Parkway Drive Tour - Part 2

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

Dunzo

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