So I've been procrastinating again, not because of having bad news, but because of not being bored enough to type up a blog entry. The past week has been pretty awesome.
When we got to Las Vegas, we drove to the house that the show was at. I'd been assuming it would be like house shows in Albany, a party house rented out by a bunch of hardcore kids. On the contrary, this was at a dude's family's house in the suburbs. The kid and his parents fed us and then cleared out the living room and set up the PA. The first band, Set Afire, was pretty solid, and definitely had a Troycore thing going on. This was fitting, as we finally caught up with Alzadie. We played, Palehorse played, show was over, we went and crashed out at another super nice house. This house was home to a couple of the kids from Wyntch Mob, some other kids, and this girl named Mary who supplied us with a delicious feast in the morning. We had Sunday off, so we chilled at the house for a spell, while Mary and I challenged each other in Mario Kart DS for like three hours. Honestly, the best match I've had in any sort of competitive videogame for quite awhile.
Eventually, after weekend commuter traffic died down, we left in the early evening to head over to lucious Southern California. We stayed with Andrew from Winds of Plague, who has a fucking NICE house. There was supposed to be a drunks vs. straightedge Wii Sports Tennis tournament, but it became a big party with a bunch of Andrew's coworkers and some irrelevant Wii Sports matches. A few of the dudes went to the "must-see" Tits Beach, but I was kinda beat, so I stayed behind.
When I got up the next day, I was trying to check my voicemail, but couldn't get a good signal. So, I stepped outside, and it was like goddamn May outside. It was like a perfect Spring day. Sooooo nice. When everyone got up, we checked out the mall a bit, hit up a Chipotle (which is goddamn delicious), and then headed over to our show in Rialto.
The show in Rialto was cool. Our friend Jenn from Tennessee came out. First three bands were all very Christian and talked a lot about salvation in between songs. Not really my thing, but whatever. It was around this time that I realized that the venue was Christian. We played, Palehorse played. I put on my eleven year old Starkweather hoodie when we were loading out and got a few compliments, which paved the way to much talk of musical nerdery with some nice kids. One kid kept asking me if I'd seen various bands that he never got to see because he's a. 20 years old and b. is from the West Coast. My answer was an unchanging "yes."
We stayed at Andrew's awesome house again. The next morning, Andrew took Paul and I to this awesome Mexican Restaurant called Chico's. It was fucking delicious. We rode around some more, visited John from Winds of Plague at work (actualy.. maybe that was before Chico's), and rode around some more. We stopped at Nick H from Winds of Plague's house, where John from WOP was now decorating the house to look like The Nightmare Before Christmas. We met Nick H's mother, who was a goddamn riot.
The show in Upland that night was pretty cool, until a fight broke out three songs into Palehorse's set, stopping the show early. Andrew, John, former WOP merchguy Eli (who apparently had largely disappeared shortly after their summer tour, only to rematerialize for the show), one of our friends from Las Vegas (which was another long long drive), and my friend Victoria came out, good times, good times.
The next day was a day off, so we stayed with Andrew again. Highlight of the day was going to the beach at 11:00 at night, and calling people from back home to tell them I was standing in the ocean.
Thursday morning we said goodbye to luscious California, and headed to Phoenix, Andrewzona to play at a record store/venue called METAL DEVASTATION 2. Pentagrams and death metal logos all over the place. Pretty awesome. We thought the show might be a dud, but a few kids were singing along, and we sold a great amount of merch, considering the small crowd.
We ended up staying with Mike, the old drummer for Where Eagles Dare, who filled in for Most Precious Blood one time. He and I nerded it up for a couple of hours, talking about 90's hardcore.
Next day was a house show in Espanola, NM. Best show of the tour, so far. Absolute mayhem. The band right before us, Excruciation, played "Hollow" by Integrity. Now, let me explain that I've been on a big Integrity kick lately. When we left for tour, I was thinking 'man, it would be awesome if a band we play wit on tour covers something off of Humanity is the Devil.' And if you've seen us on this tour, you probably heard me check my levels with a riff or two from "Hollow." So this was about the best cover someone could have played. I was in the van when they started playing it and ran inside to sing along. By now I was beyond stoked.
We played and it ruled. I didn't have my contacts in, so I couldn't see shit. More kids singing along, to more songs than usual. We stayed with this dude David, then we left early in the morning for Texas, Mike's homeland.
First TX show was in Lubbock, at a youth center run by a church, apparently. Show went well. We stayed with Mike's uncle.
Sunday was Mike's birthday. We drove a thousand hours to San Antonio Diaz, to a pretty cool spot called The Sanctuary. There was an awesome record store next door that reminded me of Music Shack. I tried to sleep in the van for a little bit. A van with a huge trailer parked near us, some dudes got out, sang and played tamborine for a while, then got back in their van and drove off. We played well. We played an extended set, trying to stall while we waited for Palehorse, who ended up showing up so late that it was too late to play.
A bunch of Mike's childhood friends came out (some of them driving seven hours each way!), and we had many offers of places to stay. Unfortunately, none of them could accomodate our trailer, so we had to suck it up and get a motel.
Today we play in Laredo.
