MY AMERICA - Day 3: North Carolina to Austin

Today was to be the day of the epic 1300 mile drive from Chapel Hill, NC to Austin, TX for the fest. Our plan was to drive around 12 hours today and make it to around New Orleans, get a cheap motel room for the night, and do the rest of the drive the following day. Seemed tough, but could be worse for sure.
The next day,we wake up early, get our stuff together, load up the van and leave pretty much dead on 9:00am. So far, so good. Or at least for about ten minutes until we realize that the AC (that was fixed for a mere $700 a couple of days previously), isn't doing the best job of keeping us cooled down. It's in fact blowing really hot air out. No big deal. The mechanic probably just forgot to put the coolant in. We drop the van back off at the mechanics and pop to the local coffee place to get some breakfast. Three hours pass and we decide that it's probably a smart move to see what's going on. It turns out that the pipe is leaking and needs to be replaced. They may be able to get it from the next town over so we decide to wait it out.
A few more hours pass and we get a call saying they've found it and can put it in. Daniel drives the van back and drops us off at the local cinema to kill time. Me and Tim go watch 'The Hangover 2' in the most cold cinema ever. At one point I try and buy a small bottle of water. "That'll be $4.95 please sir." Yeah, good one mate.
Following that, a whole 8 hours after initally setting off, we leave for Austin. Now we've wasted the time we allotted for resting, we pretty much drive straight for 25 hours with Daniel and Tim taking the drive in shifts. We arrive in Austin the next afternoon with a whole 90 minutes to kill before the fest starts, so it's time to drink...

MY AMERICA: 2011 - Days 1 & 2

For real this time, and not when I'm drinking homemade cocktails in a kitchen while using someones laptop...

So far, both myself and TD have been in North Carolina for two nights now, ahead of the others arriving in Austin on Thursday for the start of the tour. To cut a story short, we discovered that Daniel (of Sorry State Records, Logic Problem, Devour, and Limits booking enterprises) was planning to drive all the way from North Carolina to Austin by himself in the van to get to Austin for the start of tour, so we decided to come ahead to keep him company. Thankfully, this also meant we had time to relax beforehand, which is something we almost never get to do on tour, or even at home, so we jumped on it.

We left my flat in Holloway around 9am on Monday after Tim finished his 12 hour nightshift at the hospital and took the train to Heathrow, of course remembering to sing along to '29 Bus' by Hygiene on the bus of the same name, while carrying bags full of crap and punk post. Once we got to Heathrow, and had our token overpriced breakfast (big price / small portion - the best of both worlds), and took a pretty uneventful, cramped flight to Chicago, consuming sleeping pills and trying to clear my head of various shit that no-one needs to be bored with, trying to be nice to immigration and finally getting on the worlds smallest aeroplane and getting to Greensboro.

Once there, we quickly met up with Daniel, found out our bags weren't actually put on the plane, and went to eat Thai food with Daniel's girlfriend Jet, who is an elementary school teacher and quite the character. We hit up the local hipster bar after that and
then headed back for a collection of home made drinks (as documented below. I was definitely too scared to try the Cheese Vodka) and crashed out in a nearby guest house that Jet had hooked up for us.

DAY 2

Today was supposed to be all about errands, and getting stuff ready for the tour, but was instead dedicated to much more important things. Namely, spending 3 hours drinking beer, floating on 'water noodles' and talking shit in a quarry in the middle of the woods in Durham. It was pretty amazing. A mile walk into the woods there's a 100 x 100 meter wide spot that has pretty much ice cold water, which is perfect for the 36 degree heat we're experiencing at the moment. Apart from the token moments I couldn't actually stay afloat on the two of these things that were between my legs (did I mention the water was over 50 feet deep right at the very edge, only to get way, way deeper as you go on), it was the most relaxed I've been in a long, long time, and everything that was in the back of my mind seemed to fuck off for a bit. I'll post pictures of us all squirming at some point. After that the errands actually had to happen, but not before eating the most ridiculous sweet potato burrito, but that's another story.

Tour starts in two days, kicking off with Chaos In Tejas, and routine will kick in soon enough, but until then I'm enjoying the nearest thing to a holiday I've had since forever.

AMERICA 2011 - DAY ONE

This morning I was on the 29 bus from Holloway to Finsbury Park, tonight I'm drinking cocktails in North Carolina, USA. Limits are on tour again, I intend to actually update this diary with this time round. We'll see how that goes. Time to sleep, after one more glass of Blood Orange, whiskey, vodka, basil, citrus, ginger and hibiscus. That's all I've got right now.

Day 2 - Philadelphia

We left Maryland at around twelve to head to Philadelphia. We had two shows today, the first of which was to be held in a newly opened skate shop called Exit. Before that though, we headed around to the promoter Andy's house, for what had been sold to us as a 'Shitty Limits - welcome to America' BBQ. We arrived there and hung out for a pretty awkward time, but still enjoyed the free food and beer supplied for us. After a while, one of the bands playing the second show that night arrived. Foreign Objects from Mass, who were all really cool and great to meet. More on them later.

After a while we head to Exit. The shop has a massive empty downstairs area that is a perfect space for a gig (well, apart from the massive ceilings). We load in and start sampling the free keg of beer, which has the perfect PBR style mix of 95% water, and 5% taste. Still, free is free, so we keep at it. Women kick off the gig tonight, and LP follow up quickly after, and manage to be the first band to discover the advantages of having a vocal PA that doesn't actually work. Deep Sleep play next and Tony attempts to master the art of singing and holding the microphone lead in the one precise spot where it doesn't crackle for a whole set. He does a pretty good job!
We play next, and manage to get the PA working for a good two minutes, until one of the speakers starts smoking, we persist and it's great. People are into it, we play 'okay-ish' and have a good time, and at one point even the Keg gets thrown across the room.

After this, we load out to head to the second show that night at a bar called Kung Fu Necktie. As a few of us are pretty hot, we opt to walk to 3 blocks to the bar instead of getting in the van for two minutes. About an hour later, we've walked a full circle back to the venue and are still non-the-wiser about how to get there. Josh spots some girls standing outside a bar and asks them for directions, and they offer to show us the way. After a few minutes, it's decided that it'll be a better idea to drive there instead of walk, but there's one slight problem, there's one car, and eight people. Cue some Benny Hill show-esque compression, with Josh and Louis in the boot together, myself, Seth, Cameron and one girl in the back, and two more up front. It's a little tight in there strangely enough, but we get to the venue in a couple of minutes, and start pulling everyone out of the clown car.

By the time we get there, we've missed the first band (who I believe had members of the Dead Milkmen), and Foreign Objects are up next. They are fucking awesome, and play 15 minutes or so of tight punk rock that reminds me of a more aggressive Bayonets. They even cover Alternative Ulster at the end. On a side note, I've never seen an Irish or British band cover that. We play next and it goes fine. We cover The Weirdos at the end with additional BB on vocals and a couple dancing on stage. Jet lag has properly kicked in by this point so we all head back to Daniel's house and sleep in the living room and kitchen, despite his insistence of sleeping in his room.

Time spent driving today - Approx 3 - 4 hours.

Day 1 - Towson

After going out on Friday and leaving employment by drinking too much that I couldn't talk properly, I woke up a few hours later, packed all my shit in a bag (most of it still damp, smart move), and headed to Heathrow, only an hour late, not too bad. Thanks to BB's general people skills (the kind I lack), we managed to get bumped up to premium class on our flight, result. We travel in total luxury on the flight, I watch the Anvil documentary and the Notorious BIG movie, you can guess which was more impressive. We got to IAD and were picked up by Darick from Wallride and Deep Sleep. Definitely contender #1 for best dude in hardcore that we've met on the trip so far. Despite only ever talking on the internet, he's printed all our merch, released our lp on cd in the States, and has driven two hours out of his way to pick us up. Just before stopping by the house to pick up our shirts, we make our first Burrito stop after making a pact on the plane to eat Mexican every single day. The verdict will be posted separately soon enough.
Eventually, we head to the first show and meet the others. The show is being held at Celebrated Summer records, which is the record store run by Tony from Deep Sleep. The store is inside a massive comic book store, as we walk in there's around 50/60 people sitting on massive school hall type tables playing Magic The Gathering, and getting REALLY into it. We head off to a bar to kill time. We get back to find out we missed the first band play, which kinda sucked, but Women set up next, they were okay, but not really my thing. Super nice guys though. Deep Sleep play next and killed it. I'm not too sure about them on record, but will definitely return to those 7"s when I get home. In-between DS playing and Logic Problem setting up, I buy the Minor Threat - Filler 7" for $40, I couldn't believe it. Definitely stoked on that one. LP play next, and it's messy, but they're always good live either way. We're sloppy as shit, and only play for around 10-15 minutes due to Tim's wrist, people are into it though. I just hope we're better tonight. We head back to the house we're staying at and talk shit for a while. I realise I've been up for 27 hours, and crash out.

This is the next trip. It starts in two days. After around six months of planning, I think the reality of it sunk in around two days back. The schedule is already outdated slightly, but here's an idea of what to expect. We'll be travelling with our friends Logic Problem from North Carolina. They've gone all out with planning this, and putting up with our disorganization.
We are doing approx 25 gigs in 22 days currently, more may be added. Coupled with some truly gnarly drives, the trip is probably going to be exhausting, to say the least. 12 of us will be travelling in one vehicle. Out of the six people in our party, four of us have had to quit our jobs for this to happen, my last day is tomorrow and I'm glad to go, and definitely not worrying about how I'm going to pay my rent and bills next month, not at all. At least we'll be in the same boat.

Before we go on.

I'm not a writer by any means. I am fully aware there is no real "need" for this to exist. However, occasionally I go away, and upon my return I am always asked by various people how the trip was, high points, low points, did I pick up any records, you get the idea. I hate these questions, never know what to say. I always give one sentence responses, leaving me relieved to get it out of the way, and whoever asked unsatisfied. As a compromise on this, I've started this up. You can expect occasional updates about travels and tours, and hopefully a lot of talk about records. At least until I get bored of this in about a fortnight's time.