TOUR DIARY!

Tour 2001. It has many names. It could be the "Rain Tour" because it rained on almost everyday we played. Or it could be the "Al-Blow Me" tour because Albany was so annoying. It could also be the "Where's Chandra" tour salute to our buddy Jim and his mystery woman. All in all it was a tour that was bad and good. It was like pretty much all tours.

Day One: "Shall we play a gig now??"

Well here we were again. Another year another tour. This time we were going out east and to the midwest. These areas have been pretty good to us in the past. So this time around I thought we were going to have some pretty good luck. Our last tour took us to the UK. This tour was barely out of our backyard, yet we were headed for over 2000 miles of driving in just 10 days. We got all our gear together, loaded up Brian's brother's van and the four of us, plus Marty Seeholzer, set out to do the tour. (We should thank Denny and Ellen and their kids (Patrick, Mary Kate and Seamus) for letting us stink up the van....) The first show was in Rochester, New York with some old friends of ours, Dead Blue Hand at the Bug Jar. The Bug Jar is this really cool place that has entire rooms of a house on the ceiling of the bar to make you feel like a bug. It's very cool. We left Cleveland about 5pm after both Wayne and Chris had to do a day of work. We drove into Rochester at about 9 and we proceeded to get lost in Rochester the same way we did the last time we were there. Damn that Mapquest. Every time you get directions from there its seems that they never give you that final turn and you end up driving right by where you are supposed to be. Oh well. We figured it out with the help of a real map, and we loaded in. The place was pretty much the same as we remembered from our show there in April. Soon after we showed up the Dead Blue Hand guys showed up and we were ready to play. Veluxe was the name of the first band and they played around 10:30. They were cool, played kinda of a alternative folksy kinda pop. It was good. Next up was us. There was a decent sized crowd assembled for the show so we were pumped up to play. Right before we went on I passed out these "Hello My Name Is" stickers to everyone in the band. They were left over from a project I was doing at work, and I told Wayne we should wear them all tour long with different names on them. So with that Wayne took his and wrote "not Bill" on it. A tradition was born. That night we were collectively "not the guys from ALL" We decided to use a different band each night and not be them. This was the set we played: Never Be The Same, Listen To Me, Need to Know, Seven, Disappear, Stare, Cyclone, Puzzles, Self Control, Annie Mae and Leave Me Now. We played a relatively short set, but we were right on. Everyone in the place seemed to dig what they were hearing. Didn't do too well on merch that night, but oh well. That was good seeing as we didn't have the chance to practice at all for the tour. We got off stage and watched our friends Dead Blue Hand rock out and all in all it was a good night. We got a good chunk of the door money and we were off to Kevin's house from Dead Blue Hand to party the rest of the night. The Dead Blue Hand guys came over and so did a few others and we stayed up all night. We knew before hand that our Sunday show the next day was cancelled, and so it was up til 6 am for us. What a start. Eventually we all fell asleep in assorted places around Kevin's house.

Day Two: "All-Blow-Me"

Day 2 was unfortunately an off day. It was also the most annoying day of the tour. I had tried probably 8 different people for shows on this day and from the start it was a royal pain in the ass. Our very last hope

was show that was happening in Albany, NY. Earlier in the month I had discovered that another Cleveland local band, Stepsister, was playing in Albany that night. I emailed Tony from the band and he gave me the contact info for the guy that was doing this show. He never got back to us about playing. We had to drive through Albany to get to New York City for Monday's show, so we decided to go that club to see if maybe we could squeeze on the show for a quick set. When we got to the place, Valentine's, we saw Tony from Stepsister and we explained how the guy never got back to us and how we would love to just play a quick set. At hearing that Tony was like, "well ask him, he's right there" So I asked the brain dead guy sitting next to us, and he promptly proclaimed that he was on a tight schedule, and he didn't get back to me because his girlfriend threw away my email. Ha, that's pretty funny. I don't know many people that read other people's emails and then throw them away. Plus I sent at least 3 to him. Guess she was pretty good at getting rid of his mail. So I politely said thanks and was bummed at the fact that they were on a "tight" schedule, yet no one was doing anything at 8pm. So we talked to Tony for a few minutes and took off. We were going to come back and watch the show but we ended up going out to eat and getting some beer and going to a hotel room. We also took a drive around the downtown area to see some sites. Albany is pretty much a garbage city and it had a couple cool places like a giant egg in the middle of the city (looked like a big toilet) and a really old capitol building. We drove up to the Ambassador Motor Inn in Albany, and I went in to see what kind of price I could get for the 5 of us. The woman at the counter was nice and told me 72 dollars plus 5 for a cot. So we thought, hell 77 bucks is nothing for all of us so we took the room. Boy what a mistake this would turn out to be. So we sat in the hotel for the night and got a good night's sleep for the drive to New York City.

Day Three: "Rain rain rain..."

Day 3 started off bad. Annoyingly bad. I woke up and went to pay the hotel bill and the guy at the desk hands me a charge for 105 dollars. I was like, hey wait a minute, we were told 77 bucks. At that he called to manager to come to the front. Immediately upon hearing that I was quoted 77 dollars, she freaked out and started acting like a total bitch. She started yelling at the top of her lungs that they didn't offer that rate and I was wrong. I calmly told her that the woman from the night before gave us this rate, and it is her fault, not mine, if this is a wrong rate. So she still refused to give us what they had promised. I firmly said that it was illegal to do what they did and I wasn't going to sign my credit card slip to pay her if she didn't keep her word. At hearing that she basically said "you're done" and she walked away. I was pretty pissed at this point, and I left without paying. So they can go and fuck themselves for all that I care. Right now as we speak

my bank is taking care of the matter because they charged the card anyways. So they have done 2 illegal things now. And what's weirder still, the card was charged 99.90. I haven't any clue where that amount came from. So with that we were off to New York City. It was only a couple hours drive down from Albany. We drove into the city amid the rain and proceeded to go to the Village and find the club. We were way early, but it was cool. The area that the club is in is great for walking around and seeing all the shops and stores and whatever. We figured out a safe place for the van and took in the sites of the Village. And of course we got totally drenched while walking around. It seems that this was the beginning of the Rain Tour 2001. We were slated to play third out of 6 bands. This proved to be a decent time slot. We ended up playing at about 10pm. We had some old and new friends show up for the show and when we went on there was a small but decent crowd. The NY set was: Never Be The Same, Listen To Me, Need to Know, Seven, Disappear, Stare, Cyclone, Puzzles, Self Control, and Leave Me Now. We played as Not the Ramones for the night. After the show we hung out with the people that came to see us. Joey from the Rosenburgs, Ted from Flatus, Frank Leone and his wife and Dan from Dirt Bike Annie. Thanks so much to all of you guys for coming out for us. Jason, the booking guy at the club, liked us and said we could come back. So that was a great thing to hear. We watched the other bands and then went to Joey's house in New Jersey for the night.

Day Four: "Screwed Yet Again"

Day 4 was supposed to be in Massachusetts, but a last minute cancellation forced another day off. And day 5 was supposed to be in Baltimore. That show fell through at the last minute as well. So we decided to drive home. The Tuesday didn't bother me that much cause I was having a hard time the whole time and the show that we almost had was a long shot, but the Wednesday show in Baltimore was something I had counted on from the beginning. The person that was responsible for that show is someone I had helped out many times before in Cleveland, and he owed me at the very least, a show. I won't say who this was, but he is now someone I will not help ever again. What really pisses me off is when people say they are doing a show for you, and they keep saying it is all cool and it is gonna happen and then at the last possible minute they say they can't do it for whatever reason. It is a lot fucking easier to tell someone right off the bat, "I can't help you on that day." Don't freaking lie about it. Just say NO. Don't lead me along and belive I have a contact and a firm show. If I know you can't do it from day one, I wont count on you, and I'll go on and try and find someone who will help and that has their shit together. This happened not once but 3 times on this trip. To those people I say, Fuck You. Never ask me about Cleveland again. I am sick and tired of helping shitty bands play here only to get screwed over later. So we drove home. As lame as it was, we did it. We couldn't rationalize staying out for 2 days doing nothing.

Day Six: "16th time's a charm."

Day 6 was in Dayton, Ohio. I originally didn't want to do Dayton because it is so close to Cleveland. But because of other people not coming through for me I went to my old pal Mark from Rod to get a show on this day. And like a great friend, he got on it right away and got it done. So we drove down from Cleveland to do the show with Rod and The Jackalopes. We drove into Dayton and went right to Jags, the bar we were playing at. We got into the bar at about 8ish and proceeded to set up the gear. Jags is a weird place. Not

a punk place at all. It has this stage area surrounded by mirrors. When you are playing you can look up and see 6 reflections playing as well. Plus there was no where to stand and see the bands. BUT it was cool. There was a decent sized crowd there to see the show on this Thursday night. Ben from Do Tell Records set up the show with Mark and we had a great time. It was good to see our old friends Jayro and Kevin back in Rod, and this was the 16th time we have played a show with Rod. So needless to say we had a rocking good time. We played that night as Not the Sex Pistols and played basically the same set as in NY: Never Be The Same, Listen To Me, Need to Know, Seven, Disappear, Stare, Cyclone, Puzzles, Whether, Self Control, Biff the Cat and Leave Me Now. Rod came up next and proceeded to kick our asses and rock out. The Jackalopes finished the night with some cool rock n roll punk. It was a great night. We ended up staying at Mark and Ben's house and had a late night Wendy's pig out.

Day Seven: "Where's Chandra?"

We awoke pretty early for the drive to Quincy, Illinois. It was about 8 hours or so from Dayton so we knew we had to get moving. It was a relatively uneventful drive out there. We did stop in Decatur Illinois to pick up our long time friend Jim Rice AKA Devoall to take him along for the next couple shows. We figured, hey what the hell, he is on the way, why not bring him along. So after our brief detour through decatur we continued on to

Quincy. Quincy is this little town right on the Mississippi River about two hours north of St. Louis. We didn't plan on playing here originally, but when our show in Paducah, Kentucky fell through we had to come up with a backup plan and thanks to our friends Woolworthy, we got in touch with Chris and Leigh MacKenzie in Quincy. Leigh and Chris were about the nicest people we have ever met while on tour. Aside from putting on the show on a short three week notice, they were very hospitable and gave us a great time. The place we played at was called Backwaters. It was in a flats type area of the city. It was the biggest place we have played in. The capacity of the bar/club is about 1500. Normally punk rock/alternative bands don't play here, but since Chris and Leigh moved down from Chicago, they have been bringing in different types of bands to this small town. When we got into town we got cleaned up and headed out for a quick bite to eat before seeing the bar. We ended up getting there about 8:30 and we were all awestruck at the size of the room. The stage itself was a good 7 feet high and the enormous room was very intimidating. After a while people began to show up and soon after that the opening band, Jonny 7, started playing. They played mostly 80s covers and as they played the place started to fill up. When we went on there was somewhere between 150-200 people, but it looked small because the place was so large. After a the first band was done we went up and rocked out. We had to play a long set and we were ready. We got our Hello tags on, we were not the Clash, and hit the set. We played a ton of songs. I don't have the set from that night but I know we played all of these: Never Be The Same, Loose Truks, Listen To Me, Need to Know, Seven, Disappear, Stare, Cyclone, Puzzles, Whether, Self Control, Lies, Annie Mae, Million Bucks, You Might Think, Biff the Cat and Leave Me Now. It was a great time and we got a decent response from the people that were watching. It wasn't your normal punk rock crowd, so it was cool that some people were into the songs and into the music. After we played the place turned into dance party 2001 and totally filled up. So we loaded out the gear and sat around drinking a few beers and watching all the people. This is when it got interesting. I mentioned before that we picked up our buddy Jim in Decatur. Well Jim was sitting around watching all the people and one girl in particular caught his eye. She was easy to pick out; she didn't look like anyone in there. She looked cool, had blue hair, kinda goth looking. Anyways, Jim was looking at her all night, and when were were leaving he was all about trying to at least meet here. you know how the story goes, "I saw her/him across a crowded room...." Sure enough right when we are leaving she comes up and they talk for a bit. But as luck would have it, we were all in the cars and we had to be on our way. He did get here name; Chandra. So off we went back to the MacKenzie's. Later we found out that she was invited to come and hang out at the house with us, and she tried, but she had no luck in finding the party afterward. It made for an interesting night as Jim lamented the fact that he should've invited her back himself to hangout. It's not everyday you meet someone cool in the middle of nowhere. But he was being courteous and didn't want to invite people to a place that wasn't ours. Plus, she was an out of towner as were all of us. So we all sat up all night talking about the show and hanging out with some of the other Quincy people. It was a great time and we'll never forget it. Quincy, Illinois is

allright in our book. These people were so nice, I actually got to sleep in a separate room with an air filter to help me fend off any allergies to the cats around the house. I got an air mattress as well! Man did I sleep well.

Day Eight: "Sorry folks, Campgrounds CLOSED!"

We lounged around when we woke up. The show for day 8 was in St. Louis, Missouri. St. Louis was only about 2 hours away. We didn't have to rush. It was nice. We all got to shower and have some breakfast. The plan we had was to get down to the St. Louis area and look for a campsite to set up the tent we had and use that for the night after the show. We found a place just west of the city and we proceeded to head down there. We had tons of time to make the trip. We finally got down to the campsite after a ton of direction finding and of course it is pouring down rain. But that wasn't the worst of it. We pulled into the site and lo and behold what do we see. CAMPGROUNDS CLOSED. Just perfect. Just like the one time when we were on tour goin through Dayton in 98 and we got to a Waffle House and the cooks told us sorry, grills closed. We all just were dumbfounded. We had been talking about that one time in Dayton and we were all joking how the site would be closed. Amazing. There it was in front of us. Campsite closed. Needless to say we all went into the John Candy dialogue from vacation...."sorry folks park's closed...." It was unbelievable that it was closed. So we turned around and went to some Italian place for dinner. Eventually we got around to getting to the Creepy Crawl around 5, and we were told to come back later cause we were playing the late show. So we took off for the cool part of town, under Jim's direction, so we could hit some record stores and stuff. We drove through a really shitty part of town to get there. Needless to say we think St. Louis is pretty much a garbage town. Anyways, we spent a couple hours out in the University district and headed back to the club. We were lucky we went back when we did. Since the dumbass at the club originally told us to "come back later" we didn't really know when to come back. So when we got there this time, the owner, Jeff, a really cool guy, was there and he was like"where were you guys? I was wondering if you were coming?" I proceeded to tell him the story of our misinformation, and he asked if we would go on immediately. I took a look inside and saw all the people and I was like, "sure." The early show was headlined by River City High. A band that we fit with pretty well. Well they were just loading off as we were loading on. It was weird, the stuck us on the late show, but we ended up playing in between sort of and we played to crowds for both shows. PLus, and this was the coolest thing, we got to see an old friend of ours, James from River City High who was in Fun Size. It was funny, I saw him at the bar:

"Hey you look familiar,"

and he was like "I'm James from River City High."

I said "I know, it's Ken from the Unknown from Cleveland."

He looks at me all dumbfounded..."What are you doing here?!???"

"We are playing next...."

It was funny, he didn't know we were playing. So we got up there and rocked out. We played really well and had the best sound we have had in a LONG time. It was awesome. We forgot to put on our name tags cause we rushed on stage. ANd I forgot to keep the set too. It was basically the same as the others. So we rocked out and got a good response and then we loaded right out the door and back into the van. Marty was joking about how he knew what Black Flag was talking about when they talked about loading the van, driving, unloading, playing, loading and back out on the road. That's just what we ended up doing. We stayed around to talk to James from River City High and Jeff from the Creepy. We got some gas money and we took off for the nearest Days Inn. We drove about an hour to Vandalia, IL. Brian used his fireman discount and we got a cheap ass room. The only thing open was a Hardees, so we pigged out on burgers, and we were in for the night with VH1 and Animal Planet.

Day Nine: "Decatur....mmmm, mmmm, smells like shit."

Day 9 was a day off in Illinois. Most specifically in Decatur. We had a leisurely drive up to Decatur to drop off Jim at home. We didn't do a whole lot. We ate at the All Star Diner and went bowling. We also got to take a picture in front of a giant chicken car. WOW! We did however have to deal with the god awful smell that emanates from the town. See Decatur is a town that processes a lot of Soy. There's a huge factory in town that does it. As a result, the whole town smells rancid. It is a cross between soy sauce, shit, and I don't know, more shit. It's bad. Wayne almost puked from the smell. The day was pretty relaxing. At about 5 we started the drive to Indiana to find another Days Inn. Unfortunately this Days Inn, the one in Crawfordsville, didn't give us the fireman discount, but it was cheap anyways. Brian, Chris and Wayne went to Applebees to kill time, Marty and I went to Burger King. More cable TV this night with VH1 and the Game Show network.

Day Ten: "Luckey in Lafayette."

Day 10 was in Lafayette, Indiana. We drove into Lafayette early and found a grocery store. We spent the better part of the day lounging at a park. We made a trip up to the college, Purdue, and hung out there for a bit too. Lafayette is a very, well, boring place. We pretty much had to kill a whole day with nothing to do. Eventually the club was open around 8pm. So after about 6 hours of nothingness, we finally got to hang out with some people and be at the club. The place was called Luckey's and it was a DIY kinda place similar to Speak In Tongues in Cleveland. It was a laid back place, BYOB atmosphere. It was very cool. Jeff was the guy in Hubcap and the guy who booked the show. The first band of the night was Hubcap. And they were totally great. They were a rock band with poppunk influences similar to the likes of Big Drill Car, but a little more simplistic. They really impressed us. Nest up was us. We knew it was the last night of the tour and we wanted to really play well. So we did. We were Not Big Drill Car for the night and we played our hearts out for the small crowd assembled. Next up was band that had Steve from the Mixelpricks in it. I cant for the life of me remember what they were called, but they were a cool Screamo kinda band. Steve originally hooked me up with Jeff from Hubcap

to do the show. It was also the first time I met Steve face to face after talking with him via email/snail mail for like 5 years. So we hung out after the show a bit and started the trek home. The drive home after the last show is always the most annoying thing in the world. The drive from Lafayette should be only about 5 1/2 hours. But for whatever reason there was a HUGE fucking traffic jam outside of Dayton at, get this, 4 am. It literally added one hour to our drive. Marty and I were the drivers and we were pissed. The other three were asleep for most of the drive. But man that traffic jam was the worst. So eventually we made it back. And now here we are. There, I'm done.

Once again thanks to the following people who helped us out this tour: Denny and Ellen and the little ones (Mary Kate, Patrick and Seamus) for letting us stink up their family van, Marty Seeholzer, Kevin and Dead Blue Hand, The Bug Jar, Jason and the Continental Club, No Allegiance, Ted Flatus, Joe Darone, Frank Leone and his wife, Dan from Dirt Bike Annie, Jerry Jones, Mark Rod, Jayro and Kevin, Ben from Do Tell, The Jackalopes, Leslie from Impact Weekly, Jim Rice, Chris and Leigh MacKenzie, Jeff and the Creepy Crawl, Jeff and Luckeys, Hubcap, Steve from the Mixelpricks.

Day Eleven: "Homecoming"

After reading all of that I decided to add another day to the tour. We came home and had a few days off, and then played a show at the Blind Lemon here in Cleveland. I don't usually write about shows at home, but I figured why not this time around. I also wanted to write about this show because it was one of, if not the best show we have played at home in a long time. The lineup was A Planet for Texas, from Columbus, Sidecar, and then us. It was basically a local show. The only draw was us and Sidecar. Needless to say, both those guys and us were hopeful for a good turnout. Well I don't know the numbers on the show, but it was a great turnout. I want to thank all the hometown people for coming out to the show and supporting us and Sidecar. All three bands played exceptionally well, and the show was a great freaking time. We played these songs, not in this order: Never Be The Same, Listen To Me, Need to Know, Seven, Disappear, Stare, Cyclone, Puzzles, Whether, Mascara, Annie Mae, Biff The Cat, Seems So Real, Switch, You Might Think, and Leave Me Now. Except for a small altercation outside the club that saw one of our most cherished fans get beat up, SORRY MIKE!, it was a great time. And I just want to say that what happened was total bullshit. Whoever beat him up, FUCK YOU. Pick on someone your own size. I want to thank all the people that I can think of by name for coming out. If I don't mention you it's probably cause I don't know your name, come and say hi to me next time! So THANK YOU for coming if I forget your name on this list. Thanks go out to; Superdan, Rick Bender, Mustache Steve, Louis, Mike Mrowca, Corey Roscoe, Kiyomi Namba, Jason Colbert and Sarah, Jason Shick, Traci, Ama, Jeff and David at the Lemon, Marie, The Cholleys, Mike Vaughn, My dad, that dude with the mohawk, Mike Delicruz, all of the Sidecar guys (Pete, Brandon, Brett and Steve) and their fans, A planet For Texas and whoever else strolled in that night. We appreciate it.

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