Tour Recap Day 5: The Thunderbird Cafe (Pittsburgh, PA) - 10/11/2011

We woke up around noon on Tuesday morning and thought we may have lost Chad.  I remembered he crashed in the van, but was nowhere to be found in the morning.  We couldn't get a a hold of him for a while and for a moment thought maybe he was kidnapped.  It turned out he was just at a coffee shop down the street.

Relieved to find Chad, we got on the road to Pittsburgh around 1 PM.  I'm always excited to visit my family in Pittsburgh, so the drive kind of flew by.

Once we arrived in the city we were quickly reminded about the uselessness of GPS in Pittsburgh.  There are just too many hills, windy turns and overlapping roads for the Garmin to handle.  After the Garmin recalculated our route 75 times we ended up in the Penguins parking lot...right before a game... It was a bitch getting out, but we eventually did and Google Maps guided us to my Uncle Randy's house another 20 minutes away.

We ate a great lasagna dinner (thanks Aunt Cindy) and headed out to The Thunderbird Cafe at 6 PM.

We bandaged up Adam's hand, still unable to find a normal band-aid and then settled in for a great set by The Hawkeyes. I was really excited to get these guys on the bill.  I've had Double E stuck in my head for a few days since.

We performed after The Hawkeyes and then watched another great performance by Triggers.

The bands were great and although we had a small crowd (not totally unexpected for a Tuesday night), it was still a fun time.

We made the trek back to my Uncle's house and were happy make it an early to bed kinda night.

(Back Log) Tour Day 6 Recap: Garfield Artworks (Pittsburgh, PA) - 3/1/2011

So we’re on the road driving through the great Quaker state of Pennsylvania from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. Rumor has it this will be the most boring drive we ever undertake on the North American landmass, although I have to say the tunnels, bridges and scenery are pretty sweet so far.

So that said we’ve decided to kill time by playing I-phone air hockey and telling stories of all the things we’d do if met the cast of Always Sunny at Paddy’s Pub when we get to Philadelphia. So far the best thing we’ve come up with is to staple ourselves to one of their faces so they couldn’t remove us, and we’d get to be on the show. By the way, does anyone know if Paddy’s Pub is a real place? So far the internet has been providing conflicting answers to this question.

The show at Garfield Artworks tops the list of shows in terms of crowd participation so far on this tour. There was a massive tambourine solo during All We Ever Had performed by my uncle Kevin’s girlfriend, Rhonda, and an ongoing speaker phone conversation with my grandma between several of our songs.

Here's me with my Uncle Kevin and his girlfriend Rhonda. Way to kill it on the tambo Rhonda.

Also, huge thanks to my Uncle Randy and Aunt Cindy for letting us stay at their place and to my cousins Niki and Tyler for offering up their beds for us to sleep in. Thanks to all of them for feeding us (sorry if we smelled guys). Raviolis and pulled pork…delicious.

Amanda and Kevin, don't think I'd forget about you, thank you guys so much for coming out and enjoying the night with us.

Finally thank you to Boulevard of Allies and Wine and Spirit for sharing the stage. Was a blast, can’t wait to get back to Steel Town soon!

Tonight it’s The Fire in Philadelphia. Hoping it’s warm inside the The Fire….lost my coat two days ago…hoping we get some nice weather… Anyone know some good coat stores in Philly or NYC?

(Back Log) Tour Day 5 Recap: The Treehouse (Columbus, OH) - 2/28/2011

So these next couple posts will be back logs, meaning I wrote them during the tour, but could not find a healthy wifi signal along the way to post them.  Pretend you're Doc Brown and enjoy living in the past for a minute here....we'll start with the day 5 recap of Columbus... here we are on our way to Pittsburgh the morning after.

This morning we woke up early in an attempt to get to Pittsburgh early enough to see some of my family.  It’s been two hours and I swear we’re like 5 miles from the rest stop.  The fact is that while it’s really awesome to just plug in an address and follow your GPS without a map, it’s also a huge pain in the ass when it has no idea where you are and decides to recalculate every two seconds.  We’ve fallen off the highway completely at this point, however, once again we all agreed that taking the scenic route off the highways made for a way more interesting drive. 

                                                                                                                       

So yeah looks like I’ll have some time to write this little blog here about last night’s show in Columbus.

So on Tuesday night we arrived in Columbus with plenty of time to spare... the first time that has happened thus far on the tour.  We stopped at an Ace Hardware to try to fix the brand new guitar that I broke the night before (pics to come soon).  After buying some goodies from the Place that is Ace, we hopped on over to the Starbucks to grab some coffee and wifi (future Chris comments that this is the last good wifi we had on the tour).

We met some real cool folks there and got a lot of internet style work done.  After checking out some record shops and meeting folks we headed over to the Treehouse.  It was more aptly named than we thought.

The tree in the middle of the room was the highlight of the place…that and the people we met.   Right when we walked in we saw Casey from The Receiver working the door.  He's in a really cool band we played with at the Vollrath in Indianapolis many months ago.  Was great catching up with him and getting to know the rest of the staff there too…all really cool people.  Again impressed by how tight knit the scene in Columbus seemed to be (similar to Nashville and Newport).

Thank you to The Seasonal Help, Gelatinous Cube and Matte Black Silhouette for sharing the stage.

Can’t wait to see some of my family in Pittsburgh later tonight at Garfield Artworks!