If you weren't at the 8th Note in Milwaukee last night, you should take a moment to apologize to yourself for missing The Goodboy Suit and "the pAper chAse" both play amazing sets. I know The Paper Chase are on tour right now, so you should find out when they are coming to your town, and cancel any prior commitments so that you can go see them. I swear that overly talented god plays three guitar parts with one hand. You won't understand until you see them. Oh yeah, and their new songs are nothing short of brilliant. Well, now it's off to another show in Milwaukee, the land of the convienently free shows when Whitney doesn't have any money.

Jessica and I made a tour documentary, in Quicktime format. I'm trying to figure out how to save it so that the screen size is a little larger, without making the file 169 mb or something crazy like that. Until then, CLICK HERE to see it or download it. It's a 21.4 mb file, so if you don't have a broadband connection, you might want to hold off. This movie is pretty much just from the second half (east coast portion) of our tour. When we get back from Europe, I'm going to put all of the footage we have together and make one big movie, but I really doubt I'll put it on this site; it will be too long. I also don't want to have to worry about cutting things shorter to make sure the file isn't too large. We'll probably export it all back to video and makes copies of it that way or something. We'll see.

Yay! Italy. I would also like to send thanks to Ralf, and point out that I was being sarcastic when I said that it's not worth going to Europe if we're not going to Italy. It would be an amazing time even if we only got to visit Liechtenstein. Wait... I just checked our dates again; we're not going to Liechtenstein. Repeat: we're not going to Liechtenstein. Dammit.

hehe.

I would just like to point out to Nick and Mark that we will once again be going to Italy. I would also like to send a million and one thanks to Ralf from Flower Violence for setting up this tour and putting out Dismal State of the Art. He is truly one of the nicest and most generous individuals we've had the pleasure of working with. As long as I'm thanking people, I'd like to let everybody that helped us with a show, let us crash on their floor, hung out with us, played with us, or just came out to watch us over the last 2 or 3 months know how much we appreciate it. It's been amazing. Oh yeah, and to all of my friends in Milwaukee who have been letting me sleep at thier homes for the last week or so, and hanging out with me and making me realize how much I really do love living here! Thanks.

Nick brought something to my attention yesterday that displeases me. Apparently, our European tour is no longer taking us to Italy. So I'm asking myself: why bother going? I am going to get to the bottom of this, dammit! If you had asked me what I was looking forward to most about touring Europe, I would have told you that I was excited to see Italy. Now I guess I'd have to say that I'm looking forward to seeing... Spain? I don't know about this! The world is coming to an end!

Haha. I'm pretty much just kidding, but I really am disappointed. Oh well, c'est la vie!

I was outside with Jessica a little while ago, and we discovered that she has a pecan tree in her yard (she's lived here three years, mind you), so now we're here trying to figure out how to get them open without a nutcracker. Suggestions, anyone? Don't e-mail me saying to put it under the leg of a chair and sit on it, though -- we tried that, and it just made a mess.

I don't have much to say, but I'm bored (I'm here all alone today while Jessica is at work), so what the hell. I am listening to the Hidden Chord LP on Level Plane for the first time ever, and it's amazing. I highly suggest you check that out. I think we played with those guys once, but I can't remember. I guess I should head over to the past shows list. If we did, it would have been a long time ago, so my memory is a bit fuzzy.

We're all getting ready for Europe. Nick is doing the most -- he bought a new (or shall I say additional) bass amp to take over, because the one he has now is too heavy to be checked on the plane. We're renting everything except guitars, heads, and a few drum things. I thought we were renting heads, too, but I guess it makes more sense to just bring ours, since they can be brought as luggage, and we'd probably sound better using our own gear. I have to make arrangements to be back a day or so earlier than I currently am. For some reason, I was under the assumption that we were leaving on December 6th, so I planned on being back on December 4th. Well, we're leaving December 4th, so I'm going to have to be back a little sooner.

Oh well, I guess I should go back to updating my record nerd collection, or something...

I'd just like to report that we made it home just fine. You can't even begin to imagine how incredible it is going to be to go to sleep in my own bed tonight, after spending so many nights on my hasn't-been-washed-in-two-months sleeping bag on some random floor. Don't get me wrong - I love being on tour, and we really do appreciate people letting us crash on their floors, but we do get homesick and we miss the comfort of home after a few months of it. I'm leaving "home" already on Tuesday, to go to Texas to see Jessica, which I'm looking forward to even more.

Tour went extremely well -- by far the best tour we've ever been on. Certainly not competely free of any low moments, but overall, it was great. It feels like tour is over, but the longest stretch of it is still ahead of us. I can't believe we're going to be in Europe for a month and a half.

That's all I really have to say for now. I have to take a shower (it's been a while), and then I've got a phone call to make. Tonight is just like one huge sigh of relief for me; I haven't felt this good in a while.

We're currently at the BRYCC house in Louisville, which is probably one of the coolest venues in the world. Every city needs one of these. I think. I only question it because it seems as though there is some reason the kids here are a little jaded and picky about music. They look at bands as though they're annoyed at them for playing music for them. I was thinking that maybe it's because they have such an amazing venue that every band in the world plays when they come through on tour. I'd say it was just us and the fact that we just weren't their cup of tea, but a lot of the bands playing tonight were incredible and got the same reaction. Either way, this show was awesome and we'd jump at the chance to come back; even if only a handful of people seem appreciative.

It's certainly better than Tallahassee. I think we've officially decided to never play there again. It's nothing against the person who did the show for us -- he was awesome to us this time, and was awesome to us last summer, but no one seems to care about music there. We played to the kids if Members of the Yellow Press, De La Hoya, and then about 45 kids who were out in the parking lot, being too cool to actually come in and listen to a band. They did this for all of the bands playing, except the local band that will remain unnamed (not because we want to be nice to them, but rather because it's such a dumb name that you'd be less intelligent just for having read it). Someone even had the nerve to tell us that we "better not" sit outside while the afforementioned nameless band played. We've been out for over two months, and only once did we come out of a show and sell absolutely nothing. Guess where it was! Yeah, it was probably the worst show of tour. It was especially bad after the AWESOME shows we played in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Miami Beach.

Tonight is most likely going to be our last night with Members of the Yellow Press, which saddens us, but we can only be grateful to them for keeping us company for the past two weeks. We're also glad to give them the chance to come out and play on tour. They'd never been out before, so it wouldn't have been easy for them to get their foot in the door, so to speak. Check them out, if you ever see them playing a show near you, or when they get a record out, because they're a really good band.

We only have three more shows before the 2 week break before Europe. I'm excited to go home (or, rather, to TX), but I'm also excited to play Cleveland, Kalamazoo and Chicago, because I think they'll all be awesome shows (knock on wood). I'm both excited and scared-as-hell about going to Europe. We've never even played Canada, and we're going to Europe for a month a half. We have heard only the best of things from everyone we know that has gone over there, so that eases my mind a bit, but it's still very unreal and frightening to us, in a lot of ways. Being away from home for that long without being able to call "home" (I don't have a home, per se) will be rough, but I guess I've always known there are costs for living the rock & roll lifestyle. God, how cheesy was that? I think I need to stop!

Lumberjack has our CD now...

Sorry for the lack of updates. Since Tex decided to stay home, we've been finding that it's not as easy to check our e-mail or update the site as it was before. This part of the tour (or "leg", if you will) would have been extremely dull and lonely if we hadn't spent almost all of it in the company of some very good friends. We spent a whole week in the NJ area with The Assistant, and then in Richmond, our friends from back home Members of the Yellow Press met up with us and have been accompanying us. They have played all of the shows except one, which is better than we hoped for, since no one who set up shows for us knew they were coming. I didn't even really know for sure until the day before Richmond, so I guess that's why.

We stayed up until like 6 am here in Miami Beach while Whitney played Grand Theft Auto on Playstation 2 and some other people who were just hanging around here downloaded all sorts of weird videos that I didn't really need to see - including midget porn and old women getting hit by cars.

Florida has been awesome to us, though. We've played some really awesome shows so far in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Miami. Hopefully Tallahassee goes well, too. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

Oh well, I don't really think this is going anywhere, so I'm going to end this now. We're home in like a week; I can't believe this tour is almost over.

well since no one posted i will translate marks email to me for you the home audience. he said tour was kicking his ass but it was fun and the show in greenville tonight was never set up so they didn't play. he was pretty upset about it. thats whats goin down... now you know.

last night i spent 2 hours lost in the radiohead website. it was great. i learned a whole shit load about how they made the last two albums and i realized that i have everything it takes sitting in my basement on my computer. they used all sorts of plug ins they found on the internet and demo versions of programs and tons of low fi pedals and delay boxes. it just took time and vision. i wish i could get off my ass long enough to do something creative with my computer set-up. i hate radiohead for ruling so much.

I don't know if our site is up or down right now. I tried to go to it once, and it didn't work, but then I hit refresh, and it showed up. I have no idea what the hell is going on. We paid the bill a few days ago, and got a receipt and all of that junk, but it's still acting weird.

I just got an e-mail that our show today is canceled. It's canceled because most or all of the other bands canceled, and I guess no one wanted to do a show for just us. We wouldn't have minded, but if that's what they want to do, I guess we can't do anything about it. I'm sure that people will still show up, anyway, since the show is canceled so late in the game, so we could have played to them, but oh well. I guess now we just have one more day to hang out in NJ with some of our best friends in the entire world... which brings me to the next paragraph.

I don't think there are words to describe the gratitude we feel towards the five individuals in The Assistant: Tom, Leigh, Jay, Ross and Rob (oh and how can we forget John?). Tom and his roommates have put us up on his floor for the past few nights (thanks also to the east coast cities for being so close together), and he also put on one of our best shows ever last night, the halloween show in Old Bridge, NJ. Aside from all that, I want to thank them for being just great friends, aside from music or bands or anything like that. Any single one of them can instantly light up any room we're in and make us all feel good, and we're all sad that we have to leave them for a while.

Thanks Jessica for not spilling our secret halloween show plan, but since it's over, I think I can tell everyone what we did. We dressed up as old women and played as the Stella Ford Band. We got dresses, wigs, make-up, jewelry -- the whole nine yards. It was really funny. I got lipstick all over the microphone, but oh well. It was an amazing show. All of the bands that played were really really good, and it was just fun all-around. I only wish more people would have worn costumes.