For the first time in Exhumed history (at least the sections I’ve been a part of) we had time to work on a record. And we had a plan for tour. We had a plan for announcements. We had everything planned. I did not plan on being an example of one of the many victims we talk about on our new record, Red Asphalt. But that’s how this year of touring started.
Some jackass young motorcycle racer lost control of his bike in the rain and seriously fucked up my car when it hit me and sent my tiny mini cooper spinning into the curb. When I got out of my car and he saw I was bleeding from my forehead, his uninsured ass decided the best thing to do was run. The same jackass posted pix from the scene the next day on his Instagram and an anonymous tip led us right to him. No arrest, but he’s getting a misdemeanor charge after confessing. I want more, like the 4k I had to put into my car to get it running again, but the wheels of justice turn slow, if they’re going to turn at all.
Long story short, I was pretty anxious having to start the Long and Grinding Road tour with Exhumed, No/Más, and Oxygen Destroyer a month later with all that stress to start my year.
I shouldn’t have been stressed. The tour was great.
We started off in San Luis Obispo at Exhumed headquarters. I did the 200 mile drive in my newly fixed but dinged up mini cooper to meet up with the lads. We had some serious rehearsal and then a serious get together to start the mood off correctly.
The next day I drove back north to San José to drop my car off at my parents’ house because my neighborhood in East Oakland is no place to park a car for a month. That was convenient also because our first show was in San José, and that was cool because San José was Exhumed’s birthplace and where me and Matt grew up.
Having planned a road-themed album and tour turned out to be pretty fortuitous because holy hell was planning stage props easy. Instead of having to build guillotines or go for some old timey aesthetic, I bought emergency traffic cones and lights that were easy to get. We almost didn’t have a fucking banner, because Matt forgot to order one. I was pretty pissed because this was the first art I’d done for Exhumed in 27 years and I wanted to see it on a fucking banner. Our good friend Erik at Zap Graphics was able to get one to us last minute. I ordered it, and tbh I had no idea about the size and no one seemed to remember what size our last one was. So I ordered 16×16′ which as it turns out is HUGE!!! It looks rad, and we were able to use it at about 40-50% of the shows, but I still haven’t seen the bottom of it. 14×12′ would’ve been much more appropriate, so youse know.
Another fun addition to our live set came from Dr. Philthy himself. Matt had told me he wanted to bring a motorcycle on tour. A non-street legal mini bike, but a pretty sizable item to heft into a trailer and onto stage night after night. I was skeptical. Every pragmatic bone in my body said “say no this” but my heart said “sometimes you’re too pragmatic… just see what happens” and I relented on any pushback. I’m so glad I did. The motorbike was a fucking great addition to the live show, something no one would ever see for a band at our level playing bars and punk clubs, and most of all it made Dr. Philthy happy every day to fire that thing up and give it a few spins in the parking lot.
So we played our first show of tour in San José. And it sucked. Well, it sucked for us. Something was off. For my part, I have to admit I didn’t prepare enough. I barely had time with the hit and run and a bunch of other drama in my life. And out set list sucked. We had already struck a song off it before even starting tour, but it just dragged. The order was all wrong and it killed the crowd. It had to change.
We drove all night to San Diego for the next show. I implored a change in the set and Matt was open about it. We had a few hours to kill and had a nice day at the beach.
Feeling good, we set up at Brick by Brick and had an absolutely disastrous show. The new set was fine, we were not. Cues were missed, songs were mixed up, Matt was fuming. We got about as heated as we ever got arguing about it afterwards, and he said he never wanted to change a set like that again, but I’m sorry, it’s what we needed to do. Our next show proved that, at the Underground in Phoenix, when we played to a sold out crowd and the set locked in. It had the right amount of new mixed with old, the songs flowed better, and it felt good. And the crowd was fucking wild. Rough start, but we were finally off to the death races (2000).
Las Vegas was up next. Before getting to Vegas tho, Destiny, our master of merch, located a cool place called Tom Devlin’s Monster Museum. It was awesome. Original and recreations of horror props throughout the history of film. There’s a Mystery Machine and an Ecto-1 parked outside the place. I highly recommend a visit if you get the chance.
We played a place called Dive Bar. Never has a place ever been more appropriately named. Everyone was cool, but yeah, that place should be on Bar Rescue. Which was ironic, because they were actually playing Bar Rescue on the television there.
That was a joke, by the way. Bar Rescue is a fucking terrible show where an angry sweaty old man comes in and takes failing bars and ruins them even further with stupid ideas. I hate reality TV.
Vegas was a hard spot for me, because that’s when four shows and having to drive all night caught up with my voice. I got a bit of a bug, being out of practice making my pig gurgles. It happens without enough warming up in the weeks beforehand. I was afraid of a repeat of 2021 when I got severe bronchitis, but this one passed much faster and never got that severe. I still kinda sounded like shit and it was in front of our friend Reese from Creeping Death who put on all our Tejas dates. That was kind of embarrassing, tbh.
We had a monster drive from Las Vegas to San Antonio so that was our day off… all snug as bugs in an overstuffed van. O’death’s in San Antonio was decent. The next day we played the new Lost Well in Austin, which WOW is such an improvement over the old Lost Well. Crowds were showing up, getting rowdy… this tour was feeling good.
If you know me at all, you know one joy I have is going to toy stores while on tour. I collect mostly G.I. Joe toys, but even just looking at any old toy line brings me joy. Well, in Houston, me, Matt, and Jordan from Oxygen Destroyer headed to a vintage toy store called The Retro Exchange and had one of the coolest toy store experiences ever. We met the owner Jorge and talked about being bands on tour. So he took a shine and took us into the back warehouse to look around. Lo and behold, he had drum kit and an amp so we had an impromptu jam sesh amongst all the toy goodness! It was so fucking cool and one of those magic moments you can have meeting new people.
The actual show at The End was more of a mixed bag. The crowd went wild, but one fella went a little too wild. I watch everything from stage. I see people and I monitor situations. I saw this one guy who’d been pitting pretty hard get into it with another guy who looked clean cut. To be honest, the clean cut looked like the kinda person who maybe had been doing hardcore crowd killing, so if that was it, I wouldn’t have had sympathy. It ended without punches, but then the first kid got into with this woman, swung on her and they started fighting. Before I could jump down, he’d ripped her shirt, even. I jumped down from the stage, grabbed him by the hair and threw him on the ground. He deserved an ass beating, but his friends wisely snatched him as he got up and pulled him back into the crowd to calm him down. I may look like a noodle, but I will throw down if I see people getting hurt in our crowds. I want our people to mosh and have fun… actual violence will be met with violence.
Exhumed finally returned to the Siberia in New Orleans and made up for a show in 2012 where the entire band got drunk and couldn’t finish any songs and ended their set with a giant argument. I wasn’t in the band at the time, but it was so legend that it was all anyone could talk about when I played there two weeks after that show, and even two years after that show. This time, we played well and had a good time.
The Merry Widow in Mobile, Alabama was about as close to a shit show as we got on the entire tour. Mobile’s downtown is actually cute af and I got into a fun conversation with a cook about his many times in prison. These are strange days. The backstage was sick, a whole ass apartment that we could’ve stayed in for cheaper than a hotel if ANYONE HAD TOLD US THAT WAS AN OPTION BEFOREHAND. The show was sparsely attended, but okay enough. When Matt gave us his little, extremely easy to empathize with political speech before playing Necrocracy, we apparently pissed off one guy from one of the way too many opening bands that night. He’d bought a shirt and threw it back at Destiny. “I don’t want politics in my metal!” Well, if you can’t stand 30 seconds of us saying fascism is bad, you might be the problem. And also we got your money and the shirt back. You’re an idiot.
The Masquerade in Atlanta was fucking great. This was a big surprise, because the last time we’d played there, co-headlining with Origin, it was bad. And the couple times before that had been meh at best. We thought Atlanta was dead. We were wrong. Just goes to show scenes wax as well as wane. It was a welcome surprise.
Lynchburg, VA was weird. Why not Richmond? Baz had a had a bad experience in Lynchburg before so he was not stoked we were playing this much smaller town. The venue was Super Rad Video Arcade and load in to their basement sucked balls, I cannot tell a lie. But the show ended up super fun! All the video games were free and the crowd was wild.
Our return to Chapel of Bones in Raleigh, North Carolina was awesome. The last time we’d been here, our tour met up with Incantation’s and we had a fun night mashing up the tours. I figured that’s why that show had been packed and awesome. I was wrong, Raleigh’s crowd is just awesome. Packed house, crazy show. This was also the night I found out from Jordan that Oxygen Destroyer had a whole ass video to go with their set. I’m like, dude, we have the televisions on our set, I’d be more than happy to show Godzilla movies doing yours. He thought he was stepping on toes, but the boys in Oxygen Destroyer are awesome (and this time included our own sound person, Nick Ziros) and of course I would want to help make their show even more fun. So in addition to hanging the No/Más banner when we showed up to venues, we added running Oxygen Destoyer’s movies to our headliner responsibilities.
Columbia, South Carolina— Orlando, Florida— Tampa, Florida— all fun, all good. We were having a really solid run with this package. I knew the No/Más guys from a tour last year and they’re all fun guys to hang with. Oxygen Destroyer are just sweeties and total rippers. We all shared the same backline and No/Más and Oxygen Destroyer shared a drum set, so gear was not piled everywhere and the shows were running tight.
The kicker came in Pensacola, Florida. That was Mike’s last show with us. He had to jump on another tour doing tech work so we had arranged Adam Houmam, drummer of Cartilage who also filled in on our Japan and Australia tour a few years back, to jump in for the rest of the tour. He would also be joining us in Europe. Adam recorded like two records back to back right before this tour and then had to learn our very long set. He’s an animal. It’s a good thing he likes to play blast beats or he’d be on to bigger and better things than drumming for a bunch of gore metal bands. Mike would be missed, though. I kind of wish it had been a bigger and better show than Pensacola. Adieu, my big bald prince.
Adam’s first show was with us in Lafayette, Louisiana at the Pit. That was weird. The venue space itself was fine, but the rest of the complex was like a giant Chuck E. Cheese minus Mr. Entertainment Cheese. Still that, was a good show for Adam to get his sea legs with us and he played admirably considering he hadn’t rehearsed with Exhumed but once before tour and we’d changed the set list.
The Double Wide in Dallas, Texas. Look… it’s a cool bar. I would love to see a show there. Playing there? Total pain in the ass. The stage is fucking weird. It’s a tiny ass room. There’s nowhere to store anything. The merch area was in a wind tunnel. It was not fun. I guess the choice of venues open for the day we needed were either gonna be too big or… the Double Wide. Matt chose to have a more intimate show and I guess that’s fine.
Oklahoma City REALLY surprised me. The venue was fucking great with an awesome stage and easy load. And people showed the fuck up. The opening band, Ectospire, had some trans members who were not shy about their politics and identities… in Oklahoma. That can’t be easy and their courage to be themselves and for their cis band members to be real allies in a state that can be as regressive politically as Oklahoma is admirable.
Lubbock was a crazy big outdoor stage that we really had no business occupying. I think our big competition that night was a Slipknot cover band somewhere else in town. God bless the people who showed up, but yeah, I can’t say we won that evening. Still, it was fine. But the worst was yet to come.
We had a long ass drive from Lubbock to Albuquerque, New Mexico. We were all looking forward to this show as it always rages at The Launchpad. About halfway through the drive, we got word from No/Más that their van was having problems. They’d broken down about two hours behind us. There really was nothing we could do but offer advice; don’t miss Albuquerque. That’s where you’re going to get the money to fix your van. Get here somehow. We showed up, did the soundcheck, and patiently waited. The show had to start, so it did. And right as Oxygen Destroyer was finishing up there set, No/Más arrived just in time in two gigantic U-Haul box trucks, the only available rentals in the podunk town they’d broken down in. The whole crew came together to get them on stage, get their merch in, and they killed it. As they always do. It was a real nail-biter but they came through.
Unfortunately, what now? They couldn’t finish the tour in two gigantic and expensive U-Haul box trucks and leave their van behind. They doubled back with their rentals and we decided they would skip Tuscon, Arizona. After that, we had two days off and hopefully they would get situated.
Tucson was fun and so we headed to San Luis Obispo for our two days off at Exhumed HQ. We arrived late and slept there while Matt took the van to his home outside SLO. The next day I was looking forward to getting a hotel and enjoying the swimming pool. Meanwhile, Destiny and Roger had a room awaiting them at the famed Madonna Inn for Destiny’s birthday. But where was No/Más? Because of the timing and a mechanic not finding anything technically wrong with their van, they gambled. And we all sort of lost. The made it as far as Bakersfield before their van died again. They had enough miles to get the van towed to SLO, but the trailer was a problem. And unfortunately for me, I was the solution. I had to drop Matt off with his wife, drop everyone off at hotels, and then make a 5 hour round trip to pick up Roger and Joe who’d been left with the trailer at a gas station with a hostile attendant. Once I’d arrived, the Exhumed ball hitch didn’t fit their trailer and their van was long gone, so Roger and I had to make an additional 40 minute round trip to a Walmart. Oi vey, so much for a day off. I got back to the hotel late, drank some high content drinks, and went to bed to get ready for the next day’s show in San Luis Obispo.
Which was fun. I never think much of San Luis Obispo as a great town for a show, but it really is. Humdinger Brewery was literally a 2 minute walk from our jam spot and a lot of people showed up. We had a great time.
No/Más rented a car in SLO to finish out their tour while a mechanic friendly with Exhumed eventually found the problem with their car (a fucked up fuel filter as it turned out, an easy but hard to diagnose problem apparently). Los Angeles would’ve been balls if it wasn’t for a very awesome crowd. The Moroccan Lounge, a venue we’d never played and I hope to never again, nixed our entire stage show. No chainsaw, no blood, no nothing out of the ordinary. And it was a late load in because they were double booked with a show beforehand. I hate that shit. After that was the Cafe Colonial in Sacramento which was a wild, punk rock show in a stuffy venue that was a ton of fun.
Finally, we rounded out the tour back in the Bay Area with a gig at the D.N.A. Lounge in San Francisco. I love this venue. It’s so cool looking and the staff are all awesome. I don’t love that they book dance nights immediately following shows we play there. The last time in October sucked ass. This time, I communicated with staff and their management had allotted more time between the shows. I still don’t like it, but I commend them on making it less painful.
The show was great, but something more special happened that night in San Francisco. I proposed on stage to my girlfriend and we’re now engaged to be married. We met in person for the first time at an Exhumed show so I think it’s pretty god damned romantic we got engaged at one, in front of all our friends and in our home— the Bay Area. I don’t think you can get a happier ending to a tour blog than that. I love you, babe. I’m looking forward to spending the rest of our lives together.
