We started this last tour heading north toward
Minneapolis. Having to be there for a
show on Thursday, we left on Wednesday, hoping to get most of the way there and
then just having a short drive on the day of the show. I realized as we were driving on that
Wednesday afternoon that we were going to hit Chicago right at rush hour. There are a few places you want to absolutely
avoid during rush hour, and Chicago is at the top of my list. Since I fancy myself to be directionally
inclined and somewhat of a problem solver, I decided it would save us so much
time to slightly divert around Chicago and avoid all the traffic. Now granted Chicago does have a couple bypass
interstates made for just this particular purpose, but they are toll roads, and
I despise toll booths (yes, I know we should just get an I-Pass and move on,
but that’s another discussion). So I
determined what I thought to be the perfect route around Chicago that would
keep us on track and on time, and save us money. I don’t think I’ve ever been more wrong about
an alternative route. I’m sure the guys
wanted to kill me after this trip. It
would have been much quicker to just sit in traffic on I-90 going right through
downtown. I directed us to some state
highway with stoplights every hundred yards for miles and miles. Worst call I ever made (well, probably not,
but you get what I’m saying). I’m not
even sure why I’m writing about it right now; it just made me so mad at myself
for making such a stupid call. I think
the lesson needs to be to plan better in advance so we don’t go through one of
the worst traffic cities in the country during rush hour anymore. Or maybe the lesson is to get an I-Pass so we
can go on the toll roads and not have to stop at a toll booth every 3
miles.
Another way this tour got started off poorly: all 4
of us headed back out on the road with some sort of ailment. Josh has something wrong with his knee, Steve
had a lower back issue, Kevin is dealing with tennis elbow, and I had bruised
ribs. What a sorry bunch we were. Maybe we’re just all too old and wore down to
be traveling like this. On the plus side
though, Steve’s back seems to be doing better, my ribs aren’t quite so sore
every time I take a breath, and I’m pretty sure Kevin is setting some sort of
trend with that protective arm band he’s been wearing. Poor Josh and his knee are still struggling. That hasn’t stopped us from working him like
a dog though!
The first weekend of the tour went pretty well. I’ll get to that in a minute. But first, something much more important
happened that weekend: the start of the college football season. I can’t tell you how exciting this is for
me. It is one of my favorite sports
weekends of the year; second only to the first weekend of the NCAA basketball
tournament (which I’m pretty sure I discussed in a previous ‘journal
entry’). I love love love college
football Saturdays. For the next three
months Saturday is easily my favorite day of the week. I take the time to research which big games
are on, how the Heisman race is shaping up, all of it. Then I get to sit there all day long yelling
at a TV. It’s the greatest! And so far my Irish aren’t looking too bad
either, which makes it all even better.
Okay, back to music related topics.
That Sunday night (since it was Labor Day weekend)
we ended up playing the after party for a Mud Bog event. If you’re unfamiliar with what a Mud Bog is,
it is basically just a huge watery mud hole that people try to drive their hopped
up vehicles through to see how far they can make it before getting stuck. There’s some sort of competition involved
(although I honestly don’t know how they’re actually competing), and each night
afterward they have an outdoor party with live music. People have their campers on site all weekend
long, so it is a pretty wild party scene.
On our way to the show that night it started lightly raining… and didn’t
stop the entire time we were on stage.
Nothing kills an outdoor party and show like steady rain; except it
didn’t. Well, we might have had more
people out if it wasn’t raining, but the people that were there stayed out in
the rain and partied with us the entire night.
I couldn’t believe it. I thought
for sure they were all going to bounce, but the crowd seemed to love it. They were all soaked, but didn’t care. It was awesome. It really energized us on stage, knowing they
were so into what we were doing that they were willing to be out in the rain
the entire night to see and hear our show.
It was definitely one of the cooler moments of the summer.
After that show we were off for a couple of
days. During one of our days off I
received an email from our friend Ramon from ‘The Great Outdoors’ asking me if “Kevin
knew yet”. Since I didn’t understand
exactly what he was referring to, he sent me a link to the video they shot of
them doing the Ice Bucket Challenge, during which he challenged Kevin to do
it.
I want to be completely open here about something:
seeing so many people post videos on Facebook of themselves doing the ALS Ice
Bucket Challenge, I have been against us doing it. Let me explain – I didn’t want us to do it
just so people could see us doing it.
I’m sure we’ve all taken ice cold showers before when the water heater
wasn’t working, or when we’ve been camping or something. I know the feeling of having freezing water
hit my skin. I didn’t want us to do it
because it was the hip thing that’s going around right now. My opinion is that if we’re going to do something
charity related, I want to make it about the charity, not about us. I am a firm believer in being charitable:
both volunteering your time and donating money when you have a little extra to
give. There are people out there that
definitely could use it much more than me.
And throughout the years I hope that I have done more than my share of
donating both time and money for causes that I believe in. I say all that to hopefully make the point
that for me, if we were going to exploit ourselves, I wanted to make it worth
it. I was against us just dumping ice
buckets on our head and donating $10.
For me, that was more exploiting us than raising awareness. And maybe I was way off in that belief, but
that’s how I felt about it. I do think that the Ice Bucket Challenge has been a
brilliant marketing technique for ALSA, and has done much more than what it set
out to do with awareness and donations.
And I hope (and know) many of you have accepted that challenge as well
as donated to their cause. I hope I’m
explaining this well – that my whole point is that if we were going to do it, I
didn’t want to do it just b/c other people were. I didn’t want us trying to jump on the
bandwagon. If it was something we were
going to be a part of, I was only willing to participate if we were doing more
than that; if we were going to be serious about being charitable.
So as Kevin was challenged and said he’d do it, I
wanted us to come up with a way to take it a step further. I hope we were able to do that with what we
came up with. Our idea was this: we were
going to take donations throughout the night at one of our shows, and then
after the show we would invite the crowd outside with us to participate in the
Ice Bucket Challenge. Also, Kevin agreed
to have one bucket dumped on him or every $100 donated that night. So that is what we did. We asked for donations throughout the show,
and at the end of the night had raised just over $400. We finished our last song, had the crowd meet
us outside the club, filled four buckets full of ice water, and Kevin allowed
them to dump all four on him as promised.
He sat in there like a champ too.
It was impressive. The crowd was
assembled around him and cheered him on.
It was a great way to take the Ice Bucket Challenge a step further and
actually raise some more money for the ALS Association. But it actually didn’t stop there. Some people in the crowd wanted to dump a
bucket on my head as well, so we raised an extra $150 for me to do the
challenge as well. I was really hoping
to avoid it (like I said, I know what it feels like to have freezing water hit
your skin), but when they came up with that much extra money to donate, I
couldn’t really say no. So another
bucket was filled up and poured on my head as well. It was a really good thing I brought the
‘just in case’ change of clothes.
In total we raised just over $550 that night. I am very proud that we were able to raise
that much money for ALS research. I’m
proud that we made it about the donations and not just about us experiencing
the ‘ice bucket’. I also hope that we’re
able to raise awareness, which is why we’ve made a video to go along with
it. Of course, since I enjoy making
videos, we decided to have fun with it, adding a little drama and flair, and promote
ourselves in the process. But even in
the video I wanted to (and hopefully did) make it about the money raised and
about putting information out there. That
was the main goal anyway.
I’m also proud of my guys, and especially Kevin for
the whole thing. He was dedicated to
doing it from the start, and also about making it about raising money. He wanted to step up and represent the band
in an appropriate manner, and was so classy about the entire thing. Here is the video, in case you haven’t seen it
yet. Let us know what you think.
From there we went to Minot for the weekend. We have played in Minot for several years
now, but in other venues. This was the
first time we had ever performed at Roosters.
What I really enjoyed about this place was how well we were treated by
the staff. I’m sure I’ve mentioned
before in my writing about how big of a difference it makes for us when the
staff at a venue treat us well. The
staff at Roosters were great to us. They
made us feel welcome in their club. They
were courteous. They made us want to
come back again. I can’t stress enough how
much that means; especially at a new venue like that. They might not have thought it was a big
deal, but when you travel as much as we do, little things like that have a big
impact.
On Sunday we left Minot and headed to Fargo. We have passed through Fargo what seems like
hundreds of times over the years heading to or from various places, but in the
5+ years of touring we had never played there.
The coolest thing happened when we got to the venue that night for the
show though: there were at least 6 people waiting there for us who live there
now but had seen us play in different towns over the years. Going to a new town is always exciting for
us, but then to see a few familiar faces in the crowd in a new town is really
awesome for us. A couple of people were
even wearing our band shirts to show their support for us in a new town. I know we really appreciated seeing them
there.
Well I think that pretty much catches us up on what
we’ve been up to the past few weeks.
There is one more thing that has been on my mind the past few days that
I want to discuss. I’m not sure if I
should, but you know me, I’m pretty much an open book on here. And that is what you’ve asked for with this
writing, is to know more about what goes on off stage: what we do, what I think
about, etc. so, here it goes.
I have been wondering lately, what does it mean to
truly be a fan of a band? We hear so
many people say ‘I’m your biggest fan’ or ‘I love you guys so much’ or ‘you’re
my favorite band’. So as my mind
wanders, like it always does, I find myself thinking about those
statements. What would I mean if I said
those things? What do they mean when
they say them to us? So, back to my
question: what does it mean to truly be a fan of a band? Is it just showing up when they come to
town? Is it owning a band shirt? Is it really liking one of their songs? Or knowing the words to some of their songs? I’m
not sure I know the answer. I don’t know
that I could say I’m truly a fan of any bands.
While Pearl Jam is my favorite band, I haven’t seen them live in over a
decade. So I would have to say I’m not
truly a fan of theirs, but instead that I just like their music more than I
like any other band’s collection of material.
So I’ve been trying to determine what it means to be a true fan, and
here’s what I’ve come up with so far (and this is by no means a complete
or the correct description): for starters, a true fan would have to like Our music. I would hope that they would have both of our
albums; have a favorite song; know the words to some or most of the songs, and
want to hear them when they come to our shows.
I think a true fan would always come out to see us when we’re nearby
(definitely when we come to their town), that they would be upset if they had
to miss a show, and would try to get as many other people as possible to come
see us too; that they would want their friends to have the same experience they
have. I would hope that a true fan would
be excited that we were in town; that they would be excited to be at the
show. That they would want to get up and
dance and be near the stage and be a part of the experience of the
evening. I guess if I had to put it into
words, that’s what I would think a ‘true fan’ is.
As I read back what I just wrote, I hope that people
read that for what it is: just the random thoughts that go through my
head. I am not so pretentious as to
think that we should have thousands, or hundreds, or even tens of people that
like us or our music that much. I don’t
for a second think that we are the most talented, or the best sounding, or most
entertaining band around. I know that
personally, I have a very very long way to go in those aspects. I know that as a song writer I am nowhere
close to where I want to be with my craft.
I guess I just hope that someday we can get there. I watch other concerts where some of the
people in the crowd are so excited to be there that night; that they would kill
to be in the front row; that sing along to every song at the top of their
lungs; that would just die to get to talk to the band or artist for five
minutes. So for me, that’s the goal: to
be good enough to provoke those kinds of emotions in people.
Well, I think I’ve probably written more than enough
for this entry. I think I’m going to let
it sit for a day, and go back and re-read this tomorrow before I post it.
Don’t forget to check out all of our online sites to
keep up with everything we have going on.
Now for the song quotes:
This week I wanted to go way back in my past, and
give you something from my early days of getting involved with and playing
music. Paul Smith was my closest friend
when I started playing music. He and I
would write songs together, do acoustic shows together, and even cut 2 albums
together while I was in college. We moved
to Nashville together with the dream of making it big together. We eventually went in separate ways with our
lives: he moved back to Indiana and went forward with his life, and I moved
forward with pursuing a career in music.
But to this day some of my favorite music related memories involve my
old buddy. So I wanted to take some
quotes from songs he wrote so long ago, ones that I still listen to from time
to time.
“I wish you
were sitting here listening to this song I wrote about the love I shared with
you, I care for you and I want you to know, we might not ever speak again but
in my heart we’re the best of friends, and that will never ever change. You’re driving me insane I wake up every
night just screaming your name. I wish
things could be the same as they used to be.
Never knew how much I cared until I looked up and you weren’t there, so
all I’ve got to say, is why’s it got to be this way” – Paul Smith: ‘Why’s
It Gotta Be This Way’
“I ain’t got
much money, but I got lots of love. In
the good old days girl that was enough.
I’m not even me without you by my side so I swallow my pride, and I hitch
a ride to St. Louis” – Paul Smith: ‘Me and St. Louis’
*** Note: ‘Me and St. Louis’ is probably one of my
favorite songs of all time. Maybe
because of the time in our lives when it was written and played to me for the
first time, it struck a chord with me.
It was so personal and so deep.
The recording for me has never done the song justice in my opinion, and
will never be as good as the first time I heard him play it for me
acoustically.
