NO SLEEP TILL BROOKLYN TOUR 2009: Cleveland, Pittsburgh (kinda) & New York City.

holy crap. i’ve missed this. (being on tour, that is) The drive to cleveland is worth skipping, but the Beachland Tavern welcomed us with open arms (figuratively). They were super nice though. They even gave us dinner, which we LOVE on tour. We played with some SERIOUS country punks in The Misery Jackals. They were excellent. The Hiram Rapid Stumblers followed them up with excellent harmonies and some serious bluegrass/roots stuff. They played a great set and then played acoustic during the changeover.
Special thanks to our Akron contingent that came up for the show- y’all made it a really speical evening. Maid Myriad showed up and came to support too, which was awesome. We were finally able to put faces to names. Really hope to play with those guys in Akron sometime soon.

And there there was the afterparty. Oh my god. We drove back to the Akron area- there was a hot tub and pbr talls…lots of swimsuits. Our hosts and their son, and a friend of ours that lives in the area all stayed up till 4 playing in the hot tub getting drunk and dehydrated (awesome idea for the first night of the tour, no?) Jack, the resident 4 year old of the house has more energy than all of us put together. Apparently we weren’t exactly mousy quiet ’cause first the neighbors showed up to warn us that that cops were coming (we’re pretty sure they are the ones who called them) and right after they left the cops showed up and told us to keep it down. not sorry.

Driving to Pittsburgh from Akron isn’t as bad as one might think. Thank god Pennsylvania is so picturesque ’cause it is long as FUCK.

I’ll let Mike tell you about our show at Club Cafe.

Driving from Pittsburgh to New York: they tell you it’s gonna be 6 and a half hours. But they don’t warn you about the fucking EPIC thunder & lightiing & rain and basically blind out the windshield storm you’ll have to drive through going like 20 miles an hour. most of the other cars were just straight up pulled over. we soldiered on. We’re like Patton’s Army. Only really nice.

So first we went to Flatbush in Brooklyn. Which is lovely. Trafficy, but lovely. And the place we’re staying is AMAZING. We walked in and they had dinner on the table. Dinner included steak, buttery mashed potatos. And guacamole and salad and some kind of fratata/quiche type thing that was delicious. We ate in like 10 minutes and jetted to the venue on the Lower East Side. Just as we pulled up, it started pouring- there was that rain storm that had been chasing us all day. So we got soaked but it was worth it. Matt and I found street parking. yessssssss. It’s almost as difficult as the search for the holy grail in Manhattan.

The show: ok, the show itself was fucking incredible. Tour is starting to do it’s thing- all the parts are starting to feel greased and slick and like they’re running at top performance. And it’s only the 3rd show. The sound guy (Harold? dammit, now I forget) was realy nice, but it was odd when 3 songs in he made us move one of our amps to the other side of the stage. But whatever, the hurdle didn’t even make us break stride. And it was wonderful to see all our friends- thanks for coming out to support and rock out with us. We’ll see you all again in two week at Union Hall in Brooklyn on the 25th.

Today’s a day off. We’re relaxing, repacking, doing laundry, that sort of thing. There will probably be a video blog that happens later in the day, hopefully. I think there may be a barbeque in the works for later. Tomorrow is Asbury Park, New Jersey. It kicks of 9 days of shows in a row. That will be a new record. Can’t party too hard or our voices will fall off. But good god damn we love being on tour.