I had been looking forward to Portland for quite some time now. Everyone I met, who had spent time there, seemed to adore it. It’s liberal, quite pretty, has a great music scene, it’s mellow and bohemian, and yet still metropolitan. When I started booking the tour back in November of last year, I was having a tough time, though, getting anything at all booked. I must have sent out 25 emails and all I got back was deafening silence. You can imagine, then, how stoked I was when my friend Andy from Actors&Actresses suggested I get in touch with a good friend of his, who worked at a cool little club in Portland, called the Dunes.

I got in touch with her, she liked our music, and so we booked the date. Or so we thought…

A week or so before we were due to arrive in Portland, I visited their website to double-check the address and noticed we weren’t listed in their calendar. “Oh dear, that can’t be good news”, I thought. I then proceeded to email the girl numerous times, wrote to her myspace band account, but received no answer. In a bit of a panic I then wrote to Andy to see if he still had a line of contact open to his friend, but he, too, heard nothing. It appeared the date was a goner.

Not only had our Portland date been replaced with a dance party, but our Seattle date at the High Dive, too, had fallen through, as I had foolishly and mistakenly booked the 15th of May instead of the 15th of April, and was, thus, forced to cancel the Seattle show. Moreover, at this point in time, I hadn’t even managed to get in touch with Colleen, with whom we were meant to stay with in Olympia. I was, in short, staring at a gaping hole in our calendar: 6-10 days with no shows booked between Columbus and San Francisco.

Lucky for us, then, that we were about to catch a few last-minute breaks! First off, Andy emailed me through the number of another guy who worked at the Dunes with instructions to call the guy about an alternate date, which promptly resulted in us being added to a last-minute bill on Monday night. The only issue with this was that we had to be in San Francisco on Tuesday and it was an 11-12 hour drive. The guy, however, assured us it could be done (he had played San Francisco and Seattle back to back, which is farther yet), and after talking it over with Evan, we decided to go ahead with the new date!

I figured whilst on the phone, I might as well call through to Colleen, as well, and not only was she still happy to let us crash at her place for a few nights, but she even offered to add us to a bill she was playing the day after, as well! In the end, we spent five days in Olympia and played two shows there, before heading down to Portland for our Monday night show. Initially it was just going to be Portland and Seattle, then it looked like we had zero shows, now we had a Portland show and two gigs in Olympia. Epic relief!

Anyhow, Portland ended up being pretty sweet, although we didn’t get to see nearly enough of it. Unfortunately, though, the show was a total bust. There were four bands on the bill, and the venue never really picked up much of a crowd throughout the night – it wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t fun either. Sound issues and electrical problems, too, didn’t help matters. We had a massive ground loop going somewhere between our gear and the PA (hummmmmmm), and after lifting the ground via our DI boxes, I started getting massive electric shocks whenever my hands touched the strings of my guitar whilst my lips touched the mic. Hilarious. Somehow the electricity decided to earth itself via my face. Sigh. Eventually, we decided to switch to our own PA, which solved the shock issue, but our PA was seriously under-powered for the venue, and so we never really got off the ground sonically.

After sharing a few beers with one of the other bands, Evan and I loaded in and hit the highway. We drove through most of the night, but finally folded to exhaustion and decided to pull over to a rest stop, where, sitting upright in the front seats, we caught an hour of sleep before heading on.

In the end, we arrived in San Francisco around 5 PM, only to find that our show there was most likely not even going to happen. I was seriously ready to nuke the west coast…

After playing in Columbus, Nebraska, Evan and I had a few days to press all the way to the West Coast. It was going to be a ferocious drive, for sure, but we had kept just enough time aside to take in the famous Yellowstone National Park. A pity, then, that once we got within a few hundred miles, that we found out that almost all of the park was still closed, due to snow. Of the many entrances to the park, only one was open, and after talking to a few locals, we decided it wasn’t going to be worth going at all. Aside from the fact that only a small portion of Yellowstone was open at all, the weather was so rainy and foggy, that we wouldn’t have been able to see much of anything, even had we tried.

Instead, I remembered a conversation I had with a barber back in Indiana, who strongly urged us to visit Montana’s other famous park, called Glacier National Park. Of course, that park, too, was mostly shut, but we researched the local weather conditions ahead of time, and given it was supposed to be rather sunny up there, we opted to give it a go and take a bit of a detour up north. It took Evan and I two full days to get from Columbus, Nebraska to Montana’s Glacier National Park, but it was a stunningly scenic drive that lead us through some of the most isolated and desolate parts of the western United States, so it was well worth it.

Glacier National Park, itself, was gorgeous. We didn’t get to see much of it, but what we did see was worth the effort. We saw deer close up, a wonderful lake, a dead forest, and we watched the sun set in pink and golden hues upon snow-capped mountain tops. See our dedicated flickr set for Glacier National Park here.

After visiting the park, Evan and I couch-surfed with a really cool woman, who was house-sitting a luxurious forest mansion. Right on! After catching a good night’s sleep, I got in touch with Colleen from Polka Dot Dot Dot, who not only invited Evan and I to stay with her for 4-5 nights, but had also promptly booked us in to play a house show that very night. No rest for the wicked, then.

Evan and I drove all the way from northern Montana, through Idaho, into Washington, and down to Olympia to play the same night at a house venue called the Finger Complex. The show was quite fun, and would usher in a lovely period of five days, during which we played a second show, visited Seattle (see our Seattle Flickr set), and hung out and rested up in Washington’s capital of Olympia.

Evan and I had a few days of rehearsals in Indiana right before and after SXSW. Needless to say, Indiana isn’t much of a happening place, culturally, so we just decided to kick it Indiana-style. You know… just boys being boys, really. A bit of quad-biking, outdoor shops, shooting guns (45’s), going to batting cages. Taking in local flavor, so to speak :). You can view the whole set here on my Flickr page or just click and expand the above slideshow.

When we arrived in Columbus, Nebraska, I was already worried. But when we walked into the bar we were meant to play that night, I was petrified. I walk in, look around, everyone stares at me, look around some more, walk out of the bar, and sit down on the curb. “They are going to f’ing lynch us”, I thought.

The crowd that had gathered in the early evening were a rough mix of locals, seemingly in their 40’s, who were listening to an acoustic covers band playing “Knocking on heaven’s door”. Holy shit, dude, seriously? What were we doing here? And were we going to make it out of here without an incident? I could just imagine me singing about sex and love and depression and my mother, and some biker dude stabbing us in the face and calling us fags.

So what were we doing here? Well, my online buddy, Chris, who runs a superb CDr label, called Series II Records, had been helping me for months with the tour, putting me in touch with a staggering number of bands and contacts of his, and, at some point, the idea came up to play in his hometown, as he thought we might stand to make more petrol money there, than if we played the larger cities of Omaha or Lincoln. Sounded like a plan to me.

Downtown Columbus

I have to admit, I was so intimidated by the atmosphere and the town (highest unsolved crime rate in America, lots of assaults, and, on the whole, very poor), that I asked Evan if he would consider getting in the car with me and just driving off and heading west for the night. Seriously, I really asked him that. Evan looked at me like I had gone out of my mind.

Eventually, Evan and I met up with Chris, who also brought his dad along for the show. Both were just amazingly kind and wonderful people, and talking to them and going out to dinner together, did a lot to put me more at ease about the upcoming set.

When it was finally time to play, there was a big gap between us and quite a few kids in the 20’s and 30’s, and the applause after the songs was actually quite solid. All throughout the show, though, I could never quite tell if they were into it or not. Whilst we were in the midst of our final song for the night (Scattering The Sun Like Gunshot), one table seating three guys in leather jackets ended up shouting “go!” at us. “Go”, that is, in the sense of “fuck off”.

Downtown Columbus

We finished the song and immediately people started shouting “one more song” and “encore”, which truly baffled me actually, as I still couldn’t figure out if there were guns pointed at us yet or now. Everyone was really drunk already, and it was impossible to gage the overall mood, so Evan and I, gracefully shied away from playing another song, fearing that the table of badass-looking dudes would otherwise feel provoked and choose to escalate the situation. One of the girls who worked the bar tried to persuade us to play one more song after all, but our minds were made up already. I figured if we could play the set, not get into a fist fight, and leave in the morning with nothing stolen, then I would count the night as an epic win.

As has happened so often already on tour, however, the night just totally started to take a turn for the better. One person after another congratulated us on our set throughout the night, we were constantly being shouted beers and shots of polish brandy, and Nathan and his friends (with whom we were staying) turned out to be bloody terrific company.

After Nathan himself played (yarr!), all of us (perhaps 15 people or so) headed back to his place, where we proceeded to get even more wasted as the night went on. Both, Evan and I, were paid by the bar with one bottle of polish brandy each, and before the night was over, I had drunk the entire flask and was starting to feel pretty sick, truth be told. In fact, I had a bit of a run-in with Nathan’s flag-pole before passing out on the living room floor. Said “run-in” was a cosmic clash of particles between the resurfaced Polish Brandy and the patriotically placed flag-pole in Nathan’s front yard. If God’s an American, I’ll be doing push-ups in hell for eternity.

Downtown Columbus

Anyhow, we had a lovely breakfast the morning after with a lovely girl we met at Nathan’s house, called Jamie. It was Easter Sunday, so the only thing open in Columbus seemed to be KFC. I was still feeling really sick, actually, but KFC’s greasy food miraculously cured me, and so after saying our goodbyes to everyone, Evan and I eventually headed off to begin a major push westwards. I was ready to run from Columbus the night before, but I now felt sad to leave these great people behind. I hadn’t partied quite this hard in years, and I can honestly say that I can’t think of a better group of people to have shared the experience with.

All apologies for being so late to post about New Orleans. Evan and I actually stopped there in late March on our way back from SXSW, but, until now, I haven’t found the time to edit the photos and write about our experience there.

After showcasing at SXSW in late March, Evan and I decided we were going to take a bit of a detour back to Indiana. Most of the midwest is ridiculously drab, and so we figured it might be worth roaming through the south before heading up north again. We had decided early on that we wanted to stop in Memphis in order to visit the Gibson Guitar Factory, but once we got on the road and studied the map, we realized we were pretty much passing right through New Orleans, as well, and we were not going to let the opportunity to visit such a legendary town pass us by!

The first thing I did was hit up couchsurfing.com and send out a flood of last-minute requests for crashing on people’s floors. Given the short notice, I wasn’t expecting any replies, but within an hour or two a girl called me and invited us to stay at her house in New Orleans. Sweet!

After a long drive we finally pulled into Nola around 11PM, and parked in front of the house we were meant to be staying at. Although late, we had been assured by our would-be host that a late arrival would not be an issue. The house was a stone mansion, the lights were all out, the front gate locked, with no doorbell in sight. I called our host, but I was sent straight to voicemail. I texted, I emailed, I called again, I yelled from the street… all to no avail. After hanging around outside for another hour, Evan and I finally got fed up and googled a hostel. We found this place called the Indian House and decided to try our luck there.

The hostel itself was totally sweet, not too expensive, and radiated this sense of bohemia and party-excess – perfect, considering the town we were in. We promptly checked in, dragged our stuff into a group dorm, when my phone beeped. (1) New Message: “Srry. Was high. Where u at?” Out of sheer curiosity I called through to see what’s up, but she was in turn slurring in her thick Spanish accent and yelling at the top of her lungs at her boyfriend. Thanks, but, perhaps, no thanks, girl.

Anyhow, Evan and I spent the afternoon strolling around New Orleans and loved it so much that we decided to stay a few more days, in order to experience a bit more of the night life and catch some proper jazz. And I’m so glad we did stay, too, as the next night would be one of the most memorable nights of our entire trip.

Evan and I met this girl, Courtney, whom we really got along with, and so the three of us headed into town, armed with paper-bag covered flasks of rum. We saw the most amazing musicians play 1930’s New Orleans jazz at a legendary place called the Spotted Cat, which was thankfully a few blocks out from the tourist- and neon-infested Bourbon Street. Frenchman St., by contrast, just had this totally authentic and sleazy neighborhood vibe – I loved it.

After catching the show at the Spotted Cat, the three of us ran into a few more peeps from the hostel, including Andy, who was traveling from London to South America, via Nola. We got to chatting and realized we were both into pool, and somehow we promptly managed to boast our way into a money game against each other. To make a long story short, he played well, I didn’t, and so I ended up loosing not only my first $20 dollars, but also the double-or-nothing game that followed it. Shit! I consoled myself with the thought that, at least, there was no better way to loose $40 dollars at a pool table than to an Englishman in Nola.

Money or no money, life continues on, and so we eventually ended up back at the hostel, and continued drinking whatever we could scrape together until we all finally crashed around 5AM.

Now, after the previous night’s excesses, Evan and I were definitely a bit worried about forking out three nights worth of paid accommodation at the hostel, so after chatting to a guy who worked there, I felt encouraged enough to ask the owner if he would consider shouting us a night’s worth of accommodation and a free meal in exchange for playing a small set at the hostel. After a bit of deliberation, he agreed to have us play; there would even be a BBQ!

The show itself was quite fun with some people getting really into it. One guy from Vermont even offered to set up a show for us there if we came through. Lovely things happen if you make enough room in your life for happy accidents to occur.

Anyhow, eventually, Evan and I had to move on to Memphis, where we had already lined up a place to couch-surf. It was, however, quite a melancholy departure, as we had both fallen pretty hard for the unique atmosphere, lure, and beauty of New Orleans.

One of these days I will find my way back there…

So, poor Evan has, for the most part, been suffering a severe case of anti-culture-shock ever since he arrived here from New Zealand. The States, in many ways, is very similar to New Zealand. Both are fundamentally based on the Anglo-Saxon culture; both are very young countries; have similar landscapes in many parts of the country (Washington, Montana, and Oregon are painfully similar to NZ’s South Island); obviously we share a common language; and so on and so forth. Of course, there are many differences, but compared with countries like Egypt, Spain, Japan, et cetera, New Zealand and the United States definitely feel quite similar.

So when Evan and I drove through Wyoming and passed cowboys and horses, Evan nearly leaped out the window. Finally a genuine piece of Americana!

I guess you can always count on a cowboy to save the day :).

After our shows in the Midwest, Evan and I had to cut westwards across the country in time to perform in Washington and Oregon. We did, however, have just enough time to cruise around Montana and take in some of its breath-taking scenery and national parks. Most of Glacier park was still closed due to snow (as was Yellowstone), but the main access road was still open and allowed us to see some cute deer and a stunning mountain sunset. You can view the entire photoset here on my Flickr account, or just take a look at the above slideshow.

Sorry for being so late about posting these photos. During our trip from Indiana to SXSW, Evan and I decided to take a scenic detour, which ended up being one of the most memorable drives of my life. The views were stunning, the weather perfect, and I ended up having to pour Minutemaid Orange juice over the break pads (see photo) to cool down our breaks, which we managed to smoke out within the first 10 minutes of taking the Talimena Scenic Drive. You can view the whole photos set here on my Flickr page or just use the slideshow above.

When we pulled into East Moline, my first thought was… oh dear, this isn’t going to be good. The town is part of the quad cities, and lies right on the shores of the Mississippi river, bordering Illinois and Iowa, but it’s far from a picturesque place.

East Moline, like the rest of the quad cities, struck me as very poor. The houses were small and run down, and the downtown area was more of a ghost town than a flourishing riverside community, with a few small shops flanked by a greater number of boarded up windows and neighborhood bars.

When we pulled up to the Mixtapes record store, the place was buzzing with young kids from various walks of life. The store was great, but the adjacent room, where we were going to be playing, didn’t look too promising, in all honesty. It was a large rectangular room – too large, perhaps, for a band like ours – and it had a very sterile feel about it.

One of many cool bridges in America (crossing into East Moline).

The first band up, was one guy with an electric guitar. I have to say, it was an odd performance. He was probably in his late 30’s, had listened to a shit-load of Nirvana when he was younger, and he spent most of the evening playing songs whilst reading the lyrics off of a notebook. He was clearly still working out a lot of things (Evan told me he had just started playing out again), but what startled me (in a positive way) were his honest and uncomfortable lyrics. He sang of suicide, lost love, and eating out a girl… the thing was, I believed he meant what he sung. I imagine his life must have been pretty tough, really, and although the whole performance had a very amateurish vibe about it, there was something heartfelt and genuinely real about his music. I spent quite a while thinking about his show, afterwards.

Mississippi river boat on the East Moline shores.

Next up were a really, really young local band. Not sure what you would call their music… screemo, perhaps? Who can keep up, these days… They played one or two songs to a small group of young and adoring fans (I would guess most of them were 12-16 years old), and then packed it in. We were up next. It was 9PM. We were seriously not looking forward to playing – at all.

Life, however, has this absurd habit of throwing you a curve ball when you least expect it, and within minutes of playing, the whole night started to take a 180 turn for the better. Evan and I had decided before the show, that we were going to set up in the middle of the room on the floor – cut the room in half so to speak, and just give the show our all, no matter what the circumstances. If there are 5 people at our show, we play just the same as when there are 100 there. In the end, a sincere effort in front of a small audience will always work out better than giving a bitter and half-assed performance.

You see… I’m not superstitious at all, but there really lies something of value in the whole concept of Karma, and although there weren’t a lot of people there that night (maybe 20-25 or so), a lot of the people there really got into our music, and, against all expectations, we probably ended up selling more merch after the show than we had in quite a while.

All night long we just hung out with everyone there and had a freaking awesome time. Seriously, we didn’t have high hopes for East Moline, but Mixtapes is staffed with the coolest freaking people you could imagine. It reminded me, pardon the cliche, of High Fidelity or so. They have this group of people who seems to form a real family nucleus around this small record store, which, incidentally, is a terrific little store, full of good records, shirts, home-made contact mics, circuit bent electronics, badges and other wicked stuff.

Inside the shop.

After loading up the van, we ended up crashing with Jason and Liz, who had four kids, a cat and a dog, and the most bloody amazing basement I have ever crashed in. Honestly, I could write pages about how awesome they were. They are so down-to-earth, creative, open and unique. Jason makes vinyl bowls, as well as robots out of found parts (click on his photos to see more examples of his art), wires, broken light bulbs, ripped up barbie dolls, and Liz has the most amazing collection of action figures, toys, music memorabilia, and horror stuff I have ever seen. Also spending the night there were Jen and Andy. Jen works at Mixtapes and, along with Andy, plays in a band called Fatima Blush. Jen was the one one who hooked us up with Liz and Jason – a million thanks for that, as well as for your lovely company, and the starbucks coffee and donuts you two brought us in the morning!

One of Jason’s awesome wirebots.

Anyhow, it’s so hard for me to remember all the names of everyone as we meet so many people along the road, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t remember you. We do. You were all freaking wonderful, and we couldn’t be more appreciative of our time there. Thanks so much to everyone we met… Ian, Ken, Jen, Andy, Liz, Jason, and everyone else we talked to that night.

Group shot! :)

Much love to all of you. You guys have a wonderful store, a wicked community of people centered around it, and hopefully we’ll make it back before too long. Farewell, for now!

This is a journal entry I wrote a few days ago, whilst staying in Olympia, Washington.

It’s Sunday evening now. Evan and I have spent all day in 70 degree sunshine exploring the Olympic peninsula, including the Hoh Rainforest and various isolated beaches. I’m feeling tired now, and a bit sad, even, that our brief holiday in Olympia is drawing to a close. The first ten days of the tour were immensely exhausting: we played shows pretty much every day, and spent many hours on the road. Looking ahead, now, our days and nights will once again be filled to the brim with driving, setting up, playing, packing down, finding random places to sleep, getting up early and unrested to spend as much as 12 hours per day on the road.

Touring, thus far, has been an incredibly transformative experience. Each consecutive day has forced me in some way or another to lay down and reevaluate my prejudices regarding people and their hometowns. So many evenings that seemed hopeless write-offs have blossomed into the most heartwarming and fun experiences, and much that we looked forward to has ended in mild disappointment.

But touring does more than readjust one’s habit of forming rash judgment: it brings freedom and self-assuredness, as well. It has been a long time since I have felt this confident about who I am and the music I perform. The truth is, of course, not every show has been a great success. We have played to ecstatic audiences, as well as met with indifference and verbal abuse. Most people have been great, but not everyone, perhaps.

Every day we drive for hours as the land around us morphs glacier-like: subtle is the change, but relentless, too. The days produce few constants, but even after only a few days of turbulence and hyper-awareness, one begins to recognize one’s own self as something stable and solid. For when everything around you changes all the time, only two plausible options present themselves: flap around in the wind, or become yourself and let the rest of the world sort out how they chose to relate to you. You present yourself as a constant, and let the world swirl and spin and reconcile itself with what you are. There lies considerable irony in the fact that restlessness and chaos has a solidifying influence on one’s sense of self.

Any kind of change, however, comes at the expense of energy, and so remaining stationary in Olympia for five nights, has been a welcomed change of pace. Tomorrow, Evan and I are heading to Portland to play a show, after which we have to drive 12 hours down the coast to San Francisco to play another show. Then we play a radio show in Santa Barbara, then play Los Angeles, where Evan and I also meet up with my brother, Anthony, and then proceed to Las Vegas, then Utah, then Denver, the Dallas, and so many more places yet. Hours and hours of driving, never properly unpacking, never finding the time for the things one takes for granted, but filled to the brim with with peace and self-assuredness.