RS Road Journal #2

Day 3 – Peoria, Illinois
The drive wasn’t so bad to this show. The venue was a VFW hall. On the inside it was reminiscent of a log cabin, which was pretty cool. There was lots of table space and such, all and all a pretty cool place. This was one of those suprising shows. Coming into it we had no idea what to expect. It’s a Sunday night in a town Reign Supreme has never played. There were just around 100 people at the show, and people went off for both Letdown and RS. At the end of the show kids bought a ton of merch, which was awesome considering we had a twelve hour drive ahead of us to Wichita, Kansas. When everything was packed up we headed to this dude Nate’s pad where he fed us and let us shower, big ups to that dude. On the way to his place, we had a brief fireworks war, which left both bands hiding in their vans, doors locked and windows up. We came to a truce and headed inside. While eating we threw around ideas for Sound & Fury specific merch. Some great ideas were discussed, such as a Carl’s JR “Fuck you, I’m eating” shirt. Both bands came up with some pretty great designs, so be on the look out if you’re gonna be at this fest. Once everyone had showered, we hit the road and drove through the night.

Day 4 – Wichita, Kansas

The drive to Wichita was a lot of things. It was long; it was unpleasant at times as well as completely hilarious. Though it took twelve hours to complete, there were some highlights.

1. Dave getting pulled over a few hours into the drive for speeding. The dialogue went something like this
Cop: How are ya?
Dave: I’m fine
Cop: I got you goin’ 54 going into town.
Dave: That’s literally impossible.
Cop:…
Dave: I haven’t gone over 40.
Cop: Can I get your license and registration? [Dave hands it over] Thank you. One moment.
*A few minutes go by spent laughing at Dave’s approach to avoiding a ticket. The cop returns*
Cop: Here you go, try and slow it down. [hands Dave his license and the registration. NO ticket]

2. After being too tired to continue driving, I hand the wheel over to Joe. As I’m sleeping on the floor, I start to hear a lot of gravel hitting the bottom of the van, and it’s a pretty bumpy ride. I decided to get up and investigate. When I get my head up and look at our surroundings, I noticed we’re on a tiny dirt road in the middle of fucking nowhere. I closed my eyes and caught my bearings, then opened them again and I could spot the highway about 100 yards to the left, running parallel to this dirt road we were on. There was a huge ditch separating the two. I ask Joe “What the fuck?” to which he replies with loads of laughter in between, “Maria told me to turn right, so I turned right.” (Maria is the name given to the GPS we use to get from city to city. She was quite the personality and often asks us to turn ‘Bleft’)
Around this point, everyone is waking up and realizing we’re not on a paved road. Joe is still laughing. At this point I’m relatively excited to see what’s going to happen next. The dirt road turns off and comes to a fork. Joe started going left when everyone yelled at him to just turn around. At this point the jokes start flowing in. A few of my favorites were a series of jokes that spoke of a troll that Joe wanted to visit that resided at the end of this trail and Oregon Trail references.
Once we got into Wichita we were all dead tired. We passed a Ford dealership and it had a huge blow up slide in the parking lot. We stopped and a few of us ventured over. As it turns out we didn’t take into account the heat of the slide, and as we were going down each of us suffered burns in random places. On the way out there was a huge gong in the lobby, so I hit it rather hard and got back in the van.
The show itself was a pretty big disaster. It took place in this old brick warehouse in the middle of an industrial area. Around 4 people showed up, the first band didn’t go on until 9 due to lack of a PA. Once the PA was acquired, it decided to stop working after the first band. No one was there to work sound so Klint and I haggled enough to get it to work for about half of Letdown’s set. During Reign Supreme’s set it didn’t work at all, so we shot off fireworks and Jay sang into the butt end of a roman candle. We did what we could to have some fun. We crashed at a friends and woke up early for the drive to Omaha, Nebraska.