+

Placing the responsibility and cost on someone else's shoulders: Priceless.

...Yep, looks like getting rid of our vehicle and just renting from now on would be the smart thing to do. All we want to do now is finish this tour and get home.

But first, let's start from where we last left off...

Sudbury show was a lot of fun. Hottest show of the tour and the power kept cutting out on one side of the stage for every band, but the crowd was great and everyone had a blast.

Yesterday we had a day off to make the 20 hr. drive to Winnipeg. About halfway through the drive, Justin was driving and felt some strange rumbling. No sooner had he announced it to the rest of us when the back tire flew off and went rolling down the highway! At first glance, this seemed like the worst possible conditions to have road troubles. We're in a snowy mountain pass on a two-way road with very few cars on it. Our luck quickly turned around when, within minutes, a Greyhound bus passed by and pulled over to offer us a ride into the nearest town...which just happened to be White River, Ontario, hometown of Winnie-the-Pooh and self-proclaimed "Coldest Spot in Canada."

So we've been stuck here since yesterday afternoon surfing the internet in the hotel and eating snacks from the gas station and the overpriced diner next door. I just paid $19 for subpar fettuccine alfredo because it was the only place open past 9 PM. This town is TINY. Even during the day, the only other dining options are A&W and the donut shop across the street. It started snowing about ten minutes after the wheel fell off yesterday and hasn't stopped since.

Get me out of here, I am losing my mind! :(

XXX

August Burns Red Canadian Tour

2011-04-02T12:53:00.000-07:00

Nothing too exciting to report here. Tonight is the 4th show on our tour with August Burns Red and Texas In July, which runs mostly through Canada. Born of Osiris was supposed to be on the tour too but they didn't get across the Canadian border so they cancelled their dates entirely.

The drive out to the first show was insane. We left California the 25th. Four days, one van repair, and one massive trailer repair later, we arrived at the first show of the tour, having missed both headlining shows we'd booked on the drive out :(
The tour kicked off for us in Williamsport, PA at a venue called The Hive. We'd never played The Hive (or Williamsport for that matter) before, but the show was great.
We had a day off the next day so we drove, ate some Angelo's pizza at the Russin house with the Title Fight boys, then drove some more.

We'd never been to Quebec City before so that was interesting. Before the show Mikey and I walked around town and shopped and found some good food.

Hung out with our buddy Pat Moore yesterday in London and he took us to a sweet poutine place called Smoke's that serves veggie poutine and we met a very drunk guy who decided to strike up a conversation with Justin and Jr. the entire time we ate haha.

Now we're in Ottawa. Last time we were here was years ago on the No Trigger, Daggermouth, Hostage Life tour, so I'm gonna go walk around and check out the city.

Peace!

XXX

Parkway Drive Tour - Part 2

2011-03-24T13:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm finally finding time to update this thing. Things have been super busy for the past couple weeks. On top of the usual band happenings, we've got a ton of stuff going on with the record coming out in June. PLUS I found out right before I came home that all my roomies are jumping ship by the end of March, so I had to plan an unexpected move and find a place to keep all of my things until I find a new residence (I didn't) in the ten days I had at home...fun stuff.

Anyway, here are some highlights from the rest of the Parkway tour. My phone erased everything about 30 times on this tour so a bunch of pictures I took of sweet stuff are now gone forever. I may be upgrading to a new phone soon, my BlackBerry isn't cutting it.

First things first – here's the video of Mikey and our ex-guitarist and expert handyman Dave Yoha building our new tour vehicle that I promised last time. I still don't know what to call this thing. It's not quite a van or a bus...it's like a mini bus!

Not much to report about the middle of the tour, other than almost dying driving through the snow and rain every night. The most memorable part was probably in Montreal when members of the tour all pitched in to pay Marshall of The Warriors $200 to play two full songs in a G-String. Here's the video of "Transistor." Watch it...if you dare.

Here's a pic of a fort I made with Anthony after we'd lost our minds driving through the night at some ungodly hour:

Here are a couple tour updates Vans had Mikey make for the tour...enjoy!

The East Coast was amazing as usual, but Richmond, VA was probably the best show of the tour.

Surprisingly, the next night in Charlotte, NC was the worst show of the tour for us. It's strange because they're only four hours from each other. Now, I don't condone fighting and try to avoid it at all costs, but at the Charlotte show there were a couple guys front and center for our set who did not enjoy our band to say the least. They were taunting us with insults and even threw a can of beer at us before instigating a fight with some of our dudes after the set. They lost. To add insult to injury, they were kicked out and missed the band they came to see. My guess is next time they'll think twice before sitting through an entire band they dont like's set just to insult/pick fights with them. So remember kids, just because a band's music isn't tough doesn't mean they can't kick your ass ;)

Anyway, the next night in Atlanta was great. Our friend Chris from Jimmy John's brought us all sandwiches and the set was a blast. Our friend Corey Emond was out with Ice Cube and our tours crossed so he came and hung out and bought us all pizza after the show (that's him on the right):

Here's another pic of the Fellini's pizza crew:

Unfortunately the road beast had an oil line issue and we had to leave it (and Justin) in Atlanta while we drove a one-way rental van through a hurricane to get to the TX shows in time. Glad we did because the shows ruled and we priceline'ed the sweetest room ever at the Omni in Austin and made a beeline for the hot tub as soon as we got there. Here's a pic of the hot tub crew:

While we were in Texas, Corey hit me up and told me that he'd gotten Ice Cube's son, O'Shea Jackson Jr. AKA California Heir, to wear one of our crewnecks onstage at one of the shows. Pretty sweet. California love!

Justin met back up with us before we headed out to El Paso to pick up our buddy (and former TM) Juan and join the rest of the tour party for "tour paintball" on our day off. We were too busy blasting at each other all day to take any decent photos or videos, but here's one pic of the SYG paintball crew, minus yours truly:

The Phoenix show was at some awful venue we'd never played before called The Nile, but it didn't seem to matter because our set was a blast. We couldn't wait to get to CA so we went swimming at a friend's then drove straight through the night.

The Hollywood show was a headache because not only was it the last day of the tour but the show was two tours combined (the other being another metal tour w/Whitechapel & The Acacia Strain), which only added to the stress of having what seemed like a million people we know at the show to hang out/talk business with; label people, friends, etc. Before our set, Kelly Paiste (yeah, like the cymbal co.) took us and John Robinson out to dinner at Asia de Cuba next door to the venue. It was probably the best dinner I've had so far this year. If you're ever near one and have a ton of money to spend I highly recommend it. They were both very cool people and very nice. Thanks Kelly!

I think that about wraps it up. Such a fun tour and I hope we get the chance to tour with the Parkway Drive guys again soon, great dudes and crew. I'm home now and it's been raining all week but luckily I found a 30 minute window of sunshine yesterday between the intermittent showers to move some of my things into storage without them getting ruined, hooray! We leave tomorrow morning to head out East for the August Burns Red Canadian tour. Another metalcore tour...I'll be sure to let you all know how it goes!

Peace out.

XXX

I'm still alive!

2011-02-20T14:24:00.000-08:00

DISCLAIMER: I can't make the text on this entry larger for whatever reason because Google is stupid. Sorry for the eyesore.

Greetings, ppl of teh internetz. We're a little over a week into our U.S. Tour with Parkway Drive, The Ghost Inside, and The Warriors at the moment and I had the sudden urge to resurrect my blog from the dead and distant past. I'm going to try to keep the updates as regular as possible on this one (though I make no guarantees!) ...Video clips coming soon, enjoy!

Mikey had been working on the van with our old guitarist Dave for over a month (video update coming soon) while the rest of us finished up the new record in the studio (check out a montage of us at the height of our studio insanity here). He and I drove it down from the Bay Area to put the finishing touches on the interior with Junior before the tour started...but not before I discovered this little gem tucked away in the Ambrose family kitchen hahaha

This tour has been a lot of fun for everyone thus far. The first week we had the pleasure of hanging with our good friends in Gravemaker, as they were opening the tour. We weren't sure what to expect from the crowds on this tour because we sound pretty different from the rest of the bands on the bill but it's gone well for the most part. The first show was at Soma in San Diego. My dad came out and we got Thai food before the show, which I then went on to puke up right before our set, but other than that it went over great. Here's a pic from backstage:

The next day was Glasshouse in Pomona. Before the show we went to Native Foods with my friends Tom & Cathy. Tom's got a pretty impressive gun rack in his house.

We drove straight through the night from Pomona to "Da Bay" which was nice because I got a little sleep in my own bed, ate some Taqueria Cancun, and our buddy Doug hooked it up with some gear from the upcoming Rebel 8 Spring 2011 line. Stoked, thanks Doug!

...I could show you what's behind this door, but then I'd have to kill you.

All of the CA shows were great. The SF show was at the DNA Lounge, a venue I've been to a number of times but we've never played. The show was incredible and it was great to see so many friends and family come out and hang. We were all bummed to leave our home state, but we were excited for the next city; Vegas!

For whatever reason, the rest of the bands on the tour had a show with Retaliate that day, but we had the day off. So, in true SYG fashion, we headed to Vegas early to get our gamble on! We booked a couple rooms at the Flamingo hotel and they weren't able to add beds to our rooms to accommodate everyone, so they just moved us to a King-sized suite on the 26th floor for free instead! We definitely didn't mind.

We happened to be there on the same weekend as Magic, a fashion/clothing convention held in Las Vegas, so we had a lot of friends in town. We got dinner at P.F. Chang's with our friends Rob and Lisa, then Mikey and I lost our usual $200 on the casino floor while everyone else who gambled made money.

The House of Blues show was better than usual for us...no fights! Our good friend Jon Gula moved out to Vegas this past year and we got to see him for a bit. Jon is the ex-vocalist for one of our all-time favorite metalcore bands and past tourmates, Turmoil. Jon also did guest vocals on "Gaia Bleeds." After the show we went out with Doug, Josh, and Ricky from the Rebel 8 crew to a Famous Stars & Straps party and hung out for a bit before we had to start the drive to Salt Lake City.

The show in SLC was another good one, and yet another rarity for us with no fights :D There was a massive snowstorm and the transformer outside blew up, causing the power to go out during The Warriors' set; which was kind of crazy for a second because the entire venue was standing in darkness for about a minute straight. It didn't fully come back until about halfway through TGI's set, so the security guards had to illuminate the pit with flashlights so that people wouldn't get broken noses. Outside, it snowed about 6 inches throughout the course of the show, which made for an interesting drive to Denver afterwards. Before we left we ate at this place called The Pie Pizzeria which was incredible. If you ever find yourself in SLC, do yourself a favor and check it out!

Luckily Denver was a bit warmer, which made up for an otherwise uneventful show for us.

Kansas City was a little better. We went to our favorite local sandwich spot, Mr. Goodcents. My total was $6.66

We got to hang out with our buddies Tissue and Jason Shrout and the show that night was fun.

The next night was St. Louis at Pop's. The venue owner also owns the strip club next door so we all got free admission, which was convenient because it's the only place within miles to find food, so we all headed there for lunch before the show.

After the show we drove through the night to Cleveland (which is where we are now) so we could eat a delicious lunch at Melt: home to the best grilled cheese sandwiches I've ever had.

Gotta go, time to gig!

XXX

"AP Fall Ball" Tour Journal - Part 2

2010-02-07T16:05:00.001-08:00

Hello world!

I am writing to let you all know that I am still alive. I have been many places since I last wrote in this thing and hopefully I'll get around to posting the interesting stuff in here at some point because while I'm pretty sure no one cares enough to read about how we loaded in and soundchecked and ate food every day for like 2 months straight, there is some really cool stuff that happens on tour that I'd like to share with the rest of the world. The problem is that by the time I end up getting internet access or time to sit down and write on the road, a week or so has gone by and when I get home from tour it's usually months later and I get too overwhelmed to tackle such a tedious task. Plus I can barely remember what we did by then anyway. Soooo in order to prevent my blog from getting any more screwed up I think I'm going to get with the times and maybe turn this into a video blog. Now, keep in mind I've still got plenty of past tour diaries/pictures to post on here before I make the shift over to a completely video-based blog, so the metamorphosis will be a gradual one, but I figured why not go the way of the "now" and start putting my YouTube channel to use? I apologize for the random and scattered nature of my posting and I'm sure nobody knows or cares what I'm talking about and just skims through to the pictures anyway which is part of the reason switching to video seems like a such a splendid concept hahaha. I'm probably just rambling here but my point is that this should (fingers crossed), in time, improve the overall quality and timeliness of my entries in this blog. What are everyone's thoughts on this?? Let me know in the "Comments" section at the bottom, please!! Think it over while reading over my damaged memory's sorry attempt at recollecting the 2nd half of the "AP Fall Ball" Tour.

Sorry it took me so long, guys.

We returned to the Orlando House Of Blues the very next night to play there. I don't remember what we did after the show but I'm sure it involved food and probably wasn't too interesting.

The next day we played in Atlanta at the Masquerade and there was this crazy haunted house next door so a bunch of us headed over there with Luis from TSH and some friends. How do you know when a haunted house is good? When they card you at the door and make you sign a waiver releasing them of any responsibility in the event that you should incur any sort of bodily harm! This thing was definitely something out of a shock horror film and VERY realistic looking! It looked like a slaughterhouse and the actors/actresses, makeup, and special effects were superb. I won't get into the gruesome details but some of the rooms involved slicing off X-Rated body parts, the actors asking us to remove other body parts from theirs (at which point they'd spray blood everywhere), and they would even pee on us as we ran by screaming! We all agreed it was the best haunted house we'd ever been to.

The next day was Rocketown in Nashville. There were a ton of kids at this show. I want to say it was sold out but I don't know for sure. To our surprise this was the best show of the tour for us. During our set kids were going so crazy that they actually pushed the barrier forward about three feet... something I'd never seen before at any show!

In Charlotte we drove for what seemed like an hour out of the way to find this place Mikey found on urbanspoon.com called Crepe Cellar before the show. This place was incredibly good. I highly recommend checking it out if you're ever in the area. To read more about our experience at Crepe Cellar, check out Dan's entry in his tour food blog, roadnoms.com. The show itself wasn't bad for North Carolina but It felt like we were too far from the crowd because of the barrier. Our friend Fubu flew out to hang with us and some huge security guard kicked him out for moshing or something so that kind of put a damper on things as well. Oh well. The next night definitely picked our spirits back up.

Halloween '09 was spent in Norfolk, VA at the Norva. We got our costumes at Spencer Gifts and $300 later we were decked out in Juggalo gear and ready to perform as wicked clowns! We decorated the stage with jack-o-lanterns and put ICP banners over our cabs. We threw candy, silly string, and a ton of Faygo soda all over the crowd. Here are a couple costume pics:

I wish I had more pics of the madness that ensued but since I can't find any right now and will most certainly be too lazy to post them up later, you can check out the video Mikey made of our entire evening here. Enjoy! If my memory serves me correctly, YMAS all had random costumes, TSH didn't dress up, Mayday were The Village People, and TAI had skeleton faces. After the show we went to a party with YMAS and it was lame so we left fairly soon after arriving but not before waking up the entire neighborhood with an M-80 we threw into a jack-o-lantern. We placed the pumpkin in the middle of the street and began walking away. Just then a car drove up and stopped. The M-80 went off, vaporizing the jack-o-lantern right as the driver was about to get out of the car to move it... I don't think he was too stoked hahaha

November 1st we played the 9:30 Club in D.C. They made us these cute little cupcakes and put them in our dressing room:

The show was a lot of fun and the next day we had a day off so I stayed with my homie Anton Rough and hung out in Baltimore the next day.

Philly was cool but there's so much good food and so many cool shops that I always feel like there's not enough time to do everything I want to do when we play there. Got to see John Bowes and some other good friends and eat veggie cheesesteak though. Always a plus.

Albany was a good show for us and I immediately noticed this addition to the dressing room-I most certainly approve!

Boston was (and always is) a blast. Saw a lot of good friends and our set was killer.

The next night we played Toad's Place in CT and I ran into these two girls who'd asked Jordan and myself for our signatures last time we came through on Gig Life. To our surprise, these girls had gotten them tattooed on their legs! ...Don't believe me? I was so shocked I took a picture, check this out! Definitely a first for me:

The show was sold out so the promoter brought down champagne for all the bands. I guess he did this on Gig Life too but I didn't notice. Not that I had any reason to. Wooo, champagne. Big whoop. Now if he were to bring us all Shirley Temples or Martinelli's or something... THEN I'd be interested!

I don't remember anything too exciting happening at our show at the Starland Ballroom. The dressing room was super hot and I spent most of the night getting movies and TV shows from my friend Kurt's hard drive. A trip to Wawa was the highlight of the night for me.

The next day we played the Crazy Donkey in Long Island and went to the driving range next door. Ruled. The Crazy Donkey had changed a few things around since we'd last played there with I Am The Avalanche over a year ago. The merch was to be sold in a new area outside (regardless of potential rain and no lighting) and the dressing room had been relocated from the basement... to this.

...A huge step down considering the musty smell of the basement was just as present in this retired ice cream truck/trailor. There was even a bed in the back, complete with love stains. Gross.

We spent the day off in NYC and met up with our friend from home Zed and he took us to check out ground zero. Then we saw "This Is It," the Michael Jackson movie, with some of the other guys on the tour and our friend and fellow road dog, Anthony Amor. When Juan returned to the hotel he had a long phone convo with his girlfriend. It seemed to me like the entire tour, he was always in a bad mood after a conversation with her, but I didn't expect it to be this bad. He announced that he was going home and would not be doing the remaining six dates of the tour. We said OK because if our TM didn't want to be there we didn't really see it going too smoothly if he stayed. Things ended up working out because as I mentioned, Anthony was already in NYC so he met up with us and replaced Juan, who went to the airport.

Our friend Jon Gula came out to the show at Croc Rock the next night. For those who don't know, Jon used to sing in an incredible metallic hardcore band called Turmoil. Jon brought with him a super cool gift: a couple test presses of their record, "The Process Of," a favorite of everyone in the SYG camp and a definite classic.

NYC was a headache as always but the show was a lot of fun. Our dressing room was like a Nor Cal reunion. Noah, Ben, Duncan and Leo all came to hang out... all friends from back home who moved to New York!

Buffalo was kind of a weird show but ran into Andy from Every Time I Die and got some great food down the street with my buddy Dan so that was cool.

We were stopped at a random checkpoint in Arizona earlier in the tour and some of our dudes got in a little bit of trouble with John Law for having some illegal plants on them, so we were unsure as to whether or not we'd be able to cross into Canada. Somehow we made it though! We got some crappy hotel and got to chill with all our Toronto friends that night. But onto the really fun stuff...

The second to last day of the tour was in Cleveland, home of the Alternative Press Headquarters. Before the show I went to the crappy mall down the street and found this sign in the men's room, thought it was pretty funny. Only men would need to be reminded of this hahaha:

I also found this in front of a business in the same mall, maybe you recognize it from a certain Tooth & Nail band. Who is ripping off who here? That's what I wanna know!

The show was great. During Mayday's set a bunch of us ran out onstage with guitars and pretended to rock out as an end of tour prank. Afterwards everyone from the tour was invited to some secret party with an open bar upstairs where a bunch of rich people in nice clothes, the AP staff, and of course a bunch of random girls who somehow found their way in, were waiting. Everyone actually had a lot of fun as you can see by this picture i took of the tab at the end of the night (complete with boner doodle). Alt. Press sure does know how to party!

The pranks continued on last night of the tour in Pittsburgh, PA at the Altar Bar. During YMAS some of the Mayday guys got on the PA and heckled them from the front of house. During our set a bunch of guys from the other bands ran out and danced around onstage shirtless during our intro. I think "It's Raining Men" was supposed to be playing in place of our intro music but something went wrong. Still a good prank nonetheless. Other than that, I can't remember anything too eventful from the last show but I do remember the Cleveland show was the last big party night and felt more like the big farewell of the tour anyway.

In closing, I leave you with a picture of a mighty neard, as pictured on the portrait of this slave owner that we found on the wall of a Cracker Barrel. Enjoy!

XXX

"AP Fall Ball" Tour Journal - Part 1

2009-10-20T21:29:00.001-07:00

Hello Internetz!

I've come to the realization that I'm probably not going to get around to making an entry for our Australian tour with All Time Low we did last May anytime soon... if ever.

SOOOO maybe those pics will surface some day in the distant future but for now if I am ever to have anything from this tour see the light of day, I figured I'd better get to writing, so here it goes...

We picked up on the "AP Fall Ball Tour" w/The Academy Is..., Mayday Parade, The Secret Handshake, and You Me At Six in Chico, CA on 10/10. The first show was a lot better of a turnout than our show there on the Saves The Day tour. Before the show we went to Pita Pit and walked around town and checked out some of the shops for a bit. There was some kind of breast cancer benefit going on in the park across the street and there were a variety of musical groups playing throughout the day. The comic book shop in town was awesome. I hung out with my brother's friend Kelsey at the show for a bit which was cool too. After the show we went home. Ruled.

I got to the San Francisco Regency Ballroom in the early afternoon before the SYG van arrived and the Blue Angels were doing their airshow that day so there'd randomly be piercingly loud bursts of sound from the jets flying overhead. Before the show some of us walked down to The Hundreds store down the street from the venue. Junior got a pretty sweet vintage looking baseball jacket. The store looks like a giant cave, it's weird. The show wasn't as good as the NFG tour we did there but it was still pretty good. After our set, Doug (the big cheese at the venue) told us an angry mother complained to him that the moshing during our set wasn't a fitting atmosphere for her Christian family, and requested they kick out our fans who were moshing. He said that he ended up kicking out about 9 kids, all of whom were promptly brought back in through the side door hehe. Excellent work, Doug. After the show I went to Taqueria Cancun with a bunch of friends but we all went to the one on 19th and the rest of SYG went to the one on Mission & Valencia (thanks for telling me everyone was going to 19th, Manuel). Got to go home again so it still felt like we weren't really on tour yet which is always a nice feeling.

The next morning we drove to Bakersfield and though we've played there before, this was our first show at The Dome. There was a stripper pole with black lights in the dressing room. Weird. Though it wasn't a huge crowd, a good chunk of it was comprised of moshers who just came to see us and they definitely got their money's worth; our set was awesome! Afterwards I realized my friend Spencer from Trash Talk came and had tried to get in but for some reason wasn't on the list even though I'd put him on it :( ...So Spencer, if you read this, sorry bud. I owe you one! After the show I caught up with my friend John who was working the box office for a bit then did 2 hrs. worth of Australian phone interviews for Soundwave before kicking off the drive to Junior's house.

We played The Avalon in Hollywood which is always a fun area because we have so many friends down there, not to mention we love going to Swinger's so that was a must before the show. As always, a trip to Cantaloop for frozen yogurt was definitely in order as well. After the show we had a Denny's "All-Nightr" which is basically where you hang out with fans and they give you a bunch of free food. A bunch of friends came with us, including an inebriated Brian Dale. He was wearing a kimono that our Japanese friend Yuka brought to the show and posing as our samurai security guard for the evening. He sat down, ordered a beer (what?! I didn't even know Denny's served beer!!) and began engaging in conversation with our fans... I cannot remember the last time I laughed as hard as I did during the meal that followed.

All the Southern California shows were great but I felt like the shows on the "Gig Life" tour were better and even bigger in some areas like Pomona. I get the feeling our fans didn't come out because they didn't want to pay higher ticket prices to see us play a shorter set with bands they don't listen to. On the upside, I know there are a large amount of kids who are seeing/hearing us for the first time every night on this tour plus everyone on the tour has been really cool. Big thanks to all our friends at Epitaph who came to the shows and brought us some new records and Converge merch. I was stoked to get my hands on a copy of the record by Ryan Gosling's band, Dead Man's Bones, as well as the new Converge record, before their release. If you haven't heard Dead Man's Bones, check out their songs here: Dead Man's Bones Myspace - very creative and unique stuff.

On our way to the San Diego show we stopped by Innes Clothing in Oceanside and our buddy Adam Shaw hooked us up with some sweet new gear. Thanks Adam! After that we headed down to Solana beach and went to Pizza Port for lunch then walked next door for dessert at my dad's new yogurt shop, Desserted Island. Delicious! After the show we said goodbye to Junior because he had planned on leaving the tour after the CA dates to make arrangements for his wedding in November. Our good friend Justin K. is playing in his place for the remainder of this tour as well as our European tour right after this while Junior and Susie are on their honeymoon. Congrats guys!

Arizona was way too hot (as usual) and so was Texas. We had a day off between the Phoenix and San Antonio shows so we stayed with Juan and went to this place called "Bob-O's" in El Paso and enjoyed batting cages, go-karts, bumper boats and mini golf for the day before continuing on our drive:

Before the San Antonio show I went to Hog Wild Records with Justin K. and Luis from TSH. I always make it a point to stop by this place because they have hundreds of sweet punk, metal and hardcore shirts. If you're in a touring band (or ever find yourself in San Antonio for any reason) and you like metal, definitely check this place out. The show was great, kids went nuts! Dallas was a lot of fun too and though "Gig Life" was better, a lot of our fans still came out and moved around for us. Plus we got to see Joel so in a way it was similar haha

Houston was a fun night, got to hang out with my friend Lucy. During the set we took four huge rolls of toilet paper and threw them into the crowd. Kids kept throwing them across the room and they were hanging over the rafters like streamers.

The next off day was an insane drive but we managed to stop at a mall somewhere near Tallahassee, where Justin and myself began discussing the gaping holes in our earlobes (the remnants of wearing plugs) and decided it would be funny if we started wearing diamond earrings, so we bought some and so did Mikey. We also stopped by another fun center and I fed some baby alligators and played arcade games while Juan, Mikey, Justin and Dan hit the batting cages.

When we got to Melbourne we discovered a baby gator pittin' around in the canal by the hotel, check him out:

It was in Melbourne that we experienced the best go-karts of the tour thus far: Andretti Thrill Park. This place has karts that go 46 MPH! The regular karts were great too. Mine was of course #43:

We played some mini golf, batting cages, and I even saw a guy wearing a Cold As Life shirt playing one of those "Extreme Hunting" games in the arcade with his wife & kid!! Here's a pic I took with my phone while racing:

We hit up the deli (which was excellent) that was connected to the arcade before heading to the show in Ft. Lauderdale, where we met up with the one and only Anthony Amor A.K.A. Tony Love, merch guy to the stars. The show was a lot of fun and went really well for us. The Glamour Kills tour was at The Revolution that night so we headed over there after our set and caught All Time Low's set, hung out with Vinny Vegas, our buddy Chris V, and our manager Keith, then partied with all the ATL guys after their show. I unfortunately had to miss out on some of the hanging out towards the end of the night because I was dealing with some drama (but I won't get into that haha), but all in all it was a fun night for the most part.

Anthony rolled with us to Jax and stayed at our hotel because we planned on going go-karting again in the morning but we ended up getting there at like 6 AM so we all slept until noon and didn't end up going.

In the morning we said bye to our little friend, went to Waffle House with Anthony then left for Jacksonville. The show was at Freebird, a venue one block from the beach. Pretty sweet. The show went really well.

The next day we headed down to Orlando to hang out with The Swellers & Hayley at their show at the House of Blues. Caught a couple songs of The Swellers' set and Paramore killed it as usual. Here's a picture of Hayley two-stepping onstage haha

After the show we went to BWW with The Swellers, Anthony, and Hayley. We definitely played the bear hunting arcade game, watched an awkward guy & girl make out in front of the whole restaurant, and drank rootbeer floats. Someone even discovered that Life of Agony was on the jukebox so naturally, we had to mosh.

...Part 2 coming soon (maybe)

XXX

Long overdue tour wrap-up: Japan

2009-06-17T00:10:00.000-07:00

In case anybody who reads this thing hadn't noticed by now, I'm really pretty lazy about updating. Well, I'm pretty lazy about a lot of things to be honest but hey, what do you want from me? I'm in a band! Responsibility isn't part of my vocabulary! Soooo anyway, I'm gonna finish with Japan now and get around to Australia sometime in the next few days. Sound good? I thought so...
Osaka was sweet. Started off the day with some "Kono Pizza" with Joe for lunch before lobby call. Not bad, but not the best pizza I've ever had either. Kinda weird that they serve it rolled up in cone form (the cone is the crust) though, so we had to try it regardless.
The last show was good but in all honesty the first show was the best... So let's move on to aftershow activities! Dan, Jordan, Mikey, and Junior went to some sushi place with Mayumi & Mitsuko. There was a huge jug of what appeared to be a large jug of snake wine (and a jar of what appear to be snake eggs?) by the stairs. AWESOME!!!
Joe and I didn't like the looks of the place (can you blame us??) so we ventured onward in search of something interesting to eat. We found some place very far away that served very interesting food that just so happened to taste very good. I started things off with some miso soup and a lemon soda, then ordered this musubi (that's rice ball in Japanese!) with tiny seasoned baby sardines inside of it, and purple stuff that might have been eggplant? Not sure, but I hate eggplant and I hated this stuff. The rice ball was good though, the sardines tasted like beef jerky.
I also ordered some smoked salmon, cream cheese & avocado salad that was really good and some crab fried rice that was even better. Then Joe and I split an order of stingray. This stuff ruled! It was chewy and a little crispy on the ends and came with seasoned mayo for dipping. Very sweet and delicious. This one's for Steve Irwin! In your faces, stingrays!
What an excellent meal for our last night in Japan! I left stuffed and the place was nicer than most places we'd found, yet decently priced. Good stuff. After that a few of us went to the aftershow "party" at some place called "Rock & Roll Bar" or something. Here's a picture of me with our tour manager, Emi. Emi loves to party as you can see.
I also found this old picture of NFG on the wall. You can't see it because of the glare, but Steve wrote "420 Dogg" below his name hahaha. Also, check out Joel from Good Charlotte wearing a Make Move hoodie in the next pic over! For those who don't know, Make Move was on our first tour ever. We met Junior because he was playing guitar for them at the time.
The next day at the airport sucked because Malaysia Airlines sucks. Oh well, at least Japan is cool. Australian tour summary coming soon!
XXX

Japan: update

2009-05-28T08:42:00.000-07:00

Japan still rules. I'm having way more fun this time around and I don't want to leave. Maybe it's the fact that it's not freezing cold and we're here with friends. The 2nd show in Shibuya wasn't as packed but it was still fun. Yesterday we had a day off so we went to lunch with our friends Miki and Gucci from Sony Music Japan, then we went to Harajuku where we spent wayyyy too much money at Kiddyland (a 6-story toy store), then walked around a bit. Here are some of the highlights of the past 2 days...

Lunch with Miki & Gucci
A Loss For Words Endcap display at the 7-story Tower Records in Shibuya, NBD

Spotted this giant Terminator at some Nike promo in Harajuku

Mousemobile!

We then went to dinner with Graham, Yuta, and Tome from Inyaface at our favorite udon restaurant in Shinjuku. On the way we stopped at a pet store and I found these cute but retarded-looking kitties...

I ordered the scrambled egg one, it's the jam.
Hangin' tough with Tome

Today we woke up super early and hopped on the bullet train to Nagoya. On the way Junior pulled out one of his McDonald's cheeseburgers from last night that he'd saved as a snack... disgusting.

"Don't judge me"

Apparently the ATMs here get sad when you cancel your transaction:

The Nagoya show tonight was really small (150 kids) but we could tell they had a good time. After the show we all went to some chicken wing spot and ate a bunch of really weird food. Tomorrow is our last show in Japan, Osaka!
XXX

Japan rules.

2009-05-25T17:50:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!
Yesterday was the first show on our short Japan/Australia run of shows with our good friends in A ll Time Low.
We flew out of SFO, then transferred to LAX before heading to the Tokyo/Narita airport. In LAX we saw Busta Rhymes with an entourage of dudes. I also spotted this lady in line wearing what appeared to be a Bayside hoodie, but turned out to be what I'm told is an Old Navy hoodie with little Bayside birds all over it, weird:
Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child was also walking around, I think she was on our flight because we saw her when we landed. We got to the Narita airport Sunday evening around 4:15 PM local time. Got to our hotel and cruised around Shibuya for a bit and found some weird crap at Don Quixote:

I got some hot lemon drinks and udon before going to bed. When I went to bed my voice was still completely shot from staying up all night for the video shoot. Luckily yesterday morning I could talk but I still haven't completely recovered. I managed to snap a pic of myself in these sweet PJs they give you at the hotel:
Walked around Shibuya some more yesterday with the band and managed to make a friend on the way. A girl came up to us on the street with gifts and introduced herself as Yuka. She said she'd been looking for us and happened to get lucky. We kidnapped her for the day and she proved to be a most useful translator. We hit up a ramen spot that some of the dudes went to last time and then got dessert down the street. Here's a picture of us with Yuka at our favorite boba & crepes spot in Japan, Pearl Lady:
After that we headed back to the hotel and then walked to the venue to get ready for the show. Before we played they had us do some press videos and photos. As you can see, we take these things very seriously:
Despite my throat not working, the show was great. The crowd was awesome and the kids were chanting our name when we walked onstage which was a pleasant surprise. Stage sound was awesome too. I took a picture of the crowd from the stage:
All Time Low sounded amazing. Looking forward to tonight's show at the same venue. After the show we took some photos with fans and then got sushi with Graham, Tome, Yuta, Mayumi and friends. They had this special item at the sushi bar called tuna steak, which I'd never tried. It tastes exactly like a mini steak on a ball of rice but it's tuna. Amazing. I ate at least 3 orders. After that we went to some lame bar for like 20 minutes. They played decent music and there was a cracked window that someone in Metallica supposedly broke, but other than that it was pretty boring and I was way too tired to hang out so I went back to the room. That's all for now!
XXX

NWAF Tour Wrap Up

2009-05-06T22:02:00.001-07:00

Wow. Where to begin? It's been a while since I've updated this thing and so much happened in the end of the tour I don't know if I'll even remember it all.
The Michigan show ruled. The dude from Cold as Life loaded us out just like he did last time we played Detroit, and I told him Cold as Life rules. He was not impressed. We hung out for a bit and after everyone on the tour stashed all of their fireworks/weapons/drug paraphernalia with Brett's friend, everyone headed for the border. We got pulled over by some MI cop a mere 20 minutes from the Canadian border. He held us up for hours with loads of ridiculous regulations he said our van didn't meet, one being that we needed our band name on the side of the van. Supposedly "it's the law." Yeah OK! After all was said and done he let us go without a single ticket, nice guy. He did however leave us with a laundry list of things we needed to take care of to ensure our vehicle was up to code. I think we threw it away. We ended up crossing the border problem free for the most part (well, they harassed Junior for about 20 mins. so nothing too out of the ordinary haha).
I awoke sometime in the morning at our hotel and walked inside and passed out. Water didn't work all day and we all really needed showers. Fail. I got healthy food for once at the mall across the street then headed to our off day show in London, Ontario. Before the show I went to McDonald's *cringe* with Mikey, more out of boredom than hunger. While there I discovered they had strawberry pies so I had to try them and they were amazing. It's like eating pop-tarts on crack. Backed hard. It was like a Monday night so there weren't a ton of people and I heard there was some kind of scene drama with the promoter so kids boycott his shows but all that aside, the kids who showed up had a lot of energy and our set was a good time. I drove to this guy Spencer's house who Kyleworks knows, he was super cool. When I showed up there was a rabbit in front of the van and I tried to catch it. Yet another fail.
The next morning we ate pancakes and practiced Set Your Grohls songs some more. We went to the venue in Toronto and got freaked out by all the black squirrels once again, a memory we'd buried deep in our psyches that we'd hoped would never resurface. We ate bad Thai food before the show, then hung out with a raccoon that kept walking around in the dumpster near the loading door to the venue. Check him out here. That night we got nachos with some Canadian friends after the show. Our waitress sucked. The nachos were horribly mediocre and overpriced but our Canadian friends don't know any better because most of them have never had real Mexican food so they were beyond stoked. After the show we drove all night to Albany to drop off Susie, who'd been with us since Chicago. I drove first shift through the border and bought some maple fudge (which is phenomenal BTW) at the duty-free shop, and continued driving on until morning, going insane and listening to Integrity the entire drive.
I think I started feeling really sick around the time of the CT show. Our set was a definite challenge to get through and my throat just wasn't up to par. Swine flu represent! After the show we moshed with Fireworks and we got Chadball to "open it up." We even got Jenny to mosh! Fireworks followed us to Strader's house where we all stayed up til 4 AM eating brownies and drinking tea and just being idiots instead of getting rest.
The next morning we went to SJC and had our final "Set Your Grohls" practice, which sounded surprisingly solid. I passed out on the way to the show and when I woke up Joe was moving the van 2 miles to our parking spot, at which point I had to walk all the way to HOB. Sucked. Our friend Josh Lovell came to hang out and brought us some shirts from his new clothing line, Bloodlust. The design rules and I can't wait to see more. Click here to pick one up! The show was incredible. Boston is always really good for us but this show and the CA shows were the best of the tour.
Hoodwink was kinda weird, it felt awkward playing slower songs to a crowd that expects fast & energetic music from us. Kids push moshed though, so I guess they liked it?? Either way it was a hell of a lot better than last year's. Watching NFG do Green Day was the highlight of the night for me. That night we all got food with Fubu & his friends, and Felicia & her friends at a diner, then everyone went their separate ways because everyone had girlfriends or friends they were staying with. There were a bunch of people in our room as it was so I stayed with my friend Genna at her hotel and got punished by all her drunk friends for a couple hours before passing out. Good times.
Bamboozle was a long day but it was worth it because not only was our set a ton of fun, I got to hang out with Duncan and see The Get Up Kids! Definitely didn't suck. After the fest we showered and at 3 AM or so, we began the 10 hour drive to Columbus, OH. Womp womp.
I finally got a laptop bag when we got to Columbus so Jordan P. could stop congratulating me on my "new" Macbook I'd been carrying in the store-bought box all tour haha. After the show I went to some donut shop with Fireworks then we booked it to Indy and crashed at the hotel.
The off-day ruled. Hit up the mall during the day then in celebration of the last off-day of the tour, Pete took the entire tour out to dinner at Olive Garden. Good man. We pretended it was Jordan Pundik's birthday and the waiters & waitresses all brought him a little cake and sang to him. Juan took some footage of the sweet hangs using some weird internet webcam broadcasting service with his iPhone. Somehow it ended up on youtube:

After that we all hung out in the hotel parking lot with some Hooters waitresses some of the NFG and Bayside dudes had met earlier, and they brought along Pauly Shore. I felt kinda bad for the guy, the entire tour punished him! Don't believe we hung with Pauly? Well here's a blurry picture to (kinda) prove it!
The next day we played the Egyptian room in Indianapolis. This place was nuts, it's like an opera house with tons of huge empty rooms and the whole place felt haunted. Didn't know what to expect from IN but we were pleasantly surprised, but kids brought the mosh and the set was a lot of fun! During NFG's set, a car parked a couple spots from our van caught fire and the fire dept. had to come put it out. Pretty nutty. Hayley and Hannah were both out visiting their BFs so after the show we all went to BWW. Here's a picture I took on the way over. Hayley is wearing my sXe beanie and looking very non-edge while doing so... hahaha

St. Louis was a sweet venue called The Pageant, which was owned by some dude who owns like half the town or something. There were pictures all over the kitchen area of him with every artist who's ever played there, among other countless celebrities (Obama, Clinton, and Bush to name a few). Our friend Kyle from Reno tattoos down the street so after the show a bunch of us went bowling and he came along and hung out.
Kansas was a good show but the real fun was afterwards. Most of the tour went to BWW after the show and started chanting things at the punishers who followed us in there. After our meal we were in the mood to dance so we all went to find a bar with music. The first one we walked into was playing some music so instantly the Fireworks dudes took their shirts off and started dancing with each other. Apparently this kind of behavior doesn't fly in Lawrence, Kansas, because they instantly turned off the music, turned on the lights, and told everyone the bar was closed. We left and went to another bar. Last call, no dice. So naturally we started chanting, "We fucked up! We fucked up!" and moved along. This dude wouldn't let us in either so we started chanting, "This place sucks! This place sucks!" and kept walking until finally we found a place with a country band and some square dancers. We dominated the dance floor with some circle-pitting and general badassery. The band liked us so much that when they finished their last song, followed by our "One more song!" They were nice enough to do it for us. We got really ridiculous for the last song and we were even running onstage and yelling things into the singer's mic but he didn't care he loved it. He even joined us in a "USA" chant! As soon as they finished the last song we all sprinted out of there just to be weird. The rest of the night was filled with harassment of the drunk locals, dives off of unconventional objects, random circle pits around people and cars, laughing at drunk girls falling, and chanting anything and everything we saw around us. We even happened to see Batman and Spider-Man running down the street! So naturally, we circle pitted around them while chanting "Outweird the weirdos!" as well. All in all one of the best nights of the tour. Check out a video Steve made here.
Oklahoma sucks. Sorry if you live there, but there's really no way around the facts. The venue was in the middle of nowhere and so we went to the mall before the show to kill some time. The only cool thing was the weapon store, where we found blowguns, ninja stars, butterfly knives, switch blades, and Nazi knives. Yes, Nazi knives. Only in Oklahoma my friends. When we got back to the van it wouldn't start so we called Mr. Chris Mojan to save the day. He gave us a jump and when our van started up again we started moshing around the parking lot in celebration. It died again when we got to the venue so Mikey and Junior took it to Auto Zone and replaced the alternator like true savs. Got the van working again and made it back to the venue and ran onstage with literally no time to spare. Played to one of the best crowds of the tour. Kids went off. It ruled. After the show I rode with NFG to New Mexico because I was sick and needed rest.
Before the Albuquerque show a bunch of us went and got pizza down the street. I got anchovies on mine just to do it. I actually kinda liked it. Then we saw the new Star Trek movie which wasn't half bad, and I don't even like Star Trek. The Trekkies walking around town in their spandex suits were also pretty entertaining, I must say. The show sounded like crap onstage but it was probably one of the more decent reactions we've had in NM to date, despite all the fighting.
After the show we drove all night to AZ where were to meet the tour at 9 AM for the tour paintball battle royale. It RULED. I got a couple people out and raised 2 of the flags when we did team capture the flag games, and left with only a couple bruises. Chad & Anthony had made a hit list and somehow they all ended up on my team so during the last game I betrayed my team (who, by the way, had lost every single game) and tasted sweet sweet victory for once. Here's one of the group shots we took:
The last show was full of pranks. During Fireworks, Chad played the audio to the "Britney Pig Squeal" video in between songs. Hilarious. If you don't know what I'm talking about, feast your eyes...

During our set, Chad (and his unknown accomplices) lit these huge smoke bombs onstage and they would not go out, suffocating us with smoke. It was intense! There were a couple fights and after our set these dudes fought a couple security guards out back, pretty gnar. During Bayside, Chad and a few others brought cornhole boards onstage and had a full on game for a couple songs, which was pretty entertaining to watch. During NFG's last song we all got shirtless and danced/moshed onstage with glowsticks. Saying goodbye to everyone sucked more than usual because the tour was so much fun and everyone on it was just awesome. As you can see, goodbyes were long and drawn out, but it was well deserved...

Pete is a Father figure to Chris & Kyleworks

Nightbeast & Me

Definitely one of the best tours we've ever done in the states. I hope to tour with everyone again someday!

XXX

NWAF Tour Update: Day 33

2009-04-25T15:48:00.000-07:00

We went to Chevy's for dinner in Peoria, IL and our waitresses ruled. One looked like Kirsten Dunst. I ate so much tamalito I thought I was going to puke... mmmm nomnomnom.
The show in Des Moines was surprisingly really good. We hadn't played there since the Terror tour so we weren't sure what to expect. After the show I P90X'ed it up with Chad, Junior and Jenny (NFG's monitor girl/stage tech/assistant TM), then Junior, Joe and I went to McDonald's and undid all of our workout before heading to the hotel hahaha.
St. Paul, MN was an alright show but it's been hard for me to get into it for the past few days because I caught a cold and it just seems to be getting worse. Myth is a cool venue though, we played there on the Paramore tour. After the show everyone had a humongous fireworks war in the parking lot, making it the coolest night of the whole tour. There were explosions in all directions and people were basically just aiming for the crowd of spectators, who would then scatter every time a rocket or firecracker came too close. A cop came after about two hours of chaos and he was super cool about it. He basically asked if we were done lighting fireworks because some of the neighbors were complaining (the nearest neighbors were probably close to a mile away if that gives any indication of how loud it was) and then drove off. We left shortly afterward and about two minutes into our drive, our trailer tire just rolled off! Luckily Fireworks was behind us and grabbed it. We were then faced with the unfortunate task of driving to the nearest repair shop and camped out in front of it until they opened.
In the morning we got the trailer fixed by some sketchy dudes who were definitely all white power, the boss even had an iron cross tattooed on his face! We hauled ass to Milwaukee and showed up at The Rave ten minutes before we had to play. We borrowed Fireworks' gear and played what felt and sounded like a weird set to us, but apparently the crowd didn't mind too much because it was the best reaction we've gotten there to date. Ruled. Our manager, Chris Allen, came out to the show and took us out to dinner at the Ambassador Hotel restaurant across the street. It was nice to eat real food that was not only delicious but also way beyond our personal budgets haha. After we got back to the venue Junior, Brett Jones, Hodge, and our friends Kiki and Jamie went exploring around The Rave and I finally saw the pool in the basement, which turned out to be pretty creepy; complete with smeared dark hand prints and pentagrams drawn on the walls. After that we drove to Chicago and stayed with our friend Daniel Schein.
Chicago rules and it was warm for part of the day yesterday afternoon, which was a first for me. Daniel took us to Gino's Pizzeria and we got some noms for lunch, then bought costumes for the Set Your Grohls set for Hoodwink. I'm still sick as hell so our set was a struggle for me to get through but all in all it was a fun show, got to hang with Steve Kane and some of the 2*Sweet dudes which is always awesome. After the show we were loading out and this valet guy got pissed because our van was blocking him from moving cars and he started trying to act hard with us and kept saying he was gonna fight everyone. Once he'd threatened us and started to get in people's faces, everyone came over and started antagonizing him until he realized he was severely outnumbered and went back to his car. After that anytime he would drive or walk past us we would all yell "U MAD?" it was hilarious. We got food at Chicago's Pizza after the show and on my way back to the van I ran into our friend Pete. He'd gone to eat with Anthony, Steve Kane and some other friends. It was cool getting to catch up with him for a bit. Chicago has some of the best dudes ever.
Today we're in beautiful Livonia, MI hanging at Kyleworks' house before the show. I don't have any cool pics or anything for this post, so here are some of my Dad sleeping. Enjoy!
XXX

NWAF Tour Update: Day 28

2009-04-16T11:34:00.000-07:00

The Augusta show ended up being awesome. It was a Tuesday night but kids came out and lost their minds regardless. Nightbeast and Carridale were both great. As you can see, Nightbeast was hilarious.
We also debuted "Summer Jam" off our new record at the Augusta show, and it went over much better than expected so we've played it most nights since; the moshers love it!
The SC show was at the House of Blues in N. Myrtle Beach next door to a gator farm called Alligator Adventure. Before doors opened a few of us went to the gator farm next door and I snapped some cool picz, check 'em out:

...and some footage I captured of some baby gators:

We missed feeding time so I decided to hold one of my own. I took a couple chicken breasts from catering and chucked 'em over the fence and watched the gators fight over them while Steve filmed and others watched in amazement from the balcony above. Overall the actual show was kind of weird, what with security beating up kids and what not :\ That HOB is notorious for that. After the show I drove all night to Player's hotel room in Charlotte, NC.
When we got there he was already at work being trained to do grown-up shit so we hung out and showered and ate free breakfast. Charlotte was kind of a weird show but it was cool hanging Craig and talking with our old friend Rodney. Chris from Stretch Arm Strong put on the show so we got to hang with him too. This was also the day Fubu flew out and when he showed up he looked like this:

...He also got kicked out of the show for moshing/yelling at some kid who hit him. Guess he just looks like trouble haha. After the show we ran into this scary girl we met last time. I don't remember her name but Fubu calls her "Predator" and once we saw her we made it a point to avoid her for the rest of the night. Apparently she's banned from all shows at Amos' and all of the employees there have restraining orders against her because she harasses bands and is legitimately nuts. Creepy! After the show I left my laptop charging because it was almost dead and when I came back like 15 mins. later, the room had been cleaned out and my laptop was gone. After talking to everyone at the venue I called Chris from Stretch and he let me in on a very bad joke my band was trying to pull on me. So Brian (NFG's tech) and I decided to get them back and he called Junior panicking and saying I flipped out and punched a hole in the wall on their bus and that the cops were coming to investigate the theft of my laptop. They bought it. We hung out and ate at the bar next door for a bit then began the oh-so-fun drive to Baltimore. This was the night Shai Hulud were dropped from the tour. They were having a long talk with Steve and Chad when we left. I think NFG should be making an official statement about that soon if they haven't already.
The Baltimore show ruled. Before the show a bunch of us went down to the harbor and got food and I picked up one of these sweet crab hats and ended up wearing it onstage. $8 for one of these bad boys, but well worth it.

Trapped Under Ice was so good! They were super cool dudes too... And I finally got to see Anton Rough play his songs live!! Had a blast hanging out all night with tons of old and new friends. Baltimore rules.
A ton of friends came and hung out in Philly too. Philly marked the first night of the addition of our good friends in Fireworks to the tour. Mike Ski came out and tattooed a bunch of people too. For those who don't know, Mike is a sweet dude and sings for a sweet band called The A.K.A.s. Brett from Fireworks got some bats behind his ears, Nightbeast got a clamshell on his arm, and Joe got his Virgin Mary de Guadalupe from Warped Tour finished. The show was a lot of fun. I stagedove in flip flops for the first time in my life during NFG hahaha. After the show I went to Kingdom of Vegetarians down the street with Fubu and got some Mongolian pork. The woman behind the counter had her extremely hyper 5 year-old son there and we started talking to him and taught him the proper usage of the term "You mad!" His Mom was not a fan of the phrase hahaha. It ruled, Fubu and I had many LOLz. Before the drive to Cleveland we hit up Wawa with Fireworks and got our snack on.
Cleveland was pretty boring. It was cold out and as always there was nothing to do before the show, so we P90X'ed it. We worked on arms and then did the "Ab Ripper X" and hooooooly shit was it tough. This thing is like the regular workout on crack, and it's all stomach muscles and packed into a mere 20 minute workout. Myself, Junior, and Tymm all tried it with Chad and we couldn't keep up with him. We couldn't even finish half of it! After the show a bunch of the tour and friends played cornhole and c-lo in the loading dock and then we drove to what would make the top 3 worst Taco Bell experiences of my life. They "ran out" of beans (Taco Bell code for "we're too lazy to make more") so I got a side of rice since my choices were pretty slim after that, and went to sleep pissed off. We got a pointless one bed room at an extended stay and I think the only one who ended up staying awake to put it to use was Junior who drove.
Cincinnati yesterday was all cold and rainy. It was also our 3rd year in a row playing Bogart's on 4/20. We hit up BWW and Urban with some of the NFG and Bayside dudes before the show. The "Smoke Your Bowls" set was kind of weird, the moshers took the day off for the most part, but we could tell kids were genuinely feeling it. During NFG's set some kid tried stealing a stack of shirts from Fireworks and they all surrounded him until security came and kicked him and his accomplices out. There is nothing more disrespectful that you can do to a touring band than steal merch; the chief means of income on tour. Kid's lucky he didn't get carried out on a stretcher. After the show I hit up some place called La Rose's down the street and got some cheese ravioli, a salad, and garlic bread for $9. Ruled.
We have the day off today and we're at a friend of Fireworks' house. He has the softest and most affectionate pets in the world. Fireworks just left to see Observe & Report and we're just taking it easy doing laundry and practicing for our "Set Your Grohls" set at Hoodwink. I think tonight we'll hang at NFG's hotel and go swimming or something.
XXX

NWAF Tour Update: Day 19

2009-04-12T18:35:00.000-07:00

Right after I wrote that last post, we got the news that the freeway going into Denver was unsuitable for driving so we had to go all the way back through SLC and then down to Dallas. The drive was a hellish 32 hours. Oof.

When we finally got to Dallas I P90X'ed it for the first time with Chadball, Chad Hulud, and Junior. P90X is an intense workout routine that (supposedly) the actors in the movie "300" used to get ripped in order to fit their roles as supreme badasses. The show was nuts. Our set was awesome with the exception of someone throwing a humongous unfolded hunting knife onstage which hit me in the shoulder (luckily it was the handle side that hit me) and bounced onto Junior's shoe. Our set was then cut short due to the floor caving in. The set was going great until all of a sudden security began waving their flashlights at us telling us to stop playing. We thought there was a fight or something but the next thing I knew everyone was being ushered outside. Apparently the barricade was bouncing up and down along with the crowd and the building couldn't support the weight. The result: a 12 foot concave divot in the hardwood floor of the "pit" area. It's kind of hard to tell from the pic but it looked nuts. The downstairs ceiling right below this looked even crazier; the support beams were bent! Security wouldn't let us take photos of that though.

After that, the show was relocated to one of the bigger downstairs rooms. My friend Jenn showed up and was nice enough to drive myself, Junior and Joe to Taco Bell for food and then to the spot where JFK was assassinated. Got a few pics. The "X" marks one of the spots where ol' Johnny boy was when one of the bullets struck him. Also got some of the book depository, the grassy knoll, and the surrounding area.

Austin was cool too, I got some vegan food and Dr. Pepper Slurpees with Ariel and Anthony Amor before the show then met with our lawyer at some health food cafe. I also saw this lady:

The show that night was at Emo's and it was awesome. Kids were going off. After the show I was tired so I ate some pizza and passed out in the van.
Houston was another great show as well. Got to hang with Lucy, who took Joe and I to a Thai restaurant which, upon further investigation, turned out to actually be a Vietnamese restaurant. Way not as cool but we still got our nom on regardless.
The drive to FL sucked but the Orlando HOB show ruled. When Joe was moving the van to unload he backed up into some Euro dudes' rental car and left a couple small dents in the front bumper. lolz.
I hung out with towel butt and we went to bodyworlds before heading to St. Pete, the exhibit was totally gnarly. The show was a lot of fun despite the stage being super tall and the barricade being super huge, Brent and Ping (Anberlin crew son!) biked down to the show and hung out too.
Yesterday we practiced all day for our "Set Your Grohls" set for Hoodwink and then went to Ian's for Easter dinner with Bayside, Steve Klein, and the Grushka family. The food was amazing and afterwards we fed the unsightly turkey-looking ducks with Ian's son Oliver, broke open coconuts from the tree in his backyard and ate them, and played with his pugs. All in all it was a great Easter.
We got a hotel last night and I finally got some real rest for once, which has been a rare luxury on this tour. Tonight in Ft. Lauderdale was good but the stage sound was kinda weird this time around. NFG is killing it, playing their last song right now, then sweet hangs with all our friends from the area before our not so fun drive to play a show in Augusta, GA on the day off with Carridale, Dolarhyde, and NIGHTBEAST, who is riding with us along with Hodge and towelbutt to Augusta. It's gonna be a fuuuuun drive! >:(
XXX

"Not Without A Fight" Tour Update: Day 11

2009-04-04T21:58:00.000-07:00

I am sitting in a hotel room in Rock Springs, WY instead of playing a show in Denver tonight because early this morning the entire tour had to pull off the freeway due to snow hazards. So, we spent the day in a Walmart parking lot in Evanston, WY, lighting fireworks and eating crappy food. We just got dinner and split a hotel room with NFG to chill in until we get news of the road conditions and determine which route to take to Dallas. Even though it sucks nobody got to play tonight, we made the best of a bummer situation and ended up having some fun today. What is there to do at a Walmart in Wyoming, you ask? Why, take one of these, of course! (Bigger pic coming soon)

On the brighter side, up until today this tour has been great! We're on the "Not Without A Fight" Tour with New Found Glory, Bayside, and Shai Hulud, and all the shows have been sold out and the crowds have been awesome. The unique thing about this tour is that everyone bonded instantly the first day. With most tours it takes a couple weeks for people to start warming up to each other and hanging out but everyone on this tour is really cool and down to earth. Here's a recap of our trip thus far:

- Played a secret show at the Gnarwhal house in Tucson, AZ the day before the tour started. Trash Talk hit us up as they were on their way back from SXSW and got added to the show last minute and it was a blast! Way too many kids + way too small of a space = awesome show :) The girl who lived there said I could swing from the chandelier when we played so of course I did, and it ended up kind of breaking but not getting torn out. However, there were wires exposed and it started shocking people who touched it, myself included. Sketch! All in all a great show and it was fun hangin' with the TT doodz again.

- The First day of the NWAF tour was fun, My Uncle Dennis and his kids came and hung out and they were stoked. My little cousin Maddi has been calling every radio station in her area requesting our songs every day since hahaha. After the show everyone on the tour gathered in the parking lot and lit off an M-80 that Chad somehow acquired. It was LOUD. A cop came up and asked us if we knew anything and we told him it was a black '83 Honda Civic. I don't think he bought it but he left us alone regardless haha

- The CA shows were kinda stressful worrying about guest list but we had a lot of fun times with friends too. My Dad came out to the San Diego HOB show, always fun hanging out with him and watching him drink and tell stories with my band and tour mates. Shai Hulud wasn't allowed to play the Anaheim HOB show because Disney didn't approve of their misanthropic lyrics. Kinda funny/ridiculous, considering Slayer has played there. Good thing we're "family safe" so I could get my churro fix in Downtown Disney. SF was amazing. Possibly the best reaction we've had there, we even plugged the Daily Donalds blog during the set. I wore my shirt and we even brought him onstage. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, check it out here. The entire tour, along with Trash Talk and Silverstein were all in town and all ended up meeting up at the Hemlock afterwards so I got to hang with a lot of people I don't get to see enough of these days.

- Portland was our best show there to date, and surprisingly, turned out to be a really fun show for all the bands. Stayed with our buddy Kent, he's the man. Check out his band.

- Seattle was fun (minus the weather), paid way too much for a cab/bus and got incredible vegan food with Joe and Jordan P. at some place called Hillside Quickies. Hung out with some old friends, made some new ones, and the set was great. All in all a good show.

- Boise, ID was cool. Best crowd we've had there I think. Great backstage catering. Backed hard.

- The drive to SLC sucked. Hung out with my 2nd cousin Ryan, his wife Heather, and their kid neighbor at the show, and afterwards began the long drive through snowy mountains that landed us where we are now. Womp womp.

Catch y'all on the flip side.
XXX

The record is done!!!

2009-03-18T14:05:00.000-07:00

...Well, on our end of things at least. We're still waiting on a couple guest spots to be finished and a few finishing touches before we send it off to be mixed and mastered but that will be done by the end of next week. It was a long (6 weeks) and difficult journey but we made it. It's been 3 years since we recorded our last full length and this record is without a doubt ten times the record "Mutiny!" was for a variety of reasons. It's faster, less goofy, more complex both musically and lyrically, plus we've all gotten way better at our instruments and we had a lot more time in the studio to work on things until we were happy with them. The bar has been raised. The label will be announcing the signing at the end of the week and the (tentative) street date is 7/21/09.

I must credit the following people, places, and events for keeping me sane throughout the course of this album's recording session:

-Jimmy Eat World for playing "Clarity" in its entirety. One of the best shows I've ever seen.

-Felicia for getting us front row of the VIP section tickets to the aforementioned show, along with hooking up list spots to countless other shows

-Meshuggah for being the heaviest band on the planet and somehow influencing our record

-McDonald's filet-o-fish Fridays

-The burrito truck by Mike's studio

-Mike Green for taking this project on. He had no idea what he was getting himself into!

-Cantaloop frozen yogurt

-VONS' free 7th deli sandwich deal

-Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

-Books

-The internet

-My iPod

-Junior, Susie, and Nala for donating their house (and some of their food) to us for a month and a half

-And last but not least, all of our friends who came and hung out or did guest vox

Mutiny is dead!!!
XXX

Recording: Day 36

2009-03-08T18:00:00.001-07:00

I have lost my mind.

XXX

Recording: Day 19

2009-02-14T15:44:00.000-08:00

So we're making a new record in Mike Green's studio in dirty, smoggy, overpopulated Los Angeles, CA. Today marks 19 days since we got here for recording and so far drums and bass are finished. They should be finished with rhythm by the time I get back. For the first week it was just Jordan and Mikey in the studio doing pre-pro and drum tracking so the other four of us were losing our minds trying to beat each other's high score in the "Nazi Zombies" game at the end of Call of Duty: World at War. We got bored so we also started a heavy hardcore band with Junior's friend Danny AKA Joto 1, tentatively named The Hatred. We finished one song and parts for one or two more and hoped to record a demo before we left LA but who knows if that'll happen now that they're tracking guitars and Dan will be most likely going home after that. If we weren't down the street from Hollywood and there weren't shows going on almost daily I would have long since slipped into full-on dementia being down here for so long with nothing to do.
I saw Meshuggah on the 3rd at the Hollywood House of Blues with Cynic (ex-Death) and The Faceless (though we got there late and missed The Faceless), it was amazing. They were so loud and heavy and flawless it put me into a trance... I thought my head was going to explode! We watched from upstairs and the balcony next to ours was literally bouncing up and down and looked like it was going to collapse.
Last week I went with my buddy Tom to see our friend Scott's band, The Growlers, in a warehouse that the dude who runs Ezekiel Clothing owns in Costa Mesa. It was in an industrial district so we were having some trouble finding it until some guy in his mid 30's and a reflective rain jacket asked us if he could help us with anything. "Yeah we're looking for the show," Tom said. The guy pulled open a gate and we walked down the driveway were a ton of kids hanging out. Once we got inside, the show turned out to be a lot better than I expected. There were two empty rooms next to the room with the show in it, one of them had a projector set up and it was playing some bizarre sex cartoons. This place looked like a punk rock art gallery or something. All of the bands were playing psychedelic surf rock, but not all of them did it well haha. One of the supporting bands were called Japanese Motors and they were really good. I guess their singer is some famous pro longboarder and RVCA pretty much just funds their band. I was shocked that the draw was so well considering this was some super DL show in the middle of bunch of warehouses. Tom was saying the high school kids just go to any show there regardless of who's playing. My guess would be that there were close to 600 people in this place; most of them high school aged, all smoking and drinking beers that they'd bought from the makeshift bar in the corner which was obviously not carding. Sketch!

We played The Troubadour for the first time last Wednesday with Final Fight, Media Blitz and Danny's band Crash Akademy AKA "Primer Walls," it was awesome. The show ended up selling out and we had a ton of friends come out, including Four Year Strong and Phil and Sheep who were all in town for the Taste of Chaos Tour.
Thursday night This Is Hell were in town playing with Funeral For A Friend and The Sleeping at The Roxy so Phil and I went because everyone else either had to track or was too scared. We got there just as they'd finished so I walked over to The Key Club to see Madball, Terror, and Stick To Your Guns. I ran into Chad, Kent, Garth from NM (who lives out here now), Anthony Amor (he was doing TIH's merch), Sheep, Robert & Katrina, Steve Looker, and a ton of other friends. Chucky Edge was doing Terror's merch still so it was cool talking to him for a bit as well. The show ruled but Madball didn't play enough songs which sucked, I think there was a curfew.
Friday night Craig Jennings (manager for Bring Me The Horizon) and Kevin Lyman (runs Taste of Chaos & Warped) had a little pre-ToC get together with BMTH at the Sunset Marquis Hotel (balliiiiin!) in Hollywood and Sheep invited us to come and hang out and have a few free drinks courtesy of Mr. Jennings. I went with Mikey and we picked up Phil beforehand for some pre-drinking yogurt festivities at our new favorite Hollywood spot, Cantaloop. Once we got to the hotel it was pretty awkward for a while. We just hung with Flip and Phil and talked with Matt Ash who works with BMTH about booking stuff and sorta shot the shit for a while. We did see Billy Bob Thornton hanging out though, that was kinda rad. Once we all relocated to the bar at the front lobby things started to pick up. Some of the FYS dudes showed up as did Rob Hitt, Brad Gilboe, and an array of other characters that we didn't expect to see. Mike Green even stopped by and helped himself to a slice of some stranger's red velvet birthday cake and stole one for me too before he left. Delicious!
Taste of Chaos was a super fun hangout but the show itself was kind of weird. I ran into a bunch of the Epitaph heads, Brian Dale, Trevor from the Smartpunk stage on Warped this summer, Michelle Yoon, a few other people I hadn't seen in a while, and even made some new friends!
Sunday I went with Tom to see The Swellers play a house show in Orange. The show was super awkward until they played. They were solid as always and the 30 or so people there were having a blast.
Monday I sat around the studio and worked on lyrics all day and then went to our friend Felicia's apartment and hung out with The Swellers dudes for a bit. I left early and got a ride to San Diego with my friend MVM and I've been down here ever since. Got to hang with Mishella which was cool and went to Taste of Chaos down here last night at HOB which was cool too. Thursday's set was a lot better this time around because they played more of the songs I like and during one of the new songs a bunch of us threw these humongous black balloons they'd inflated off of the stage and for the rest of the song they bounced around the room on top of the crowd, looked pretty cool. I go back to the studio tomorrow where we will begin writing lyrics/vocals. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera down with me but luckily there are some pics Felicia took from our show at The Troubadour available here.

XXX

Massive post

2009-01-30T14:38:00.000-08:00

So after almost a year, I've finally finished the saved draft of my tour diary for the "Bamboozle Road Show" tour. It's quite a read.

If you wanna check it out, go to my first post in this blog, or if you're REALLY lazy, simply click here.

XXX

Meow

2009-01-28T10:29:00.000-08:00

This is my brother's cat literally climbing up me and sitting on my shoulders while I'm on the computer (taken with my camera phone)

In other news, I'm on the last day of my "no corn" kick and it's still just as hard as it was on the first day but I'm still going strong. We leave for recording with Mike Green in LA in like 3 days. We'll be there February 1-21.

XXX

Corn fed nation

2009-01-23T17:07:00.000-08:00

I was talking to my friend Kramer at a friend's BBQ last week about high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), government subsidizing of the corn industry in America, and how it has dominated the makeup of American food and negatively affects the health of Americans as a whole. It got me thinking...

HFCS has been generating some negative publicity for some time now and subsequently many American food and beverage companies have had to replace it with another form of sweetener in order to avoid decreased sales. This is public knowledge at this point and I'd say avoiding HFCS has even become a trend in American dieting as of late, but what about corn in general? Is too much a bad thing? This was what I set out to learn.

Now I know it's healthy to have a balanced diet and that excessive amounts of anything (even corn) in one's diet can't be good for you which was one of the things that concerned me about my conversation with Kramer; the human digestive system probably isn't adjusted to breaking down as much corn as the average American is eating. So I decided to do a little bit of research when I got home to see just how much corn that really is. The results of my little research project were shocking. Not only did corn exist in my diet in high amounts, corn was in literally almost EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY GROCERIES in one form or another! Exceptions included water, cheese, and an avocado. My pasta, Tofurky slices, candy, iced tea, cereal, waffles, and whole wheat bread all contained corn-derived products. Even the almonds had hydrolyzed corn protein in the ingredients! Needless to say I was a little taken aback by all of this.

I did some more research and read up about it on the internet. It took some time but what I found was this: when we eat corn, we're essentially eating the seed of the corn plant, which is what the kernels are. Seeds are designed to remain intact as they pass through the digestive system of whatever eats them in order to be capable of germination once they reach the soil. The human digestive system isn't built to break down cellulose (which is what the outside of the kernel is made of), which is why it shows up in our stools after we eat it. The inside of the kernel is mostly made up of starch, sugar, and oil. Can you see now why Americans are so fat? This stuff clearly isn't helping. HFCS is especially hard for the body to break down and lives in the fatty tissue longer than other sweeteners (as if starch, sugar, and oil weren't fattening enough).

At this point you're either as shocked as I was, or this is already common knowledge to you; in which case you're probably saying to yourself, "that's really fascinating and all, Matt, but get to the damn point already!" The point is I've decided to abstain from all corn and corn derivatives for one week. Just to see if I can do it and what effects it will have on my lifestyle. Right now I'm finishing up day 2 and I have to say: this is HARD! I almost didn't make it through the first day because this stuff really is in everything! I had to end up buying all new groceries and spent hours reading ingredients at the grocery store, but here I am $80 later with more than enough food to finish out the week corn free. So far I've learned that by eliminating all corn from my diet I am forcing myself to eat healthier by default. I found myself having to buy many more whole foods and items from the health food aisle in order to avoid corn. And while I don't think anyone should go as extreme as to eliminate corn from their diet entirely, eliminating all processed food products containing corn is probably a step in the right direction.

So that's my update for now. Kind of a long post and probably boring for some but I am intrigued by learning new things like this and in all honesty I am kind of a nerd (I'm choosing to blog about this on a Friday night after all), so there you have it. Take that for what it is.

Until next time, a slightly more self-educated Matt Wilson saying goodnight and thanks for reading.

XXX

Dunzo

2009-01-18T22:07:00.000-08:00

The past week has been somewhat eventful. I'm pretty sure nobody reads this because I've only told a handful of people that it even exists but I'll preface the recap of my week with an explanation of the current state of my life regardless: SYG did 4 shows with Four Year Strong on the East Coast starting the day after Christmas. I found out right before going over for those that we had to move out of the apartment I was sharing with Morgan & Monica a month sooner than expected, so when I got back I had like 2 days to move everything out. I hadn't figured out where I was going to stay for the month of January so I asked my Brother and he said I could stay at his place. He also offered me a job working with the catering company he works for so for the past 2 and a half weeks I've been staying with jason and waking up at 5 AM Monday-Friday to work this catering sales job. This job sucks. I've been averaging $40-50/day for 7 hours of work and it's just not worth it for me. Jason hates it too I don't know how he works there and then goes straight to another job for 6 hours. Anyway last week I told the boss I'm quitting so tomorrow will be my last day. I must say, I'm stoked to be done! The only thing I'll miss will be the convenience of buying $1 menu items at the end of my shift. Well, that and talking to all the hot secretaries in all the business offices on my route haha

My birthday ended up being a lot of fun. Went to P.F. Chang's and got to spend time with people I don't get to see enough of anymore so that was nice. After that some of us went bowling and I gave out my Christmas presents I had made for everyone who contributes and/or enjoys the "Daily Donalds" blog. Check 'em out,

we even got the star himself to pose in the photo! If you are reading this and you have no idea what I'm talking about, head over to http://dailydonalds.blogspot.com and check it out. It may not be as funny if you don't know Donald, but it's still pretty good.

After bowling we went to Artie's in P. Hill and at first we thought they were closed because the door wasn't open and there were no cars out front but after Noah knocked on the door the guy came and let us in and said we could come and hang until close so we had the bar all to ourselves. We listened to Pantera and R. Kelly and played pool for an hour or so before everyone headed home for the night. Duncan and I saw "Benjamin Button" and "Defiance" this week, both good movies. For my birthday Morgan bought tickets to go see Tim & Eric live in SF which was hilarious. They came out in yellow spandex suits singing "Diarrhea!" ...Definitely the best birthday present I received this year.

In other news, I got these little devils as my birthday present to myself:

Today I went to my Uncle John's house and hung out with him and my Cousins Ben and Nick for a few hours which is always fun. They're 5 & 7 so they were super stoked to have someone to play with for the day. We shot the BB gun and played wiffle ball and Wii then got pizza. Not much else to report so I guess that's all for now. Time to get some rest, gotta wake up in 6 hours!

XXX

26

2009-01-10T20:34:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is my 26th birthday. How depressing. I've felt old since my 17th birthday and have always awaited the death of my youth with an awful feeling in my gut. I still feel (and act) pretty youthful for my age in my opinion and when you're in your mid 20's I don't think that's considered a good thing by society. Yet I don't want to let it go. I can't. Once my youth is 100% dead and gone, what do I really have to look forward to in life?
Children? ...Marriage? ...Homeownership?
Ugh.
Just the thought of assimilating myself into the "adult" world and allowing myself become completely absorbed in it makes my stomach turn. I already don't enjoy most of the things my peers do like going to bars/clubs, watching sports, cars, etc. It's a world I've never fully understood, and undoubtedly one that has never understood me. I don't want to take part in it and not to be dramatic but I really don't see a purpose in continuing to go on living once I reach the precipice of my youth. It doesn't seem like you're even really living your own life after a certain point. The thought of fully "growing up" makes me cringe. Maybe I'm delusional and that time has already passed me by ages ago. I mean, legally I was no longer a child at 18 but I sure felt old at the time. Have I been living in denial, perpetuating a fantasy for the past 8 years? It's possible but I still feel the lust for life within me. I know it's there because I feel it gradually slipping away as the days pass like fleeting moments... Every day doors close for me, and every day I take a step closer to becoming one of the lifeless husks of the once beautiful people that I see walking all around me; the walking dead.
I haven't updated this thing in ages so I'm making regular updates part of my new year's resolution. This blog is so disorganized that I don't even know where I last left off so I won't bother getting up to date with a recap of the 2nd half of last year. I'm still caught up in all the old posts that I've saved, just sitting there unfinished and unpublished in my "edit posts" box. I'll get around to those eventually too but since my main purpose in keeping this thing is to remember what goes on in my life and my corresponding thoughts, I'm probably going to have a lot of incomplete posts when they do finally surface because I can't remember shit even 5 minutes after it happens. C'est la vie.

No more hope just closed doors
and as we walk into oblivion
every step is a reminder of passing hours
of passing days
of passing lives
of passing away

XXX

"TM Pumps!" Tour Update

2008-06-05T03:00:00.000-07:00

Let's see... where did I leave off? The show at Jerry's Pizza was ridiculous. All the bands had great sets but I don't think anyone was prepared for what happened during our set. There were so many kids pushing their way up onto the stage (keep in mind it was like 6 inches tall) that we were all being asphyxiated between their bodies and our equipment. That made it 4 near-death experience shows on this tour so far due to venues that are way too small for us to survive playing. We've way outgrown the draw we had even 6 months ago, it's scary. Going into this tour we were all wondering why our booking agent continues to book us at these tiny venues that force us to endanger our lives just by playing. Still can't figure it out but it's frustrating to us and the kids who are trying to enjoy the show. Mikey's drums were getting knocked over, the mics kept cutting out, all we could hear was noise, it was like 100 degrees, and the walls were sweating just as much as everyone in the room. Disgusting. Once again, the best shows are the hardest to play. Afterwards we got down on some sick parking lot mosh with the 2*Sweet dudes and hit up Del Taco.
The Petaluma show was at The Phoenix Theater. I got to hang with some friends for a day and the show was alright but I never really enjoy our North Bay shows. There's always an awkward vibe and that definitely applied to this show as well. There was a poster for an upcoming Gallagher gig on the front door to The Phoenix though, that was kinda cool. During our set Donald threw a watermelon onstage during our set and Jordan slipped on it haha shit was everywhere. It was Dan's birthday so he was completely wasted when we played and kept fucking up while everyone watched and laughed. He didn't remember any of it the next day.

San Diego was the last night of the tour, we played Soma. We filled out the small room and the show went off, it was way fun. Falcon and Zaira came to the show and hung out and after the show all the bands had a good parking lot mosh session.

All in all it was a good tour. Not long enough, but it's always nice touring with nothing but friends.

XXX

Yo dawg!

2008-05-22T14:15:00.000-07:00

The rest of our little UK escapade was awesome and is brought to you by the word NICE, the phrase "yo dawg," and weed. On the 13th we went shopping in Leeds and I got some shoes at Top Man and we went to the Cobra/ATL show in Leeds that night and did a Blink cover w/ATL for their encore it was hella fun. After that the venue had a club night so we partied with babezzz all night (and of course got with none of them), it ruled.
The first of The Peel shows was awesome but the second was way better, at least for me because ATL played and did a Midtown cover w/Gabe and both the SYG and Movielife sets went off harder the 2nd night in my opinion. Lags and his girl came out, as did many of our other friends new and old. Afterwards everyone from the show went to party at The Works, where JT spins. All in all it was a great trip. Some of the best shows we've played since the inception of our band.
We awoke at the crack of dawn and flew back to the states. I slept for the majority of the flight. We hung out at Strader's and played Halo 3 with his friends that night.
The ICC show was retarded. Sooo much hotter and way more packed than last time... it was sold out! After our set I was so exhausted that I went outside and threw up 3 times in a row. It sucked. The best shows are always the hardest to play. Keith and Pike came out for the show so we got to talk biz with them for a minute and we all got fitted for in-ear monitors after the show. We got Spike's with Fubu, Jeff, and the JS and Fireworks guys, then headed out to Cleveland where we got a hotel.
Cleveland was the last day of the HTL/Farewell/Sing It Loud tour and we were added as main support. Some girls brought us gourmet cupcakes and Wawa lemonade tea. Ruled. This show was sold out too and the first thing the promoter lady said to Craig when he warned her that the crowd would be crazy for us was, "oh well I wouldn't worry about it too much... Nobody's here to see you." We definitely made her feel dumb after about 30 seconds into our set when we had to stop playing because security was overwhelmed, Jordan's mic cable snapped, kids were diving onto a pile of bodies, and some girl had a panic attack. We were like, "wow that didn't take long!" We warned the crowd that if they didn't want to get knocked into then it'd be best not to stand in the very front. Immediately 8-10 girls moved from the front of the stage over to the side of the room. We resumed the set playing to a frenzy of kids going completely nuts. I thought I was going to break my neck. The whole set was pretty much nonstop chaos. It was by far the best set we've played in Cleveland so far, and after we played about half the crowd left which is always lame. Hit The Lights still put on an awesome show though and afterwards the lady came up and apologized to Craig.
The DeKalb, IL show was the first official date of the "TM Pumps!" tour and it was at this little cafe we'd played once before. Craig explained the promoter had to cut off presales because it came close to selling out in advance. 3rd sold out show in a row, not too shabby! what I don't understand is why Pike continues to book us at these tiny venues that are way too small/dangerous for us to play in cities where he knows we draw? My guess is that he's just too lazy to do otherwise but I wish I could figure it out. Anyway the DeKalb show went over well and afterwards we made the drive of death to Denver!
Denver was cool, Maris came and took pictures of a scantily-clad Mikey for his myspace and I hung out with my friend Nina, good times for sure. There was a Thrice/Circa Survive show across town and a Rockies game that same night, which probably affected the show's draw. Only like 150 paid but they got their money's worth in MOSH. After the show we gave Maris a ride to his graveyard before embarking on another wonderful drive to beautiful St. George, Utah!
I've never been to St. George before in my life, but man, is it ever boring! Last night was the smallest show we've played in over 2 years. There were like 7 presales, 103 total paid, and up until we played, we'd only done $75 in merch. Somehow we ended up selling something like $525 in merch by the end of the show and kids went off despite the small crowd and the "No Moshing" signs posted everywhere. Hit The Lights had a busted alternator but they somehow managed to fix it themselves and made it in time to play the show which was amazing. After the show the whole tour went to Vegas and most of them stayed up gambling and getting drunk/stoned until the sun came out. This was very entertaining to watch. I lost $30 playing blackjack, slots, and roulette before heading up to HTL's room to witness Dave and Anthony (their TM) having a drunken mattress fight while we all watched and laughed hysterically. I think it was around 5:30 AM when I finally made it back to our room and as I drifted off the last thing I remember was Craig closing the blinds to block out the sunlight as Mikey and Junior got out of bed and headed back down to the casino.
Vegas. Fuck yes.
XXX

U Mad?

2008-05-12T13:55:00.000-07:00

So far, this trip to Europe has been amazing and brutal at the same time. The flight over to London was wack. Ben (our driver) is pretty much Phil's twin so that rules. His van is a lot smaller than we'd anticipated so the entire time we've been sharing our leg room with a mountain of merch bags and luggage which sucks but luckily the long drives are over. Upon being picked up from the airport, we all decided to go to Amsterdam on our day off and party. Good idea. We took a pretty weak ferry across the English Channel to France and drove to an overpriced hotel in Belgium in the early morning and slept all day. We hung out with the horse and the Shar Pei that were running around the hotel's back yard during the day, and that evening we got amazing food at what seemed like a truck stop diner on steroids on our way to Amsterdam. Once there, we walked around for hours just drooling at hookers in between stops at cafes where everyone except for Junior and myself got high eating and smoking various THC-containing products. As with every other visit to Amsterdam, every ten minutes or so we would walk by guys asking, "Coca? Ecstasy?" so I started saying it to them first haha. All in all it was a fun night and at the end of our excursion a baked Ben drove us back to our hotel where the butter-toothed old man let us in at 3 AM.
We woke up early and headed to Groezrock. This thing was way organized. I was tired and hot so I slept in our dressing room until the fest started. We opened the fest at 5:30 PM but our set was awesome and the sound was surprisingly really good despite the fact that we were playing on a gigantic stage in a massive tent. There were so many friends at that thing that it felt like we weren't even in another country across the ocean. Anti-Flag, Silverstein, and All Time Low were all there. We got a chance to see ATL kill it and hang out with Fubu (who showed up way late) before taking off for London. I felt bad because we didn't have room for Fubu but there was nothing we could do. Luckily he made it the next day.
The drive back sucked even more because we were already so tired and sleeping for like 20 minutes on the ferry was just a tease. There was no point in getting a hotel since load-in was so early, so we attempted to sleep in the van in the parking lot of a Tesco down the street from the venue. We were so tired by the time we got to Give It A Name fest that we all just immediately crashed on the concrete floor of our dressing "cubicle" the minute we got there. Luckily we had Ben and Phil to save our asses, taking care of checking us in and getting merch sorted out in the morning while we slept. I Woke up more tired than I was when I'd fallen asleep and we all played exhausted to about 20,000 people. Unfortunately everything that could've gone wrong, did. Mics and guitars cut out and the camera guy stepped on a power cable at one point, causing half the stage to lose power for the second half of "Flight of The Navigator" which caused the rest of us to lose track of where we were in the song. We should've just stopped playing but we continued on, further embarrassing ourselves by completing the song... no big deal, it was only the biggest show of our career to date! Keith was there and unfortunately witnessed the entire disaster. After that I tried to sleep some more but I was so stressed and tired already that I couldn't. All Time Low were awesome and so were Paramore.
When we got to Annie's I went to get food down the street with Dan and Joe once we got there and we witnessed the craziest brawl ever. There were like 5 dudes with their girlfriends being kicked out of a bar and fighting with security, and security was fighting back! I got a couple seconds of footage with my camera. That night we got like 4 hours of sleep. So pointless. Oh well, at least we got to shower.
The Sheffield fest was about half the size and way more laid back, not to mention our set went over way better. I was so bored all day before we played. I was relieved to see Fubu though, he'd made it alive! Alex from ATL came out during our set and did a song with us, then Hayley came out and did the end of "To Be Continued" with us too (it sounded so good!) so all in all it was a fun set. ATL owned as always and the rest of the show was great. After the fest we walked with ATL and Paramore to look for food but after walking 15 minutes in the wrong direction, we realized that T.G.I. Friday's, and everything else, were closed due to it being 12:30 AM on a Sunday night. Stupid England. Apparently you can't do ANYTHING after 6 PM on Sundays here, not even eat. Not to worry though, there are always plenty of Kebab shops! We went to one near Leeds on the way home and got pizzas for ₤2.50 at a place called "Simpsons Pizza." The outside of it was decorated with characters from The Simpsons (I guess they don't have copyright laws in the UK), it was amazing. Junior and I hung out in the kebab shop while everyone else got high in the van. The ride to Helen's house until we went to sleep was undoubtedly one of the funniest hours of my life.
Today we got Popina's in the morning and I took it easy at Helen's with Phil while everyone else went to Movielife practice. Ruled.
XXX

"Bamboozle Road Show" Tour Journal

2008-04-30T15:54:00.000-07:00

I didn't have frequent enough access to the internet on this tour, so I just wrote all of these down in my phone as I went along and figured I'd post them all at once later. I've finally uploaded all the pics so now it's as ready as it's ever gonna get. Here's what was cool enough for me to commit to my crippled memory on this tour:

3.29.08 - 2:37 PM
Last night was the first night of the Bamboozle Road Show featuring Saves The Day, Armor For Sleep, SYG, Metro Station, and A Cursive Memory. Jathon is riding with us for the first 3 dates and on the way up to Seattle he and Jordan ate and smoked a retarded amount of weed. Jason brought a bunch of "day ruiners" and sold them to Metro Station's merch dude, Chris V.

Check out Anthony (our merch guy) sleeping:

4.8.08 - 2:54 AM
...Jason and Chris Clark did the first few days of the tour and their last day with us was Chico, which they drove up for. Jason brought more day ruiners with him and sold them all to Chris V, at which point he proceeded to eat 5 in a row, after which he smoked a blunt in Metro's bus and shouted absurdities out the window to us while we did an interview with a guy named Matt Wilson on the sidewalk below. Jason has never seen anyone eat more than 2 of these things in a day, and says 5 is an inhuman amount. The day ruiners, as well as Jason's weed, quickly became legend among the smokers of the tour and he was missed as soon as he and his traveling weed dealership left the tour haha.
Anyway I just drove 6 hrs. on the first shift from LA to Albuquerque w/Anthony in shotgun. We've grown delirious. We almost ran out of gas and luckily made it to some bizarre gas station that I'm convinced exists in an alternate dimension we discovered via wormholes in the space-time continuum after driving 85 miles straight without seeing diesel. This place had ceramic lamps depicting images of Catholic saints and half the store was lined with fish tanks. We had the pleasure of paying the low low price of $4.89/gallon for our gas and my snacks cost me $13. What a steal! When we walked inside I grabbed a Cactus Cooler and upon seeing this, Joe immediately goes to the van to get his $ so he can buy the last one. While he's gone Dan buys it just to fuck with him and we stand in the candy aisle with Jordan and Junior, anxiously anticipating his inevitable "discovery." Like clockwork, Joe walks back in and walks over to the drink case and opens it, looks around a bit, then realizes the Cactus Cooler is gone. "Oh, god damn it!" We all lost our minds. I got some cherry M&M's which kinda sucked but Dan liked 'em. I also got chocolate Skittles which are veg and actually pretty decent.
Earlier today Rupert took us to the Urban Outfitters he works at and got us all his 40% discount. I got some Puma sandals and a heather red hoodie. Mere minutes later Joe goes into the Vans store and buys the red Vans I have; THE SAME EXACT ONES THEY WERE SELLING AT URBAN THAT WOULD'VE BEEN $25 WITH RUPERT'S DISCOUNT!!! Undoubtedly one of his greatest anti-survival moments yet. Keep in mind this is after he'd received a phone call to warn him not to do what he did, and after buying them I told him he should return them and go buy them at Urban but of course he ignored that too. Joseph Ray, ladies and gents. Going out of his way to make life harder on himself 24/7.
Bamboozle Left yesterday was one of the best days I've spent in the last 4 years with this band and without a doubt one of the best shows we've ever played; we opened with the Blink cover we'd been doing the past couple days on the tour w/the ACM dudes and it went off. I already miss those guys. The whole day felt amazing but our set was especially great and The Movielife set was incredible too. I appreciated it so much more knowing it was probably the last time I'd see Vinnie sing these songs and that it was my bandmates playing them. OK time to go to sleep...

4.9.08 - 1:33 PM
The drives lately have been sucking. It's a cold Wednesday afternoon in Texas today which is strange because it's usually hot here. The van smells like dirty laundry and none of us have showered since Monday morning. Last night in Albuquerque was the worst sounding set of the tour. All we could hear onstage was an echoey (sp?) wall of noise, it sucked. We did like $400 in merch. Lame compared to how merch sales on the rest of this tour have been. After the show we hung out with Anthony from Armor and Buck (international TM and road technician to the stars) at a karaoke bar. He was going to do No Doubt's "Spiderwebs," but they never called his name so instead we watched him drunkenly insult the fat chicks onstage, calling them Chewbacca and what have you. At some point he wandered off and we couldn't find him anymore.

4.16.08 - 11:48 AM
Last night was wild. The entire week since my last update has been almost nonstop awesomeness.
Austin was cool, we stayed with our friend Nate and his GF at their apt. with their crazy ass deaf dog who likes to bite people/things and hung out with Ariel, Juan, Nutter, and a bunch of other friends after the show and went to Won Foo and got Dr. Pepper Slurpees at 7-11. Apparently you can only get them in TX.
In Dallas we hung out w/James K and finally went to The Clubhouse for the first time and got a picture with Vinnie Paul, it ruled.

Oklahoma was aight, I called out the security lady working the show onstage because she was a bitch to me before our set and she was letting kids fall on their heads when they came over the barrier. I got food at this amazing Italian pizza/pasta joint down the street from the venue called Falcone's. This place had posters of every great mob movie on the wall including a poster for "Casino," my favorite mob flick, signed by the cast and crew.

I want this!

Houston was a good show too. I was stoked I got to hang out with Lucy, who is one of the sweetest people I know. We got Thai food and sat around people watching all night. Ruled. The drive after the show suuuucked.
We spent our entire day off driving and loafing around a mall in Tallahassee.

Here's a dead bird we found stuck in our radiator grill:

4.18.08 - 12:42 PM
The FL shows were ridiculous. I feel like we entered an alternate dimension when we hit the state line. Such a weird place. We started things off properly by stopping to eat at the first Cafe Risque we saw. After that we stayed in Orlando because we were burnt out on driving. Playing The Revolution was nuts as always, SoFlo loves SYG! Dan and Junior got tattooed before our set at Colorfast studios around the corner from the venue, where I would be getting my nipples pierced later that night. It was Chris V's birthday (merch guy for Metro) he turned 25 so he was drunk as hell and so were Taylor and Melissa...

Right after the show I got my nipples pierced (along with a very hard slap in the chest) in exchange for some free shirts from a very drunk Scott at Colorfast Studios around the corner from Revolution.

All in all it was a crazy night filled with drunk people, nipples, piercings, tattoos, gorgeous women who are out of my league, shirley temples, and even a fight involving Diablo FSU at the bar next door! Some dude said something to him and Diablo just knocked him down in one punch. It broke out into a brawl and everyone kept trying to calm him down but he was hopping around like a leprechaun waiting for the next person to make a move, holding his SYG shirt in his hand throughout the entire ordeal! I caught the tail end of the brawl on video with my digital camera. Wildest night of the tour thus far.

After a night like that I didn't expect much from St. Pete but the crowd went nuts for our set and afterwards we enjoyed some awesome Thai food down the street.

Orlando was cool too, a bunch of our friends came out. Hung out and talked with Rob Dobi and his wife Maggie for a bit, that guy is so awesome. Artie (ACM's merch guy/TM) was there too. All the support bands shared the big green room so it was without a doubt the sweetest backstage yet. It was like a full on frat party complete with beer pong, flip cup, and other drunken foolishness. After the show we went to BWW with Keith & his GF Anna. Chris and Ben from Armor and Anthony's friend Eddie tagged along too. Frank 3 Gun walked in while we were in there strangely enough, said what's up to him. Apparently his GF lives in Orlando. Anyway I drove from 2 - 6 AM after the show with a very high Hash Brown passed out next to me riding shotgun:

In case you were wondering, Hash Brown is the nickname Jordan has acquired somewhere along the course of this tour. This can be attributed to his newfound appreciation for smoking hash, and his last name being Brown.

Speaking of which, we're in Atlanta now and I just got a hash brown casserole at Cracker Barrel. Rules.

4.20.08 - 9:39 AM
4/20 bro! Smoke weeeeeeed! Atlanta ended up being the best show of the tour for us. 700something kids paid and went the fuck off during our set. On top of that, Saves The Day's set consisted of pre-"Stay What You Are" material only! Everyone kept buying them drinks while they were playing so by the end they were pretty trashed haha. This was the first time they'd played a lot of these songs this tour so Mikey filmed the entire thing and I got a set list from Durijah afterward, which I meant to post a picture of but now I can't find it. Instead here's a picture from the show. This was probably the best STD set all tour for me.

The next night we played the Skate Park of Memphis which was weird because the vert ramp was gone and the layout for the place was totally different. Our set was intensely hot and my mic sounded like a cyborg when I'd sing into it. Wack but we hung out with Andy and Hannah the whole show which was cool. After the show we began driving...

4.30.08 - 6:59 PM
Cincinnati was cool, it ended up being the best set we've played there to date. It's funny, we played there on 4/20/07 on the Anti-Flag tour which was one year before to the day. So naturally we announced ourselves as Smoke Your Bowls again haha.

The Grand Rapids show was one of the smallest of the tour because Paramore and Jimmy Eat World were playing across town that night, not to mention Grand Rapids is generally a weak area for shows to begin with (or so I'm told). Chris Mojan, Justin K, Baloni and friends came out to hang which was awesome. Jaimie and Stephanie came out too, and Hayley had their runner drive her over from the Paramore show to say what's up. After our set, Mikey, Dan, Joe, Junior, Mindy and myself went to the Paramore/Jimmy show to hang out and caught JEW's set.

This was my first time seeing them and it was nuts (I once stood outside of Bottom of the Hill on their "Clarity" tour with my friend Josh but didn't go in. Way to go, me). They were so intense and didn't say a word their entire set until they were finished playing and then again for the encore. It was cool catching up with RJ while they played and talkin' smack with him haha. JEW's drum tech is the original drummer for Suicidal and their other guitar tech is Timmy Chunx. Sweet road crew. After their show, Hayley went with us to T.G.I. Friday's and so did the Fireworks crew... It was rowdy! After that we moshed all the way back to the buses and everyone went home so we played Halo 3 on Armor's bus for a bit before beginning another overnight drive.

Our day off was kinda lame, we went to Steak 'n Shake and then hung out in Chicago and I went with Joe to a secret Myspace show Moby was playing downstairs at The Metro across from Wrigley Field. There was a huge line outside but since our friend Pete works there he hooked it up. It was kinda lame though.

The Moby show:

Wrigley Field:

St. Paul, MN was cool, finally met Colin Strandberg who designs a bunch of shirts for us. Turns out he used to sing in Nehemiah haha. I found the coolest costume shop around the corner from the venue and we got a bunch of animal masks for our Warped promo photos, and got a Fidel Castro mask for Anthony which he began wearing while selling merch. Yes...Cuban B! hahaha. Ate an amazing veg chicken parm sandwich and then we bounced out for Milwaukee.
Milwaukee wasn't bad but the pillow room was locked! :( It was the best sounding set and the best reaction we've gotten at The Rave to date so that was cool, plus the AL4W dudes came out to the show so we chilled with Matty most of the night. Here's a picture of the parking lot at The Rave that I took from the front of the venue before the show. Above our van you can see the sign for the Ambassador Hotel across the street, where Jeffrey Dahmer killed and ate hella fools:

Hung out with J-me and Kiki which was good times. We got Pizza Shuttle after the show with AL4W and acted like idiots, cheering and chanting and singing, making fun of people while a hired police officer just stood by and watched without doing anything haha. After the show we drove to Chicago and showered at Jenna's before rolling to the show.
Chicago's show was at HOB so that ruled, I ate hella food and after our set I mostly hung out by merch for the rest of the show. That night we drove to Liz's house and got there early in the morning and passed out for a few hours before heading to the show.
The guy from Cold As Life loaded our equipment into the Detroit show which was pretty weird haha. Our set was a lot of fun and Saves The Day's was even better. Chris told us that their printer was out of paper so they were just gonna do requests and they liked doing that so much they did it every night for the rest of tour. We kept holding up signs that said Third Engine until finally they played it. The surrounding area sucked and nobody ate anything but PB & J sandwiches and chips all day because that's the only food we had in the dressing room upstairs. After the show we went with Lydia to Liz's house and partied with her and Jaimie & Steph. Party.

Columbus ruled. I don't really remember our set but Saves The Day's was so awesome. We kept buying them shots in order to get them to play the songs we wanted to hear and they ended up playing an hour past curfew! Eventually the rest of the band walked offstage (they were all trashed) and Chris grabbed the mic and said, "What is a curfew anyway, honestly? Isn't this supposed to be a college town? Nobody here goes to bed early!" and proceeded to play Three Miles Down as the venue turned on the house lights and the entire crowd screamed the words at the top of their lungs. He ended up getting in trouble with the venue afterwards but it was well worth it if you ask me. It was seriously incredible to watch, and easily one of the best sets of the tour. I wish we'd videotaped it. After the show we went to BWW with Mitch, Chris V, and the Armor dudes. They got rockegnized by our babe waitress.

The next day we stayed somewhere in VA on our day off and went to a shitty mall and hung out with Metro for a bit. It was Junior's birthday so we went to Olive Garden with some of the Metro dudes and got him a pizookie with, "Happy Birthday Audelio Flores Jr 88" written on it in frosting and a bunch of Sprite and grenadine. Afterwards we chilled with Chris V and Mitch at their hotel and then passed out at ours.

5.12.08 - 8:20 PM

The show at The Norva was our most decent show there to date. Kids were moshin' it up and singing along, and the rest of the show was pretty cool too. Keith came out to the show and hung out for a bit. I can't remember anything from after the show but it probably wasn't terribly exciting but it may have been the night we played our final game of front vs. back lounge Halo 3 on armor's bus. it ruled because they had all the best players and on our team we had all the worst players plus Ben. So basically it was Junior, Dan, Ben and myself on our team and we won every game! I think it ended up being like 6 games total. We rule. After that we definitely didn't let them hear the end of it hahaha.

Baltimore was awesome. Anton, Fubu, Joe Mitra, and all of Senses Fail came out to the show to hang and had a blast. My mic kept cutting out so at the end of the set I threw it up in the air and let it fall on the stage and the venue got a little pissed about that. I got into an argument with Junior and Joe about it afterwards in front of everyone which in turn made me even more pissed off, it was retarded. Anyway after all was said and done we talked it over after the show and minutes later a very drunk/high Chris Conley jumped the parking lot fence and ran into our van, rolling around in our bunks and ranting and raving about how much he loved them. He continued rambling on about a lot of things, like how he liked the smell of the cave and we got some sweet video documentation of this. Upon exiting the van, he left us with some slurred words of wisdom. I don't remember what it was exactly but he said something along the lines of, "Life is great but it's going to end so let's enjoy it!" Out of everyone on that tour I think i could relate to his perspective on things the most. Funny because most of the time he came off as socially awkward to others but he has a very objective approach to everything which I think is cool. Talking to Chris isn't awkward unless you make it awkward because he seems so relaxed all the time. We got some footage of everyone smoking in the infamous back lounge of Metro's bus before taking off for Kurt McGurt's house.

Thank science we went to Wawa the night before because we didn't have time to hit it up in the morning before the show.

The show was sweet, Jimmy Eat World had a day off so RJ and Timmy Chunx came out to the show and hung out. I got a GG special from Gianna's which was better than the show itself and afterwards I went with Joe, Junior and Billy Yayo to see Tragedy at the First Unitarian Church:

We made it back to the show in time to catch the end of Saves The Day's set and afterwards we hit up this pretzel factory that RJ recommended in the ghetto that sells giant pretzels made fresh and they're like 35 cents apiece! Ruled. That night we crashed with Kurt again and got like no sleep because we had to go play Hoodwink the next day.

Hoodwink is basically just a Bamboozle warm up show with like a quarter of the bands playing to about 1,500 kids. It was freezing and we sold like $90 in merch. Weak. Joe played in a bunny suit though, that was entertaining:

That night we got a tiny hotel and chilled with John Bowes, our good friend who plays in the band CDC.

...And here's John eating his own beard:

Bamboozle was crazy. There were so many people and both our set and The Movielife went off. It was one of the best shows we've ever played, and also one of the biggest crowds we've ever played to.

Hit The Lights had a great set too.

Yeah, that's an inflatable mattress they threw into the crowd that Nick jumped onto.

Later on RJ waved me up onstage to watch Jimmy as all the "cool" people got denied stage access for the first half of their set. Mwahaha suckers. They were awesome despite the crummy weather.

After their set I checked out some of Snoop Dogg before heading over to the Red Bull VIP tent, but all I could see was smoke.

The Red Bull VIP tent was exactly what I thought it'd be at first: a ton of "industry elite" types schmoozing about, mooching free drinks from the open bar and "networking." That type of get together doesn't appeal to me at all and events like these are usually what make me hate the music world, but HOLY ASS things got awesome fast! We knew almost everyone in the tent after about an hour of people trickling in when word spread that everyone was hanging out in there. My time in the tent went from making fun of people, throwing drinks, degrading women, and uttering racial slurs at increasing volumes w/Mikey and the HTL dudes... to helping Fubu get drunk... to dancing with Lydia to the surprisingly decent mix the DJ was spinning... to laughing at Nano drunkenly falling on girls with Keith... to chatting with the Red Bull guys, who for some reason treated our band like royalty and allowed us go in and out as we pleased with as many guests as we wanted, even though everyone else had to stand outside due to the tent reaching capacity... to playing Rock Band with Mikey... to finally running into Chris (high on shrooms at the time) and listening to him tell me about how sweet his shoes were as he proceeded to hug (and kiss!) every member of my band he saw that night, and tell us how much he loved our band and that he wanted us to write out a set list for them for the show the next night. After I said goodbye he resumed his solo dance session in the middle of the room with his eyes closed. Chris Conley everyone, best dude on the planet. We went to a diner with Keith, Craig and Fubu afterwards, and ran into Chris V and his friends. Bamboozle was another one of the best days I've ever spent with this band and I hope we can play again next year. We took off but we were all so tired from sleeping like 3-4 hours/night for a week solid that we had to pull over and sleep at a rest stop about an hour into the drive.
In the morning we made a few pit stops in MA to buy sombreros, a pinata, candy, and a bottle of Patron tequila for the show that night. I figured that since we wouldn't be on tour together on Cinco de Mayo, what better way to end the tour than by celebrating Quatro de Mayo?!
Tom and Brad Rheault came out to the show and so did Strader, so it was good hanging with them for a bit.
Valencia was on this show which was cool too, those guys seem pretty sweet and Ollie Mac was TM'ing them (in his limited all-over print myspace hoodie) which ruled.
During Metro station's set, Jordan, Dan and myself all went out on stage carrying bass guitars and rocking out pretending to be their missing "mystery" bassist that comes through the PA every night. They actually thought it was funny which was good haha. For our set, we all came out wearing the sombreros and Metro Station booty shorts (except for Jordan who had fallen victim to fear's tight grasp). We had some trouble breaking the pinata ("Of course this giant plastic toy bat will work!" -Mikey) but we ripped it in half and threw it, and the bat, into the crowd. The set was incredible up until the last minute and a half, at which point a fight broke out, died down, started up again, and was then broken up completely...But not before Jordan decided to PMS about it and run off the stage and hide in the van for a good hour sleeping in the cave. This pissed the rest of us off because there was so little time remaining in the set and it had been so great up until that point.
I'd written our band's song requests on a paper plate and placed it in STD's dressing room and to my surprise, Chris walked onstage carrying it and actually used it for their set! This night was the most drunk we got them the entire tour and by the end of the set they'd killed the whole bottle of Patron. For one of the last songs Manny just laid down on the ground and remained there, playing the entire song that way.

After the show I hung out by merch and listened to Chris V's weed and alcohol induced ramblings about life. I told him he ruled and he said something so funny I had to write it in here: "Matt, I don't rule. I am just a weakened version of your reflection, bro!" He then admitted he'd stolen it from of a DMX song hahaha. After that there was a full on rager on Metro's bus.

Everyone on the tour made an appearance with the exception of Manny (who was puking, which Dave informed us was a first for him), Durijah, and Ben, Nash, and PJ who were hanging out with their ladies.
Needless to say we were all bummed when we rolled away that night and everyone agreed The Bamboozle Road Show was one of the best tours we've ever done and we will always remember it that way. I learned a lot as a touring musician and as a person on that tour and got to know a handful of great people who I hope to remain friends with for a very long time and hopefully tour with again at some point.

XXX