day 1!!
Day 1 of "High Fives and Power Lines" Tour with Museums (Museums as of right now is: Ben D'Angelo, Zach Finein, Vinnie Roselli, Christian Mear, Thom Bulman)
8:30 am. The start of the "high fives and powerlines tour" , .
We wake up at Vinnies attic room on resolute st. in the city of Rochester, NY. Me and Christian shared a couch, and Ben and Zach shared a fotun while Vinnie slept in his bed. We had all met up there the night before to go over outfits...Vinnie lent me a pair of pants and I have never worn anything tighter before in my life LOL. We all get around slowly but surely, and figure out all the things we need to do right away. Me, Vinnie and Zach went up the street to get coffee to start our day off, and buy breakfast. we brought breakfast back and his aunt? made us it! then we split up to run our errands. The day before we ran into problems with the hitch for our horse trailor we're barrowing from Thom's parents....so we had to take that to get fixed. We also had to go to House of Guitars to get last minute things for the tour.
Me, Ben, and Christian split up with Vinnie and Zach to get the hitched fixed. We drove a bit down the 104 in the webster area and took our hitch to Mike a mechanic who works out of his own garage. We had to get our ball torched off and he had the torch to do it. We torched the ball off, but we still had another problem with the wiring that we had to sort out. Our trailor has breaks on it but the van doesn't have a hook up to power the breaks so we needed to figure out how to hook up electric to the trailor. We decided to just use external lights instead, and he hooked that up for us. We then realized our new ball didn't fit the reciever that we had and we went to an autoparts store down the street to get the right one. I saw a bunch of those car air freshioners that I love. We found out that we were using a class 4 ball with a class 1 hitch. time for an upgrade when we get back! we went back to mike and he hooked us up with just hollowing out the hole for the hitch to fit. success!
So it's about 10 when we get back to Vinnies and I decided I was going to keep a good log of each day and announced it to everyone haha. We hung around and waited for the others to get back, I took a nap while Ben and Christian played acustic. The others arrived back from the HOG and I guess they were really nice and helpful. They mentioned that they would send us whateverwe needed if anything happened on the road. SWEET!! Once the others got back we all got up and moving and started to pack the van. I unloaded my car of the drums I had and the drum cases that cokie let me for the 2 weeks. We took turns skating around a little bit. Once everything was packed we got in the van. Ben and Vinnie are the drivers for this 2 week long tour, and seem to be the leaders of the band. at last minute I realized that I don't want to leave my car in the city and decided to take the drive to Thoms. We get there and load the van, I tuned my drums as well as I could. It comes up to be around 3 and we're running late. we finish up and get out on the road at 3:40!! We're officially ON TOUR!!! We are now stopped at the reservation on the way and it's about 6:55. The gig we're on our way to is in Cleaveland, Ohio at a bar. The doors open at 9 and our expected time to arrive is 10. haha. we keep stopping so we're getting later and later, oh well. I'll finish this after the show!!
So around 10:20 we arrive at the "HI FI" in CLEVELAND OHIO!!!...and the band that's with us on the tour (13 years to victory) had just finished their set. We talk to the guy at the door and hear that we're not getting our garuntee and we're only getting a piece of the door...when an hour earlier Christian fronted 80 bucks for gas until we got our garunteed 85 bucks. Tom called the owner of the club and sorted out everything, and we all got a free meal on top of that. SAWWEEEET. me and tom sat at the bar and I ordered a chicken quesadilla, while he ordered chicken fingers and a sandwhich. A punk band played while we ate, these dudes were old, I'd say they'd been playing punk rock for over 15 years. It was cool to see something like that, old guys still getting down with punk rock. they were huge dudes, it was like skin head punk...it wasn't bad. it was right around then when I was approached with some bad news....
when we had left for the road it was POURING rain, and it rained a couple times on the way here. Vinnie was unloading the equipment and found my cases from cokie had been completely soaked. I unload the drums to find water INSIDE the rack tom, and the floor tom wasn't too bad. The snare I'm barrowing wasn't very wet either. I was able to wipe that off...but I had to take off all the heads to the other drums and let them dry off. my heads were completely soaked. It'll only be a matter of time to see the real damage done to the drums, but they weren't too bad. I let them dry as much as I could and tried to keep my cool about the whole situation. Everyone was so supportive and almost nervous that I might blow up? I tried tuning them the best that I could but it was a little rough.
In between letting my drums dry and everything, I got to chill and talk with 13 years to victory for a bit. They are all really cool dudes, the drummer dude was wearing an acacia strain shirt so I was totally stoked on that. They're hardcore kids....perfect. I can relate. I think me and zach were happy to see these kids were hardcore, because so much of our musical background and history has been in hardcore music. I don't remember any of their names though, lol. I'll try and get everyones name from those dudes just for my own records.
I started setting up my drums inside the club. A band was playing before us, "Broke by Monday"...they were basically pepper but ALOT better and more complex. the bass player was rippin, the drummer was sooo on point. so smooth. they played a couple sublime covers. While they were playing I set up my drums and dude a quick tuning job. gah these drums are so hard to tune, and with what I'm working with the heads are probably shitty/ruined...but only time will tell. They didn't really sound bad to anyone else, or at least that's what everyone said. so it was my first time ever playing a show with Museums, and I didn't feel like it went too bad. I wasn't really nervous or anything, and I didn't completely blank out on any of the parts. I think I'm just not 100% comfortable playing the songs yet...I mean that just takes time. I've only had a week with these guys!! ha ha I think I keep forgetting. So my opinion on my performance tonight really differs from my feedback. I feel like part of it is me ust being highly critical, but it could possibly also be because of what the dudes giving me the feedback are looking for. I mean I saw an amazing drummer tonight play with good well rehersed musicians and to them they heard really shitty music and in their opinion they "sucked." I feel like I'm learning the importance of showmanship with this gig, and the ability to just be a personable musician. anyone can completely tear up their instrument if they sit home by themselves and play all the time but what good does that do when you actually get together with other people? but yeah I'm trailing way off the story of today. The set went alright, I feel like I screwed up and I'd rate my night tonight a 6.5. I had an awesome time, especially with my kit, I had fun, it felt great to be on stage with them but I just feel like I could be playing alot better. oh well. they were all diggin' it so that's good. I need to set up my click a lot faster tomorrow and have my playlist/notes out and ready. moongels. fuck. I fucking lost my moongels. meh.
So this city actually does rock. I got to see a couple cool bands, mostly punk rock but it's cool to see it still happening. not much of a scene of kids, no one was really at the "HI FI"...but oh well. Not much of a Graffiti city as far as I can see. I've already dropped more tags than I've seen. I'm having so much fun being on the road. being in a different city, this experience is awesome. as of right now I'm sitting in a walgreens parking lot around the corner from the club we played at....and I'm having such a fucking good time. I think the fact that the only thing I have to wake up and do tomorrow is play with an awesome band full of awesome dudes is something I've wanted to do for so long. I owe it to the guys to own the parts tomorrow. Plus tomorrow's show is a house party so it's going to be fun...college kids. I guess it's right on campus. I'll try and get pictures, I've got a camera but dude my LCD screen is broken so I can't see what I'm taking pictures of...plus I left my memory card at home and my card reader. what a bummer...that would have really made for a sweeet journal. Thom is taking pictures so maybe that will help a little bit. so I was skating earlier tonight and took a bit of a spill and my whole middle finger on my right hand is fucked. theres skin hanging off of it and it's full of blood. I'm probably getting blood on the keys as I type. that's hardcore. lol.
So I guess now that I've covered the events, I think I should begin to talk about some of the things that have been talked about a lot on the tour. little things that I missed that weren't really events. like I noticed when we got here to the club we went in, said hi, but came out and planned what we were going to wear. I think it's sweet how professional they take being a band. we went on stage with an image. it worked out great. I feel like my playin is a bit weak, but I think It'll get there. I need to get comfortable. IM MAKING THIS HAPPEN. I gotta be cool up there and play for the crowd. I feel like they all really like me and they've delt with dudes with egos that they had to keep happy for that person to stay with them. I'm not really going anywhere, I like these dudes. I feel like some of them are just wowed about the SJC kit, psyched that I got it more than they'e actually psyched on my playing. I feel like my playin has nothing to do with these songs sometimes, like, I'm playing to music already written rather than being the actual natural player of the song. the one making it happen....it's hard to not just do me. but it's great for my playing at the same time and I really need to stick through it so I can have this 2 weeks under my belt. The way things are looking, we get back for a week and a half and then we're out on the road for another 2 weeks. I haven't commited or told them that I would yet and they haven't really asked but I think they're slowly getting there. I'm sure after tomorrow they might consider it (hoping that the show goes better than tonight). it should be a pretty chill night so I hope so. so I guess the plan is we chill in this walgreens parking lot and wake up tomorrow and flyer for the house party around campus!! We really gotta sell some merch tomorrow for gas money. eeeee. tonight went well. I should get some sleep it's 4:23 in the morning!!
8:30 am. The start of the "high fives and powerlines tour" , .
We wake up at Vinnies attic room on resolute st. in the city of Rochester, NY. Me and Christian shared a couch, and Ben and Zach shared a fotun while Vinnie slept in his bed. We had all met up there the night before to go over outfits...Vinnie lent me a pair of pants and I have never worn anything tighter before in my life LOL. We all get around slowly but surely, and figure out all the things we need to do right away. Me, Vinnie and Zach went up the street to get coffee to start our day off, and buy breakfast. we brought breakfast back and his aunt? made us it! then we split up to run our errands. The day before we ran into problems with the hitch for our horse trailor we're barrowing from Thom's parents....so we had to take that to get fixed. We also had to go to House of Guitars to get last minute things for the tour.
Me, Ben, and Christian split up with Vinnie and Zach to get the hitched fixed. We drove a bit down the 104 in the webster area and took our hitch to Mike a mechanic who works out of his own garage. We had to get our ball torched off and he had the torch to do it. We torched the ball off, but we still had another problem with the wiring that we had to sort out. Our trailor has breaks on it but the van doesn't have a hook up to power the breaks so we needed to figure out how to hook up electric to the trailor. We decided to just use external lights instead, and he hooked that up for us. We then realized our new ball didn't fit the reciever that we had and we went to an autoparts store down the street to get the right one. I saw a bunch of those car air freshioners that I love. We found out that we were using a class 4 ball with a class 1 hitch. time for an upgrade when we get back! we went back to mike and he hooked us up with just hollowing out the hole for the hitch to fit. success!
So it's about 10 when we get back to Vinnies and I decided I was going to keep a good log of each day and announced it to everyone haha. We hung around and waited for the others to get back, I took a nap while Ben and Christian played acustic. The others arrived back from the HOG and I guess they were really nice and helpful. They mentioned that they would send us whateverwe needed if anything happened on the road. SWEET!! Once the others got back we all got up and moving and started to pack the van. I unloaded my car of the drums I had and the drum cases that cokie let me for the 2 weeks. We took turns skating around a little bit. Once everything was packed we got in the van. Ben and Vinnie are the drivers for this 2 week long tour, and seem to be the leaders of the band. at last minute I realized that I don't want to leave my car in the city and decided to take the drive to Thoms. We get there and load the van, I tuned my drums as well as I could. It comes up to be around 3 and we're running late. we finish up and get out on the road at 3:40!! We're officially ON TOUR!!! We are now stopped at the reservation on the way and it's about 6:55. The gig we're on our way to is in Cleaveland, Ohio at a bar. The doors open at 9 and our expected time to arrive is 10. haha. we keep stopping so we're getting later and later, oh well. I'll finish this after the show!!
So around 10:20 we arrive at the "HI FI" in CLEVELAND OHIO!!!...and the band that's with us on the tour (13 years to victory) had just finished their set. We talk to the guy at the door and hear that we're not getting our garuntee and we're only getting a piece of the door...when an hour earlier Christian fronted 80 bucks for gas until we got our garunteed 85 bucks. Tom called the owner of the club and sorted out everything, and we all got a free meal on top of that. SAWWEEEET. me and tom sat at the bar and I ordered a chicken quesadilla, while he ordered chicken fingers and a sandwhich. A punk band played while we ate, these dudes were old, I'd say they'd been playing punk rock for over 15 years. It was cool to see something like that, old guys still getting down with punk rock. they were huge dudes, it was like skin head punk...it wasn't bad. it was right around then when I was approached with some bad news....
when we had left for the road it was POURING rain, and it rained a couple times on the way here. Vinnie was unloading the equipment and found my cases from cokie had been completely soaked. I unload the drums to find water INSIDE the rack tom, and the floor tom wasn't too bad. The snare I'm barrowing wasn't very wet either. I was able to wipe that off...but I had to take off all the heads to the other drums and let them dry off. my heads were completely soaked. It'll only be a matter of time to see the real damage done to the drums, but they weren't too bad. I let them dry as much as I could and tried to keep my cool about the whole situation. Everyone was so supportive and almost nervous that I might blow up? I tried tuning them the best that I could but it was a little rough.
In between letting my drums dry and everything, I got to chill and talk with 13 years to victory for a bit. They are all really cool dudes, the drummer dude was wearing an acacia strain shirt so I was totally stoked on that. They're hardcore kids....perfect. I can relate. I think me and zach were happy to see these kids were hardcore, because so much of our musical background and history has been in hardcore music. I don't remember any of their names though, lol. I'll try and get everyones name from those dudes just for my own records.
I started setting up my drums inside the club. A band was playing before us, "Broke by Monday"...they were basically pepper but ALOT better and more complex. the bass player was rippin, the drummer was sooo on point. so smooth. they played a couple sublime covers. While they were playing I set up my drums and dude a quick tuning job. gah these drums are so hard to tune, and with what I'm working with the heads are probably shitty/ruined...but only time will tell. They didn't really sound bad to anyone else, or at least that's what everyone said. so it was my first time ever playing a show with Museums, and I didn't feel like it went too bad. I wasn't really nervous or anything, and I didn't completely blank out on any of the parts. I think I'm just not 100% comfortable playing the songs yet...I mean that just takes time. I've only had a week with these guys!! ha ha I think I keep forgetting. So my opinion on my performance tonight really differs from my feedback. I feel like part of it is me ust being highly critical, but it could possibly also be because of what the dudes giving me the feedback are looking for. I mean I saw an amazing drummer tonight play with good well rehersed musicians and to them they heard really shitty music and in their opinion they "sucked." I feel like I'm learning the importance of showmanship with this gig, and the ability to just be a personable musician. anyone can completely tear up their instrument if they sit home by themselves and play all the time but what good does that do when you actually get together with other people? but yeah I'm trailing way off the story of today. The set went alright, I feel like I screwed up and I'd rate my night tonight a 6.5. I had an awesome time, especially with my kit, I had fun, it felt great to be on stage with them but I just feel like I could be playing alot better. oh well. they were all diggin' it so that's good. I need to set up my click a lot faster tomorrow and have my playlist/notes out and ready. moongels. fuck. I fucking lost my moongels. meh.
So this city actually does rock. I got to see a couple cool bands, mostly punk rock but it's cool to see it still happening. not much of a scene of kids, no one was really at the "HI FI"...but oh well. Not much of a Graffiti city as far as I can see. I've already dropped more tags than I've seen. I'm having so much fun being on the road. being in a different city, this experience is awesome. as of right now I'm sitting in a walgreens parking lot around the corner from the club we played at....and I'm having such a fucking good time. I think the fact that the only thing I have to wake up and do tomorrow is play with an awesome band full of awesome dudes is something I've wanted to do for so long. I owe it to the guys to own the parts tomorrow. Plus tomorrow's show is a house party so it's going to be fun...college kids. I guess it's right on campus. I'll try and get pictures, I've got a camera but dude my LCD screen is broken so I can't see what I'm taking pictures of...plus I left my memory card at home and my card reader. what a bummer...that would have really made for a sweeet journal. Thom is taking pictures so maybe that will help a little bit. so I was skating earlier tonight and took a bit of a spill and my whole middle finger on my right hand is fucked. theres skin hanging off of it and it's full of blood. I'm probably getting blood on the keys as I type. that's hardcore. lol.
So I guess now that I've covered the events, I think I should begin to talk about some of the things that have been talked about a lot on the tour. little things that I missed that weren't really events. like I noticed when we got here to the club we went in, said hi, but came out and planned what we were going to wear. I think it's sweet how professional they take being a band. we went on stage with an image. it worked out great. I feel like my playin is a bit weak, but I think It'll get there. I need to get comfortable. IM MAKING THIS HAPPEN. I gotta be cool up there and play for the crowd. I feel like they all really like me and they've delt with dudes with egos that they had to keep happy for that person to stay with them. I'm not really going anywhere, I like these dudes. I feel like some of them are just wowed about the SJC kit, psyched that I got it more than they'e actually psyched on my playing. I feel like my playin has nothing to do with these songs sometimes, like, I'm playing to music already written rather than being the actual natural player of the song. the one making it happen....it's hard to not just do me. but it's great for my playing at the same time and I really need to stick through it so I can have this 2 weeks under my belt. The way things are looking, we get back for a week and a half and then we're out on the road for another 2 weeks. I haven't commited or told them that I would yet and they haven't really asked but I think they're slowly getting there. I'm sure after tomorrow they might consider it (hoping that the show goes better than tonight). it should be a pretty chill night so I hope so. so I guess the plan is we chill in this walgreens parking lot and wake up tomorrow and flyer for the house party around campus!! We really gotta sell some merch tomorrow for gas money. eeeee. tonight went well. I should get some sleep it's 4:23 in the morning!!