theriotbefore.com

Watch your step.

If tour were a book I was reading, I’d currently be in that section after the last chapter but before the epilogue. It’s over, but not really. The preceding could exist without the following, but will benefit from the addition. I say this because while we still have more shows in the upcoming days, we are now home and won’t be away for more than a day or two. It’s not real tour anymore. The good news is that we will be playing the next few shows with Endless Mike and the Beagle Club, which means that, as far as fake tours are concerned, it will be pretty remarkable.

Three months ago I bought some mirrors at Ikea with the intention of hanging them up in my bedroom, but soon after I got home I quickly remembered how much I hated using drills and screwdrivers—unfortunately necessary in the instillation of these mirrors—and so instead of putting them on my wall I hid them in the corner of my room and tried not to think of them. This approach to home improvement, though admittedly not the most effective, worked well for me. Anytime I was disturbed by the vacant space on my wall I could look at my boxed up mirrors and know I had a plan. At least, that is, until this morning, when, shortly after I awoke, I was possessed with an insatiable desire to finally do something with my hidden mirrors. It was as though they were calling out to me from behind my door, pleading to be put to use, and I, heeding their call, arose and walked toward them with purpose and dedication (mind you I was dressed in only old underwear and the dried sweat from two night’s shows), committed to expunging the laziness that had plagued me since my Ikea trip. Unfortunately, the rest of my body had not shaken itself free of sleep, and the instant I tried to pick a mirror up I knocked the other over. It, as if in slow motion, broke over my shin. The new formed sharp point finding a home just underneath my epidermis. My shin bled. Blood trickled down my still dirty leg. Across the top of my foot. Onto the carpet. I stood there, motionless, eyes darting from broken mirror to bleeding shin and back again. My brain, now receiving pain messages just moments after being so determined, so ambitious, did its best to grasp where everything went wrong. My muscles apathetically shrugged their shoulders, yawned, lazily wiped the sleep from the corners of their eyes, looked at my humiliated brain, and said plainly, “What did you expect?” I took a shower.

So that is how the end of tour began. Luckily the days that came before were much more successful, both for the band and for my shins.

After a day off in Orlando we packed up and, with freshly printed new merch in tow (thanks to Enemy Ink), headed off toward Charleston, SC. The city is peninsuliar or peninsuluded or peninsulating or something like that. It has water around it is the point and looks kinda cool from above. Google earth it. The show went well and if things work out ok, a video or two may surface. The defining event of Charleston came after the show while hanging out at the venue. It is a moment that will go down in the history of The Riot Before as the time when we were introduced to the glory of Shakey Face. I could explain exactly what Shakey Face is, but it’s easier to just show it.

Awesome? Yes. Addictive? Oh, like you wouldn’t believe. In the final four days of tour I’m pretty sure that Jason and I took something close to 100 Shakey Face pictures, and never once did we get tired of it. There is talk of compiling these pictures and designating an entire section of this website solely to Shakey Face. I’ll let you know how that goes. Nevertheless, I highly recommend you trying Shakey Face yourself. All you have to do is relax, shake, and then take a picture of it. It’ll change your life…or at least how you spend your downtime.

Even with all the attention received (duly received I must insist) by Shakey Face, no amount of head shaking could loosen the hold of Super Taco on our minds and, well, stomachs. Super Taco was first discovered by The Riot Before near the end of our first tour, way back in the summer of ’06. We had spent close to a month driving around and playing shows before we pulled into Clemson, SC, not knowing what to expect from this small football centered town. But we soon discovered, thanks to our benevolent and wise host, Cam, that Clemson wasn’t just the home of too much orange paint and sporting enthusiasm, it also possessed Super Taco.

Super Taco, for those of you unfamiliar, is by far the best, most authentic Mexican Food I’ve had anywhere outside of California or, for that matter, Mexico. And it is in, of all places, Clemson, SC. When it came time for The Riot Before to tour down south again, we purposely made sure to include Clemson, partly because we had a great time on our first trip through, but mostly because of Super Taco. You can’t just eat it once. It pulls you back. I’m convinced that there is a Super Taco sized whole in all our hearts, and though we try to fill it with Moe’s, Chipotle, or Baja Fresh, deep down inside we all know that nothing but the perfectly seasoned ingredients and fresh, hand-made tortillas of Super Taco can truly satisfy.

We ended up going twice and it led me to decide that from now on out I’m trading in Thanksgiving and instead devoting an entire day to gluttony whenever I find myself in or near Clemson. As far as I’m concerned, Thanksgiving is no longer celebrated at the arrival of a date, but of a location.

We binged on burritos, nachos, and head sized tortas…

…and then we rested.

It was sad to say goodbye to Super Taco, but, we are first and foremost a band, and we had more shows to play.

Following Clemson we drove up to Charlotte and played a show at Lunchbox records. We’ve played Charlotte three times now and the shows keep getting better. There’s always a good turnout and everyone seems to have a good time. We took a group Shaky Face picture that I will post as soon as I get my hands on it. The guys in Lamda hooked us up with the show and then we all ate at a local diner afterwards. Good place which I probably would have enjoyed even more if my stomach hadn’t had been filled to the brim with Super Taco.

Our show last night was in Raleigh at a house that was decorated very interestingly.

I can’t remember the name of the above sculpted figure, but I do know that he is the anti-Santa in various northern European countries. Apparently he flies around and beats all the bad children with a stick. At this house though, he was going after Osama. So, you know, he’s useful year round I guess.

The show ended up being plagued by our anticipation of sleeping in our own beds, and well, we were bad. But Crossed Eyes wasn’t, in spite of being sick. Go listen to their music. They’re also good people too.

Done.

Brett

This has defined almost every drive we’ve done this tour. I’m mostly to blame.

Brett

We don’t have a booking agent and book all our shows ourselves, which means we don’t have anyone telling us when or where to tours. We get to choose where to go and, so far, the primary motivator behind where we’ve gone has been climate. July found us wearing hoodies in the Northeast while everyone back home was suffering the summer heat and humidity, and for the last three days, while the snow has falling on the streets of Richmond, we have been in Florida, driving around with t-shirts on and the windows down. We have really good ideas sometimes.

Another good idea, which really wasn’t ours, was the quote ceiling. I’m pretty sure I already mentioned this is in an earlier entry, but I feel it deserves another mention since we’ve been mostly quite diligent with recording funny tour quotes (though we kinda slacked off this fall). Our van’s ceiling is starting to get impressively cluttered with humor. It’s even served as inspiration for song titles; the following title will be on our upcoming EP.

The thing about riding around in a van with four other guys for weeks or months at a time is one soon adopts the others’ way of speaking. This would probably be beneficial if you were in, say, The Decemberists, but the only thing I’ve picked up so far is imitation rapper slang and this thing Garrett does where he describes almost everything with “Kinda Superlative”. Bands are “kinda awesome,” and shows are “kinda amazing”. This annoys me since “kinda amazing” is really just a long way of saying “good”, but no matter how much distaste I have for it, I have found that “kinda superlative” has begun to preface kinda everything I say. See what I mean?

We played a show in someone’s front yard in Statesboro, GA the other day that was, surprisingly enough, an extremely good time. The guys that hosted us at the Hanger Haus—an airplane hanger converted into apartments—where fun and friendly, and so were the people in and with the band we played with, The City is the Tower. They’re from New Mexico and have burrito pretensions similar to mine. We’re playing with them again in April and I can speak for everyone in my band when I say that we can’t wait. Great people. Like them. We do.

The day after the Statesboro show we went swimming at a local indoor pool. I attempted to take pictures of the swimming but it was too humid inside and my lens fogged over instantly. You’ll just have to trust me that it was a fun. Jason borrowed some swim trunks that had an interesting “manhood securing” method.

It was similar to the netting used is some swim trunks except that all the excess netting was removed, leaving only a V shape in the front and two strings in the back. It was, from what I’ve been told, not comfortable.

Last night we played in Orlando with The Loved Ones (kinda amazing), Zolof the Rock and Roll Destroyer (kinda awesome), and The Attack (kinda fantastic). You should’ve been there.

Orlando is a cool looking city and looks a lot like this if you stand on a particular corner and stare up diagonally at a certain windowed building, then throw what you see through a sepia filter…

Our show in St. Petersburg fell through tonight but some nice kids came to the rescue and gave us a place to sleep in Orlando. We watched about an hour of Pete and Pete on DVD and then decided to walk to 7 Eleven for snacks. After buying an ice cream sandwich and Gatorade (orange flavor) I walked out of the store only to find that Florida decided to do what it does best, rain like hell. We tried waiting out the rain–during which I discovered that Justin Timberlake is rebounding from Cameron Diaz with Scarlott Johanson who used to date Jared Letto and totally is committed to whatever relationship she is in–but the rain didn’t let up and we reluctantly walked the half mile or so back to the house in the downpour. Remembering the episode of Mythbusters which proved that one gets less wet when walking rather than running in the rain, I maintaned a moderate pace and kept an eye out for puddles. But when I got home I realized I was drenched to the point that I doubted my shirt’s ability to be any more wet. This at first made me think that I walked in vain, since I couldn’t have been worse off if I had run, but then it occured to me that if I had run, and did indeed get more soaked, I may have drowned. Mythbusters saved my life tonight.

Everyone just started watching “The Hills Have Eyes”. It’s common knowledge amongst my bandmates that I hate horror movies. The main reason for this is because they scare me. Like, a lot. Horror movies are the reason I check behind the shower curtain when I’m home alone and why my heart rate increases when I have to walk down secluded dark hallways. But I also hate them because the dialogue is typically bad, the plot is predictable, and they give me no reason justify suspending my disbelief. If a knife-wielding maniac is stumbling after a young screaming coed, frantically running through the forest, and he somehow manages to catch up with her, you better give me a good reason why, or be prepared for me to hate your movie. So far it’s been 100% the latter. I sometimes think of uber PC reasons for hating these movies. My favorite is my belief that finding entertainment in death, suffering, and violence is insensitive to people who have to deal with those things in their everyday life. Enjoying watching someone violently die on a tv screen is in a way bragging to the rest of the world about the relative safety with which we live. And it distances ourselves from the plight of others, lessoning our interest in helping them. I’m not sure I really believe this, but it’s fun to think it’s true on nights like tonight. That’s the beauty of rationalizing stuff. It’s a great way to feel self-righteous when you’re probably just a big pansy.

Kinda terrified,
Brett

I’m occasionally a wordy guy. The following is proof. This may even be too much for Phil!

There is an assumption that people have that touring in a band is a good way to see the country. I too believed this, and while the assumption isn’t completely wrong, it’s accuracy hinges on how one defines the word “see”. If by “see the country” you mean, “stare vacantly out at the sky and the tops of passing trees from your spot lying on the increasingly uncomfortable van bench” (see picture below), then yes, tour is a great way to see the country.

But if by “see” you really mean “experience”, then tour isn’t naturally the best way to do this—a writer of travel books would probably have a much more well suited occupation. Though touring sets one up to experience different parts of the country/world better than, say, working in a cubicle, the actual degree of experience is really left up to the volition of the traveler and doesn’t magically happen through some sort of osmosis. It is easy to fall into the routine of sleep in till noon, eat fast food, drive to next town, eat gas station food, play show, hang out at bar/house where show was played, go to bed very late, wake up at noon. Nowhere in that routine does one have the opportunity to really get to know the city he or she is in, it simply becomes a different arrangement of buildings with which to sing and drink in, separated by uninteresting and surprisingly homogeneous stretches of highway scenery. We, those who tour in bands, aren’t doomed to this lifestyle, but it does take work not to settle into it. I have recently resolved not to tour apathetically, and I purposely made this resolution in public, announcing it both in the van and on this blog with the hope that this will provide some sort of accountability. We’ll see how that goes.

Last night, while lying on said van bench, staring vacantly at the night sky through the tops of passing trees, a bright yellow billboard caught my attention, on which was printed in bold black letters, “JESUS”. It said nothing else. I sat up, curious, stunned at the billboard’s simplicity, and as we drove on I noticed that written on the other side, in similar yellow and black, was “COMING SOON”. Again, the words were unaccompanied by a further explanation. Maybe it was because I had been idly sitting in a van all day and desperately needed some sort of mental stimulation, but this simple sign brought on a whole host of ideas about the motivation behind its origins, the purpose of its message, and its ultimate effectiveness. Seeing as how we were in Georgia, I assumed that the billboard was the work of some sort of evangelical organization whose focus was primarily in the saving of the souls of sinners from eternal flames, a fiery lake, and/or the gnashing of teeth. The sign was an extension of this and served as a seemingly hip way to converge tired market rhetoric with the even more exhausted doomsday imagery. But, really, what purpose does the sign serve? Who benefits from being told that Jesus is coming soon? It seems that the sponsoring group would be trying to reach out to the unsaved, but there’s a problem with their approach. The sign operates successfully only if the reader knows who Jesus is, why he is coming back, where his coming will occur, and what his arrival will require of us, if anything. But if a person doesn’t have a working understanding of the New Testament, then that person, the very person an evangelical organization should be trying to reach, is left in the dark. Probably confused and definitely unsaved. So the billboard then isn’t really for the unsaved, is it? But if not for them, then for whom? Well, after some thought I decided that I think it’s for the very people who paid to have it put up. It is up and communicating to the all those commuting between Athens and Atlanta not to save their souls, but to save the evangelicals from actually doing any work. That way, when they come across passages in the Bible asking the followers of Christ to serve others, to preach the gospel, they can point to their billboard as evidence of their service. “Look,” they’ll say, “we are warning thousands of commuters a day of the immediacy of Christ’s return and of their need to repent, etc,” but without actually having to do any work. The sign is there to do the work for them, and I’m pretty sure they’re aren’t too concerned with how effective that work is, so long as they don’t have to do anything.

So that’s what I thought about after the sign passed and shrank slowly into the night landscape behind our van. But I don’t think we should stop with picking on lazy evangelicals. That’s too easy. The lesson there has nothing to do with them anyway, the point, I feel, has a lot more to do with how we often we are content to let inadequate signs and slogans stand in our place and “work” for us. We sign up as democrats or republicans and then let party affiliation guide our vote rather than an understanding of the issues. We label people by who we think they are—prep, punk, artist, snob—and then allow those assumed slogans to save us all the work of actually getting to know these people. The point of my critique of the “Jesus, Coming Soon” sign had almost nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with slogans, the latter almost always being detrimental, the former, though plagued throughout history with scandal, extremely capable of benevolence of the highest kind.

In fact, it is people who are committed to just that, service over slogans, who have recently begun a non-profit that The Riot Before is now proudly dedicated to supporting. These Numbers Have Faces is still getting off the ground, but I’m very excited to have the opportunity to support this organization, one dedicated to bringing tangible and direct aid to the often overwhelming statistics coming out of Africa. Please visit thesenumbers.com or their myspace page in the upcoming months frequently. The website, along with the organization, is still in its infancy, so bear with the construction, but be aware that it is just this time, when still getting off the ground, that groups like this need the most help. Plus, the people behind it are some of my best friends and I can vouch for their dedication to serving others while caring little for silly slogans.

All that said, this is a tour journal and I guess I should probably say something about tour as well. I tend to get on tangents that I just can’t abandon until they have been thoroughly explored, and, well, I’m not sorry.

Last night we had a great, albeit cold, time hanging out and playing music with some excellent bands in Athens, GA. The first “band” was the Matt Kurz One, which is remarkably just one guy who happens to play four instruments and sing all at once. That’s right. He plays bass with his left toe. Snare and kick drum with is right foot. Guitar and keyboad with his, well, hands. And he sings on top of everything. It’s amazing to see and would be entertaining even if the songs weren’t very good, but here’s the thing, the songs are great. I’d enjoy them if played by a whole band. Matt is one talented guy, funny too, and all together difficult to follow.

But follow him we did, and I for one reveled in all the activity and energy required to play a show. In just minutes I was warm. It was great.

Bomb the Music Industry followed with one of the most energetic and entertaining sets I’ve seen in a long time. Like this band and definitely catch them live if you can.

The last band was a mellow two-piece called Christopher’s Liver. With drums and acoustic guitar, this guy/girl duo played a very impressive set, and the lowered energy was welcome at 1am. I think they’re coming through Richmond in a month or so and I’m excited to see them again.

We stayed at Jeff’s house (head dude and sometimes only dude in BTMI) and it didn’t take long for a pretty intense Dr. Mario battle to begin between Freddy and Sarah, a girl who lived in the house.

Freddy came into the game pretty cocky, overly confident in his skills (can you call gaming a skill?) and he was humbled right away by Sarah’s, again, “skills”. I know nothing about Dr. Mario, but I was grateful to be given an opportunity to make fun of Freddy, which I did for a solid 10 minutes before he warmed up and began winning.

Overall, I like touring, I feel that I’m made for it mostly, except in one key area: sleep. Being on the road means sleeping in all kinds of different places, mostly floors, and in rooms full of other people. And while I can normally sleep through a wide variety of sounds, one noise sleeping Brett cannot tolerate is snoring. For as long as I can remember even the most faint of snoring can keep me awake for hours. This is a problem on the road because two members of my band snore earthquakes and my sleep is built like archaic Indonesian architecture. I crumble the instant any sort of snoring reverberates through the room. Cory’s snoring alone woke me up about five separate times last night. I documented it this morning…

I’m tired,
Brett

With a short drive to Louiseville ahead of us and rainy clouds above, we spent a good deal of time yesterday in a coffee shop in Lexington nerding out on the internet, playing board games (Prof. Plum with the wrench in the Billiard Room), and reading. Regarding the latter, I spent a good majority of yesterday completely absorded by Dave Eggers’ new novel, “What is the What.”

I have yet to be anything but completely impressed by what that guy writes (and publishes for that matter: mcsweeneys.net) but I think this book is a step above anything he’s done before. Go read it.

The coffee shop served chocolate Lucky Charms! Yeah, I couldn’t believe it either. I think that the rest of my life will be spent on some sort of quest trying to find out where to get this stuff. Jason agrees:

Last night’s show was small but fun. Eat this McKinley was good. I recommned checking their stuff out, and you’ll never believe it, but they have a myspace page and everything!!

We had the day off in Nashville today and filled almost every minute of it with this:

I have no regrets.

Brett