A Midsummer Night’s Sweat

Posted July 7, 2010

We spent a good portion of June in the great state of Texas, the majority of which was spent listening to Texans say things like “there’s nothing more Texan than putting red beans in your chili!” and “there’s nothing more Texan than not putting beans in your chili!” and “you boys are from Virginia?! I bet you never felt heat like this before!” We didn’t really know what to say about the first two comments but we did respond several hundred times the third comment by saying “yea, it gets pretty hot in Virginia too.” We’ve been home for a week or two now and it seems the weather must’ve been listening and felt we had to prove ourselves. Holy hell, it’s been hot up here! James has been out weed-wacking poison ivy all week, sweating like a whore in church. Todd even told me he broke a sweat playing Halo 2 the other day! It’s getting serious.

But let’s not jump ahead in the story. We had a great time going South last month. We spent a week in Austin and New Braunfels with a bunch of new friends including Chris from KVET, Shane and Zach from LoneStarMusic.com and Walt Wilkins (who bailed us out with a last minute gig when ours got rained out). We also spent a couple nights greeting the sunrise after jamming all night with Brady and the crew from Randy Rogers Band and our new friends Matt Skinner and Dub Miller. Badasses all around.

While we’re on the subject of greeting the sunrise, we should make note of the Lake Charles, Louisiana crew who were still awake to greet us (mixing Bloody Mary’s with Marleboro Reds) when we rolled into town at 6am after driving all night to get there. We spent several great days in Louisiana reconnecting with old friends (including our boys from back east American Aquarium, who are currently on tour out west) and making some new ones along the way. That’s one hell of a state, and if you can figure out anything to do that will help keep it from getting covered in oil, do it. Here’s a link where you can donate to the Gulf Coast Fund that’s helping with the cleanup. Here’s a link to BP’s website to hear about what their doing to cleanup. Or maybe you can just tell them to f**k off while you’re over there. (sidenote: I was told we should clean up our language a little. Do ***’s count?)

In general, it was a great month. We capped it all off with a brief trip to Ft. Worth to jam at the Randy Rogers Stockyard Stampede Festival. The weatherman said it would rain all day, but we still managed to all get sunburned. We saw a lot of great tunes, but nothing quite touched getting to see MC Hammer do his thing with a crew of 12 backup dancers (total stage tally: 12 dancers, 2 singers, 1 Hammer, 0 musicians). Todd had the presence of mind to pull out his trusty Droid during a key moment and get some priceless backstage video for your viewing pleasure. This might be the only video I’ve ever seen that’s awesomer than us covering “Fade to Black” at the Paramount last year. Enjoy.

We’ll be heading down to do some shows at the beach in the next couple weeks. We’ll hope to see you there and if not, we’ll certainly be back on the road in August.

stay cool,
SoB