Blog About Photography

That’s me last sum­mer on Bryan Schut­maat’s shoul­ders, try­ing to take this pic­ture of a dead thing:

I really should redo this.

There’s gonna be a trickle of tour shots on Flickr. Check them out.

Mon­tana was a pretty kick-​​ass spot; the dudes played in Boze­man and then Billings, and we spent two nights camped out at Uncle Mitch’s house on Lake Ennis. Google it. It’s awe­some. There were some huge, gor­geous hills I climbed with Mike and Marlen, an expe­ri­ence that Mike clas­si­fied as “scen­sters in the wilder­ness,” which was punc­tu­ated every few sec­onds by one of us shout­ing, “Fuck! Ow!” when the prickly pear would pierce our can­vass shoes. The view from up top was killer. 

The Mon­tana shows were only so-​​so, but the Filler is a really rad bar and Boze­man a pretty rad town. A lot of funny things hap­pened at the Filler, but I can’t really remem­ber them right now, but will recount them when I do. Some of us may have smoked dope with the 50-​​year-​​old bar­tender in a meat locker. It was a seri­ously rus­tic experience.

Mike told the crowd he had can­cer; they didn’t think it was funny.

Then we went to Yel­low­stone, checked out all kinds of bison and elk and what have you, and there are some pretty hilar­i­ous pic­tures from that com­ing as soon as I get to Hous­ton. I prac­ti­cally touched one. Later that night, My uncle Dave, who lives in Wyoming, told me that I was lucky I didn’t get gored. That’s usu­ally what hap­pens when a tourist tries to play with a Buf­falo, he told me. He and Aunt Joanne live in Jack­son, Wyoming, and we dropped in on them after Yel­low­stone on our way to Denver. 

The show in Den­ver was pretty much hor­ri­ble. The Mar­quis The­atre is appar­ently a rock and roll club run by peo­ple who have never heard of rock and roll. Tak­ing a piss required a bracelet,  as did drink­ing a beer, as did stand­ing by the bar, as did being with the band. The other crowd sucked and the other bands were bull­shit. Den­ver itself is pretty cool though. We ate deli­cious faji­tias and hung out at a pub across from the Mar­quis. I drank some kind of local whiskey which was so good I didn’t mind pay­ing the $800 a glass or what­ever it was for more, twice. And the weather was gor­geous after we froze our asses off up in the moun­tains for half a week.

We had lunch with Bryan’s friend Mar­cus in Kansas City and checked out the Kem­per Museum there. I bought a signed copy of Stephen Shore’s Uncom­mon Places there; the show had just come through. The girl who sold it to me as adorable and wanted to know all about what we were doing at her museum. We fell in love.

Then two days in Decatur, Illi­nois, where the band’s old base player, Will Spent, lives. It was a lot of Grand Theft Auto IV briefly punc­tu­ated by a show a goth out­reach church called Wake the Dead. I’m not jok­ing about that. Then we drove to Malta Bend, Mis­souri, which is a town with about 4 peo­ple in it, for a show in a kid’s garage dubbed Bis­ter Migstuff. Kids came from all over the area to see the dudes rock out though, and the local bands were pretty decent. I man­aged to leave Malta Bands with a hand­ful of high-​​school-​​aged Myspace friends, prob­a­bly putting me on some kind of pedophile watch-​​list.

Ok so after that, we went back to Decatur for a night, then headed to Cleve­land, Ohio which may or may not be the great­est town on earth. They fuck­ing love the Jon­benét there, and so the dudes totally slayed. We crashed two nights with their friend night, the drum­mer from Integrity, played a whole bunch of wii. And also Drew and I and par­tied until 10:30 in the morn­ing with two adorable but kind of dense girls who I don’t think have ever been out of Ohio. Texted an ex-​​girlfriend. She ignored me.

What hap­pened after Ohio.… I can’t seem to remem­ber. Oh yeah. Brook­lyn. Three nights at the Levee, pretty much, show at the Charleston, which none of you fuck­ers came to. But this hilar­i­ous thing hap­pened. At the Levee, I was stand­ing at the bar wait­ing to get a drink, and next to me were these two girls. One was really upset, and the other one was con­sol­ing her. The whole sit­u­a­tion was pretty cute since they were being such a girls. So I was sort of look­ing at them and I may have had a smile on my face. The girl who was upset is sit­ting there talk­ing to her a friend, and she hap­pens to notice me look­ing at her and mid-​​sentence, with­out miss­ing a beat, goes, “Fuck off, dude,” and gives me the fin­ger, then goes back to talk­ing to her friend. What? Really?

Recount­ing it to my friend Amy a sec­ond later. “Do you want me to go crash into them?” Yes, yes I do. A minute later: mis­sion accom­plished. The chicks left the bar. 

I’m get­ting a lit­tle ahead of myself on this one, but it couldn’t wait. I’ll bring you up to speed as far as the nar­ra­tive goes in the next cou­ple of days, but let me give you some back­ground: we met up with Will Spent, the JB’s old bassist, in Decatur, Illi­nois, yes­ter­day and he came with us on the road to Mis­souri. So now, we’re all hang­ing out in the van before the show, and Will shares with us the fol­low­ing poem ded­i­cated to the kids hang­ing out in here with us:

Take Care, dont leave me
Weed all day I love my life
Dont Smoke all My Weed

He was also a state track run­ner, ladies.