theriotbefore.com

We’re currently on tour with The Sidekicks. We think the world of them. I’m pretty sure that feeling is mutual.

A lot has happened since I last updated this thing. First off, tour ended. I had every intention this last tour of writing some sort of update every day, and I actually did a pretty good job of sticking with it, but then my computer broke…twice. The second time was for the last week or so of the tour, and, seeing as how I was already a few days behind, I didn’t have it in me when I got home to write twelve or so posts. Instead, I wrote zero. We’ll call it a compromise. That said, tour ended pretty dramatically. Everything was going well, really well actually. We we’re operating mostly in the black, people here and there were coming to shows on purpose, my voice was holding up pretty well, and we all seemed to be having a pretty good time. All of us except for the Beeve. He ended up bailing on tour in Gainesville. Oh well. Apparently some people just aren’t cut out for sleeping in and napping in vans. Then, on our very last day, after a few days in the S. Carolina mountains, our transmission started acting up. Real bad. We had talked before that if our transmission ever broke, it’s pretty much be the end of this band touring for a solid 6 months. Seeing as how we have no credit to get a loan for a new van, no money to make payments anyway, we had always envisioned a transmission failure as the worst possible thing that could happen, sans totaled van. And, well, after our very last show on tour, with only 4 hours left of driving, the van’s transmission completely died on a freeway in Charlotte, NC. Granted, it could have been worse. We could have been stuck in Texas or some other place far away. But it was such a tease to be so close to home, yet not able to get there. Luckily Freddy had got Eli from Lamda’s number and we pretty much relied on his and his family’s generosity throughout the night and the next day. He came and picked all but Cory and I up from the side of the freeway while we waited 3 hours for a tow truck to show up. Part of this wait involved being really bored and lighting off fireworks (photos erased when my computer broke) and some really sketchy guy showing up at 3 am in the middle of the freeway, demanding to use a phone, then freaking out and leaving when I said the cops were coming. When the tow truck did come it did so with the ultimatum that in order to be towed, we had to leave our trailer on the side of the freeway. Now, considering that the van had a broken transmission, the most valuable thing we had was our trailer and all the gear inside. So, after waiting 3 hours to get towed, we ended up opting to limp 5 miles to the AAA repair center. First gear kinda worked, but only for about 100 feet. So Cory and I, with Eli following, drove through downtown Charlotte at 4 am doing the following: put van in gear…hope it goes in gear…it doesn’t…curse…turn van off…curse…compliment the van…turn van on…put it in gear…it goes in gear…drive till van goes out of gear (maybe 15 seconds)…curse…coast…curse…turn van off…curse…turn van on…put van in gear… That happened for over an hour. When we finally got to the AAA center two things happened. The first was really good. Eli was still with us, God bless his soul, and we had a ride back to his house and a place to sleep. The second was that I received a text from Freddy that Garrett had quit the band. Not so good. Garrett had a pretty frustrating night. We had routed the tour to get him home for one of his best friend’s wedding. When the transmission broke it occurred to him that he might not make the wedding, and, understandably, he got pretty bummed out. This was apparently the straw that broke the camel’s back. He had been on tour for more or less the last decade of his life and I think it was wearing on him. And though I never really talked to him about it (oddly enough, I to this day have only heard second hand that he quit) this big of a set-back on the tail end of what was a pretty optimistic tour for us, was just too much. He opted out. And, well, I can completely understand where he was coming from. The good news is that one of Freddy’s friends, who had never even met Garrett, agreed to drive, at 2am mind you, the 4 hours from Richmond to Charlotte, and pick Garrett up to get him back in time to make it to his friend’s wedding. Yet again, I cannot stress how often I’ve been amazing by the generosity of others while on the road. Freddy joined him on the ride home, driving the whole way while Garrett rested for the wedding. The next day Cory, Marrisa, and I dropped the van off at a transmission shop, packed up a rental van, and drove it back to Richmond. The day after, Garrett played his final show with us. It was a small show, but some of his really good friends were there to see it, and I hope he had a good time.

After the show we were left a member down, a transmission down, negative in money when we were so close to coming home from tour with a little bit of it, two months away from recording a full length, and, surprisingly, I was incredibly optimistic. For some reason all that collapse at the end of two years of significant growth didn’t bum me out. It felt like a new beginning. It was so absurdly devastating that it made me feel like our band was, in a way, invincible. That we were going to keep going no matter what. And, well, we have. Shortly after Garrett quit, one of Cory’s longtime friends and former band mates, Jon Greeley, took over on guitar. He brought a sense of newness and freshness that we desperately needed. We had played over 220 shows in less than two years. Most of those shows were to less than 30 people. And no matter who you are, it gets tough to play songs to mostly expressionless faces every other night for two years. So whether or not it actually pans out to be true, Jon’s entry into the band felt a lot like the beginning of something new. It felt like we were exiting, slowly, our old routine. And even if that turns out to be not true, to be entirely imagined, it was still really helpful.

With out new found energy, we set out to work. Practiced nearly every day for two months, worked extra shifts, pooled our money up, and soon we had a finished record and a fixed van. And, well, I’m really excited. Like, beyond words. I can’t wait for this record to get out. I also can’t wait to get out of town and play shows on tour again. That’s happening next week. We’re going to play a bunch of really hot shows in the Midwest. Mostly in basements with our friends from Cleveland, The Sidekicks. I can’t wait for that too. If you can’t tell, I’m pretty excited.

Keeping with all this change and newness, I’ve decided I’m going to try to do something a little different with this journal as well. I’m going to experiment a bit with how I write it. I want to challenge myself and challenge the way I write. Try to get a little goodder with words. You know? So I won’t be updating this blog for the next tour. Hopefully it’ll all come as one big update. Maybe not. I make no promises, except that I promise I’ll try.

That said, I hope that through some sort of computing osmosis my excitement has been made contagious and that you are now infected. I’ll see you on tour!

Brett

Oh, and Freddy beat someone up the other night while protecting our bikes. Ask him about it. It’s a really good story.