Category: Music

Falling Down 2014 Tour Log Part 1

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This has been a busy, busy tour. The kind of stage wrangling and crafting we’re doing is pushing our limits. And driving all the god damned time has really put a crunch in my writing. But here I am, about half way through tour, speeding through the swampy mess of Florida ready to bath salts and leave a baby in a hot car. This is sure to be TLDR.

Get ready for a long night
Get ready for a long night

We started tour prep back in February, writing up a list of new props to build, things to buy, and songs to learn. Half way through tour, we’re still trying to check off some stuff from that list. Props are being modified, shit is being bought, and songs have actually been learned during sound checks. One of the biggest things we bought was Rosie, the 6×12 trailer that bafflingly is still filled to the brim just like our old, smaller trailer. On the plus side, when it’s empty, it’s become a back stage at a couple venues. Why buy? We had the savings in our personal accounts and we can just sell the damn thing when we get home. Having capital is the only way to increase it.

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5 Stupidly Easy Ways To Save Money on Tour

Doktor Ross Sewage1 Comment

Becoming an artist is a good way to ensure you’ll never be rich. Becoming a musician is a good way to have no money at all. Even musicians who make a living have legitimate gripes as to how the system is gamed so that everyone around them gets most of the dollar produced by their music. In the underground, that dollar becomes cents and it’s really hard to stretch out a coin. It’s not even made of rubber.

Actually, a bag full of rubbers
Actually, a bag full of rubbers

So, your band is going on tour? Well, you already should know you had to save up so you can pay your rent for the couch to mom and dad. But you guys just know that this tour will be awesome. People are gonna buy your shit up because you’re playing metal in a way no one else can even comprehend. I know that 21 and up bar in Duluth should pay you a king’s ransom for deigning to gild their evening with your fine musical fare. They won’t. And that’s why you need to know some easy ways to save money on the road.

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5 Unexpected Careers Required to be a D.I.Y. Musician

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I started playing music because that’s what my friends were doing. We used to draw comics together, but then I grabbed a bass guitar and said to my friend, “How does this work?” And I’ve been an overwhelmingly adequate bass player ever since.

Four stings?! How hard could that be?
Four stings?! How hard could that be?

While I expected a learning curve and to eventually be required to know what a “chord” was, I didn’t expect the other responsibilities. This doesn’t hold true of all musicians, but most wear quite a few hats. Sometimes they’re of the leather cowboy from hell variety, sometimes they’re the hat of an entire other occupation.

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From Creepsylvania to Cascadia

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Or, from the Great White North to the Great Black Circle.

I’d been clamoring for some time to take another trip up North. It’d been a good god damned YEAR since we’d been there for the Revelations of Death fest back in 2012. I missed the amazing coffee. I missed the greasy spoons. I missed Fred Meyer. Ah, Fred Meyer… if God opened a Wal-Mart, it would be called Fred Meyer. But I digress. We were headed to play a show in Vancouver, British Columbia on the Friday, August 9th and the Black Circle Fest in Portland the next day.

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A beaut from our own Scott Bryan

People had work, so Thursday night we loaded up the van and made a run for the border… for Poutine Bell. I really, really hate making this drive at night. The I-5 through the Oregon mountains is no joke for some sleepy headed band in a big van. I always try my damnedest to avoid night drives, let alone one on a road that has taken actual musicians’ lives.

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Ghoulunatics and Bako Bits

Doktor Ross Sewage2 Comments

When people think of California, they think of something like SNL’s The Californians… a bunch of woven patio furniture lounging, iced-tea-drinking, bottled blonde, surfer types. And of course lots of gay orgies, vegetarians, and PETA protesters forcing tourists to smoke pot and listen to lectures by Noam Chomsky. Then, there’s Bakersfield. This is the real California. It’s a large agricultural town with an infrastructure not updated since the ’60s and maybe a rolling meth lab or three. This is the side of California that passed Proposition 8. This is the bulk of the Golden State. It was about time we played a show outside our Occupy Oakland and Hollyweird bubbles.

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We rolled into Bakersfield after a five hour drive at about four o’clock. The temperature outside was above 100° and climbing, well above some Bay Area pussies’ comfort zone. On our way in, what few people were in downtown were evidence of the city’s lack of support for the homeless, drug addicted and schizophrenic. Hey, maybe this place is more like the Bay Area than I thought!

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European Bluntkrieg 4

Doktor Ross Sewage2 Comments

The Bavarian pigs sure had thrown us for a loop. On our way to Tilburg in the Netherlands, they’d made us leave our back line and our Scott behind. What bungling! We showed up for a show I’d booked just four days previous with no back line. Because I only have Skype on my phone and no international plan, I had to wait until we found a McDonald’s with free wifi one hour outside of Tilburg to inform the staff at Little Devil of our predicament. Need I have worried? To paraphrase my friend Luuk running the whole thing, “Hey man, you’re in the Netherlands. It’s all taken care of.”

 
In one hour, give or take, Luuk and friends at the Little Devil had organized an entire back line, including a five piece drum set, cymbals (which we stupidly left behind), two Marshall cabs, a Marshall 2000 TSL, some Line 6 guitar head, and a decent Trace-Elliot bass combo. This show was going to happen.

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European Bluntkrieg 3

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Our adventure continued as we left Deutschland on a reverse-viking raid into Scandinavia. We we took to the sea like savage warriors of old, bringing death and destruction. Except, our death was only of rubber monsters and our boat was a big ass ferry that had an expensive breakfast menu.


Copenhagen awaited us with just the merest of shakedowns by German police preceding at the border. We lucked out that we only got a warning for two people being up in the loft, a 70€ fine each that they waived. And somebody ate something they forgot they had, and that’s all I’m saying about that.

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