Hello, friends!  Rob here.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?  Welcome to an extra-special super-long edition of Blog Wednesday!  How super-long, you ask?  Why, this week’s Blog Wednesday is so long that it doesn’t even start until Friday!  Yes, that absolutely makes sense!  Just stop thinking about it!

Yeah, okay, I know, there was no Blog Wednesday this week or yesterweek.  I’m terrible.  It’s been hectic.  Things are calming down and we’ll have updates on the regular again starting next week.

It’s been a few thousand miles, but we’re home.  This has been a bit of a different tour for us.  We’ve been rolling pretty deep this week, so, before I get into event-listing, I’d like to provide a rundown of our expanded cast of characters this weekend.  In addition to the six core band members (Dave, Zack, Andrew, George, Ed and myself), our live performances this week have been thoroughly augmented by everyone’s favorite man-about-town, Michael Girardot (of Big Rock Candy Mountain, Rotary Downs, FOBURG Festival, the New Orleans Indie Rock Collective, two of our albums, and pretty much everything else in the world).  By now, our local fans should be well-acquainted with this handsome gentleman, who has joined us onstage for several of our recent shows in New Orleans.  Too good at music to be confined to a single instrument, Girardot rocks a mean keyboard, and provides a welcome threat to my horn-player masculinity by playing trumpet in a way that adds awesome to everything.

Brett Tierney is a pretty rad dude.  He has come with us on a few weekend trips in the past, and like Mr. Girardot, he is a double threat, operating both a video camera and a merch table.  Brett was a huge help this week, and as the days went on (time flows differently when you’re on tour, and last night’s performance can feel as if it had been weeks ago), he adopted a bit of an organizational role as well, helping with people trying to make contact with us during shows and generally helping us stay on top of things.  Considering how much of our money he has been handling, and the hours of embarrassing candid footage he has collected, we’re fortunate that Brett is a trustworthy person.

Andrew’s roommate, Ryan Farishian, hitched a ride back with us from DC.  He basically just shows up on the last night of the tour and doesn’t really do much aside from the occasional wisecrack, but he’s a cool guy, and an excellent graphic designer (you can check out some of his work on the Indian Chief T-shirt available in our online store), so he gets a shout. 

Anyway, here’s what our week was like, starting with last Tuesday:

LAST TUESDAY: DRIVING DAY – THE 1100 MILES OF INTERSTATE BETWEEN NEW ORLEANS AND FALLS CHURCH

We get in the van.  At this point we are seven: the core band plus Brett.  Already we have too many people, too many bags, and not enough space.  Over the course of the week, as we are joined by more people, and more bags, and more everything else, our vanscape will get more and more crowded, and our drives will become exponentially more intimate until the last driving day where we’re all just spooning in one bench.

The road is a lonely place.

We’re leaving on Tuesday to take some of the pressure off.  This is a pretty short, well-planned run, but it’s in one of the least convenient regions of the country, so we’ve got a monster drive today and another one to get back home.

We only have to be in Philadelphia by Thursday, so the plan is long horrible drive to Andrew’s parents’ house in Falls Church, VA, then sleep all Wednesday, then go to Philadelphia on Thursday.  That’s pretty much how it goes down.  We leave New Orleans at 3:00 PM and arrive at the ever-hospitable Campanelli residence at 10:00 AM the next day.

LAST WEDNESDAY: SLEEP A LOT BECAUSE WE JUST SPENT 19 HOURS IN A VAN

We get in.  We wake up Andrew’s younger brother and make him drink a beer.  I don’t know what everyone else does all day because I go upstairs and sleep until dinnertime.

LAST THURSDAY: WORLD CAFÉ LIVE – PHILADELPHIA, PA

Michael Girardot arrives as we are packing the van.  We drive to Philadelphia.  We decide that the new way to say something has hipster street cred is that it’s “totally Brooklyn.”  This will come into play a lot tomorrow, when we are in Brooklyn.

We play music.  Honestly, and I admit that this is really sad, but what I remember the most about our trip to World Café last week is that Ed was really looking forward to eating an item on their menu called the Portugese Burger, but they didn’t serve it anymore.  That is about the only thing from that evening that really stands out in my memory.  I am ashamed to call myself Band Historian.

We pack up and drive to New York immediately after the show.  We arrive at about 2:30 in the morning.  We’re not all staying in the same place, so we have to drop a few people off in Manhattan before the rest of us go to Brooklyn.  I try to hold my breath through the Lincoln Tunnel.  I am not successful.  I try to parallel-park our massive land behemoth of a van, along with its trailer.  I am successful.  We call Ed’s girlfriend, Maggie, to let us into her parents’ house.  Brett, Zack, Mike and I are staying there.  Ed is not, which feels kind of weird.

LAST FRIDAY: SOUTHPAW – BROOKLYN, NY

Actually, Maggie’s mom is super nice so it’s not weird.  Mike leaves to do New York stuff.  Brett, Zack and I walk around Brooklyn talking about how totally Brooklyn everything is.  We go into American Apparel in Brooklyn for the sheer hipster value of it.  We buy clothes there, thus defeating the purpose of our smugness.

Urban Sun.  Urban Sun.  Urban Sun, Urban Sun, Urban Sun.  Great dudes, great band.  Great people to write about because I can just write the word “great” a bunch of times and call it a day.  They kick the evening off with greatness.  Mike and I join them for a few songs.  The Revivalists come on afterwards and stomp faces.  George and I use the bar’s photo booth to take four of the most awesome BFF pics in existence.  We go to a bar that looks like a library and has bocce ball upstairs, then down in the basement there’s a karaoke lounge just past the huge unisex bathroom.

Brooklyn.

SATURDAY: DANIEL ST. CAFÉ – MILFORD, CT
George’s hometown is like, super fun.  The show was great (on a technical level possibly the best show of the tour), but I don’t have much to report.  George could probably give a better rundown of all the catching up he did, but I don’t remember too many highlights outside of a brief episode at the afterparty, during which five grown men (including myself) realized that we had spent the past twenty minutes talking about how awesome Justin Timberlake is.  Then we tried awkwardly to change the subject, but all roads lead to JT so we just kind of went with it.
 
Seriously though, guys?  Can I be real for a second?  Justin Timberlake is the fucking man.

SUNDAY: B.O.M.B. FEST – HARTFORD, CT
B.O.M.B Fest  is great.  The most gratifying thing about playing at a music festival like this (excluding the fact that it’s a charitable event) is that we get to start the show playing in front of very few people, and end it playing in front of very many people.  Music festival people are the best because they are there to see live music and get the living hell into it.  They want new music.  They want to become fans.  They want to be surprised.  They want to hear things they have never heard before.

They don’t think it’s funny to yell “Freebird!” anymore.

We made lots of music festival friends.  A highlight for Zack and me was talking to this nice guy named Patrick who had some very nice things to say about us, and then it turned out he was the keyboardist for River City Extension and we both turned into giddy little schoolgirls because they are very seriously awesome.

River City Extension, that is.  Not giddy little schoolgirls.

MONDAY (DAY): THE KENNEDY CENTER – WASHINGTON, DC
If you’re interested, you can watch our entire performance here.  Please do when you have an hour to spare.  It will save me the trouble of having to write words about it.  Also, for the sake of posterity (and because I know it’ll make Dave mad), here is the video of our previous visit to the Kennedy Center in 2009.  I don’t recommend watching all of it, because the more recent one is, simply put, better.  However, there are a few points of interest:  The show took place before Ed’s time (I wasn’t officially in the band yet, either), our friend T from The Blue Party was filling in for George on that tour, and I am wearing the same shirt in both videos, which is odd and kind of embarrassing.

MONDAY (NIGHT): DOGWOOD TAVERN – FALLS CHURCH, VA
For some reason the last show of any tour always comes with a sense of- oh, wait, we’re playing in New Orleans on Wednesday.  It’s not time to get all retrospective just yet.  Okay, whatever.   Music then!

After a fun opening set from our friends The Dustys, we play music for a long time.  It is really sweaty.  It is Memorial Day.  We break into “The Star-Spangled Banner” midway through our second set.  It keeps being really sweaty.

After the show, some guy decides to be a huge jerk and ruin everything forever.  Two guys get into a bit of a scuffle at the bar, and it is broken up quickly.  Nothing much happens to either of these two men.  However, this story isn’t really about either of them.  It’s about this other guy at the bar who is completely terrible.  This unpleasant fellow (hereafter referred to as “the Defendant,” because he has probably already been arrested) sees that a fight has broken out and thinks to himself, “hey!  Violence!  I want in!”  Unfortunately, the Defendant is like, seven whole feet away from the actual fight.  What’s a lazy sociopath* to do?

Well, the fight’s all the way over there, but fortunately, a complete stranger (hereafter referred to as “the Plaintiff”) is watching the scuffle from close by.  “By Jove,” thinks the Defendant, “I could just exact some measure of unprovoked violence upon this gentleman standing in front of me!  It’ll be just like in those old west movies, where one guy throws a punch and then suddenly the whole saloon is a symphony of sepia-toned violence!  I’ll be a hero”

The thing about hitting somebody in the head with a chair that makes it so much less endearing in real life is that people’s heads tend to have a lot of blood in them, and when you jab a human head with the metal foot of a bar stool, some of that blood is bound to come out of the person’s head and mess up the carpet.  Very inconsiderate, Mr. Defendant!

And then the Defendant leaves.  Just puts the chair down and walks out of the bar.  In case that was confusing, here’s a quick recap of the action:

1) Two guys start fighting each other at the bar.
2)  Very quickly we have a decent-sized mass of people and a lot of confusion.  The bar’s security is involved here and not looking elsewhere.
3)  For some reason, or perhaps for no reason at all, the Defendant (who by all accounts was completely uninvolved in the fight in step 1) decides this is an excellent time to hit somebody, anybody, with a chair.
4)  He hits the Plaintiff (a fellow bystander) with a chair.
5) The Defendant leaves.  He runs away like a small dog that just hit another dog over the head with a bar stool for no discernible reason and is now beginning to fear the consequences of his actions..

Fortunately, the good folks at Dogwood called the police pretty quickly.  They have security footage, they have the Defendant’s name because he left a tab open, and they have a few eyewitness reports.  The Plaintiff is put in an ambulance.  He’ll be fine.  The Defendant didn’t exactly make himself hard to find.  He’ll get his.  I’d say all’s well that end’s well, except that some poor guy still got hurt for no reason.

But hey, other than that, we had a great time in Falls Church!

TUESDAY: DRIVING DAY – THE 1100 MILES OF INTERSTATE BETWEEN FALLS CHURCH AND NEW ORLEANS BUT THIS TIME WE HAVE TWO MORE PEOPLE IN THE VAN SO IT SUCKS A LITTLE BIT MORE THAN IT DID LAST TIME

WEDNESDAY: WEDNESDAYS AT THE SQUARE WITH ERIC LINDELL – HOME SWEET NEW ORLEANS
For some reason the last show of any tour always comes with a sense of accomplishment, completion, and looking back.  You’ve accumulated that rare type of experience that is intrinsically valuable not because it enables you to go other places and do other things, but simply for its own sake.  Not to say touring doesn’t open doors, because it does, but that’s not all there is to it.  There’s awesome.  There’s loudness.  There are bad smells in the van.  There’s not enough sleep.  Not enough water.  There are a handful of new places and a hundred new friends.  There’s magic.

This magic is exactly the kind of thing that I am not thinking about when I park the van in front of Dave’s house at 5:30 in the morning.

We arrive just in time to get to bed before sunrise.  It’s a difference of all of half an hour, but there is a profound psychological advantage to going to bed when it’s dark out.  Nobody seems to get enough sleep anyway.  We go to Lafayette Square.  We defeat fatigue and play good notes.  Eric Lindell is awesome.  Ed gets to sit in with Eric Lindell.  Ed is awesome.  We’re tired.

The end.

So that was our week!  Thank you for your patience, I know I’m super late but hopefully all of the extra words make up for it.  I tried to make them good!  Between now and next time, we’ve just got two shows.  We’re playing Back to the Beach tomorrow at 4:20 (shut up) and then we’ll be headed to Artmosphere in Lafayette that evening.  Hope to see you there!

*”Lazy Sociopath” would make an awesome band name.  Dibs.