Update July 2008
Posted July 15, 2008
Well folks, it was one year ago this month that we boarded a plane in Washington DC and exited the same plane16 hours later in Guam. It’s been a long year and much has happened since we briefly gave up the Southeast for the Far East. If you feel yourself getting nostalgic for our overseas updates, or you have no idea what we’re talking about, you can still find the story of our month in the Pacific, available for public consumption on this very website. As far as the SoBsD Arachnids and Phone Lines Department knows, internet links don’t get rusty or anything, so you should still be able to read it.
 Enough reminiscing. This year, Sons of Bill got out their collective travel bug with a trip down the road to the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. Unfortunately we did not perform. Fortunately we did watch Metallica perform…and they were awesome. Other highlights abound but we won’t bore you with them in this forum. Whatever you may or may not have heard about Kanye West’s performance, take it from us: Seth stayed up all night to see it and it was awful. Despite the fact that Seth is prone to waxing sympathetically about Kanye and his plight to reconcile his musical genius with his delusional megalomania, we must be honest in reporting that it was just bad.
 After Bonnaroo we were right back on the road with an excellent show at the Visulite Theatre in Charlotte (with the Masonboro Boys) and our first trip to The Soapbox in Wilmington, NC. Both are great clubs with cool vibes worth checking out. If you’re ever in either area, be sure to pick up a local rag and see what’s happening at those spots. However, for better or worse, these shows were both overshadowed by our show at the Norva with Jason Isbell.
We can’t say enough about how good Jason is. He is a former member of the Drive-By Truckers who is now on his own and touring with his (awesome) band, the 400 Unit.  If you haven’t seen Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, you should get into your car now and drive towards his next show. I believe it’s next week in Asheville, NC. He’ll be in the Carolinas for several shows next week. Go to his MySpace and check out his tour schedule. Listen to “Try” and “Dress Blues.” If you’re not convinced that he rocks…listen to them again.
Back on topic, we played with Jason at the Norva. We’d heard that the Norva has a backstage hot tub and full-court basketball court. We assumed this was just an urban legend, but brought our bathing suits and hoop shoes just in case. We can now tell you that there is in fact a (quite nice) hot tub backstage, although it was in Jason’s dressing room, so we didn’t get to use it. These is also a basketball hoop which has been placed in an old raquetball court backstage. Not quite full-court, but impressive none-the-less. Especially impressive considering most backstage areas include two, perhaps three couches, one cooler (often empty) and (occasionally) a toilet. The Norva’s also has a big screen TV, ping pong table and pool table. We rocked a very appreciative crowd, and then joined the crowd to be rocked by Jason and the 400 Unit. Afterwards we hung around the pool table just long enough for Jason to challenge Seth to a game with our guarantee (i.e. our night’s pay) on the line. Seth (somewhat jokingly) offered to bet our guarantee against his band’s guarantee (him being the headliner, his guarantee was somewhat significantly bigger than ours). We might at this point say that Jason is a hustler, except that a hustler would never have agreed so quickly or excitedly to such a lopsided bet. A real hustler would have casually hemmed and hawed before agreeing to the game and easily walking away with our money. Jason is not a hustler. He’s just a friendly musician who later mentioned that he carries his own pool cue on tour with him and he would be glad to take half of Seth’s balls off the table before the game even started. Luckily for us, Seth was dragged into the van before any bets were agreed upon. Despite that narrowly avoided disaster, we had a great time and we hope to do more shows with them in the future. We reiterate: go see them, they rock. Also, buy their record Sirens of the Ditch. Also rocks. We hear the live one is good too.
That said, you will have many opportunities to see us as well in the coming months. Check out our tour schedule for a complete listing of shows. Imminent highlights include two nights in a row on the beach in Charleston with Shooter Jennings and our first ever trip to Philadelphia! We’ll hope to see you all soon over a cheese steak and copy of Things Fall Apart.
until then,
Sons of Bill
