Tour Diary Day 2: Dirty Deeds

I had fully intended to keep up with this "Tour Diary" as some sort of right of passage thing, but sometimes things down't workout as you like. Tour on the other hand turned out to be quite a blast.

After leaving Charlotte on Saturday morning we headed for Brad Hurst's house in Hotlanta. Most of the drive down is through the dirty anus of a state South Carolina. So I spent 3 hours drifting in and out of sleep with the waking hours staring at strip club billboards and firework stands that look like they are made of popsicle sticks.

Things picked up when we entered Georgia as Shaun, Jeff and I pulled off to get some Jamocha shakes from Arby's. Shaun asked the pimple faced yo who handed over the shakes what the dirtiest of the dirty hip-hop stations were. He turned us on the 107.9. We knew we had the right station when the DJ muttered the word DIRTY 20 times in 2 minutes. So with no-name southern hip-hop as our soundtrack we pulled into Atlanta to meet Brad. We found it easily and were amazed at how well manicured his lawn was. Turns out Brad has an adult house. I'm taking sweet back porch, gas grill, dining room WITH A DINING ROOM TABLE, house plants that aren't dead, surround sound… basically the kinda place you don't ever get to stay at on tour.

We rolled over to the 11:11 Teahouse after dumping our bags and met our delightful host Penny. The teahouse was gorgeous and sort of reminded me a bit of a Frank Lloyd Wright house with two of the main room's walls made of slanted windows. When we got there the More Dogseseses were already chillin'. We did some quick catching up before going on a beer and pizza run. At the beer store Steve Santillian and I decided to make it a High Gravity night. I'm new to the world of High Gravity Malt Liquors but learned really quickly what it was about when we split a can of H2 in the parking lot of the hipster pizza joint. We made our way back in time to see Mexcellent which is Brad and his friend Kristin. I thought it started off good but not too long after I stepped outside to take a call they stopped. They both seemed pretty bummed and apparently had some technical difficulties. I tried to tell them that it wasn't so bad and they weren'y having it… i can understand this.

More Dogs came on next and killed it. Their new songs are completely sick. Emmanuel broke 12 strings throughout the course of the set(wtf?). We hobbled up afterwards and stumbled through another iffy set where we couldn't hear each other and things never really gelled. I set up by the window actually facing out and watched a teriffic thunderstorm as we played. Again despite how of I felt it was people seemed to dig it so I tried to fake like I felt good about it.

We hung out for a bit and Penny said we could pick up our stuff in the morning which was a relief. We rallied everyone up and returned to Brad's house briefly before a small group of us left for the grocery store for beer and food. Michael Bouyukas and I explored the Kroger together mostly flipping past turkey and cranberry sandwiches and jalapeno subs before choosing a $3.99 bag of 8 pieces of fried chicken. Word was Brad had burgers back at the house so everyone else bought fixin's and chips. Shaun was already passed in the living room by the time we got back potentially ruining our plans for Guitar Hero action. We discovered the burger were gone but there were veggie burgers instead. We sat on the back porch or awhile eating chicken, drinking beers smoking cigs and talking shit on the Atlanta and Baltimore indie rock hierarchy until I decided it was time to hit up Guitar Hero.

Everything is sorta foggy after that but I remember playing GH with Emmanuel until 5am and soloing on a sleeping Shaun. I fell asleep on a recliner for awhile before being awoken by flipping it over and the ensuing laughter of everyone else in the room.

"That's not good" I belive was my reaction. I picked up the chair and stumbled into the room Haleta was sleeping in to crash on the floor thuse ending day 2.