Nick Fit The Nobleman

Here we have one my favorite dudes to see on the road and at home, Nick Fit. Dude has been road dogging for Trash Talk for some time now, and has played bass for The Mongoloids on a few tours. Definitely a brain worth picking, dudes got some funny things to say. He wrote this article for my zine so here it is.

LIFE ON THE ROAD

So after you gather a group of friends, write some songs, put out a demo, and then finally get the idea to get in the van, that's when your life on the road will start. It isn't for the weak of heart I must say. It's rough and those who aren't ready to sacrifice the basic necessities of life will never truly experience what it's like to be out on the road in a hardcore band. There is nothing luxurious about touring. If you are in a hardcore/punk/indie band and you aren't signed to a major label, then you aren't reaping the benefits of touring. You have to go into the idea of touring with a one track mind. You have to lose a lot to gain a little. You don't start off seeing the good side of being out on the paved paradise. I've been doing this touring thing for about a year and half and I am in no way in a better spot or making the money I should be as a 23 year old human being. Whether it was roadie-ing and/or playing bass with The Mongoloids to roadie-ing for Trash Talk and War Hungry, nothing that I've gained from doing this has ever helped when I arrived home after being gone for 2 months. But, that doesn't mean there aren't amazing aspects to getting out and seeing the country.



If you've surrounded yourself with good friends, then the times you will have will only be those of laughter and joy, and they will be unforgettable. Maybe you'll be driving all night, you've been behind the wheel for 9 hours and all of a sudden the passenger turns to you and says, "yo, put on Mariah Carey." Or maybe you've been to so many spots in the country that you know some of the locals and you treat them as good friends. I live in New Jersey, but i have friends in almost every state. From JP to Daylin to Joe Harder to Jason T. to Andy to Ian to Alex to Hoodrack to Riley to Rossman69 and so many more. These people share the same mindset as me and in a classic quote i must use right now, "real recognize real." I've stolen from gas stations to eat because I had no money. I've driven a van full of sleeping people 10 hours because no one else wanted to wake up and instead of pulling over, I decided to push on. I've sang songs for the bands I've toured with and have somewhat made a name for myself. You may not know who I am, but that isn't what matters to me. What matters is the memories I'm making for myself and the ones around me. I've been thrown off a jet-ski because Ian and I thought it would be a good idea to play who could knock the other person off the jet-ski first. I almost died from that but I took it in stride and was more worried about Mook. Nothing ever changes with tour. You line up shows and you drive to them. You load in, you set up, you preform, you load out and then it's back to driving to the next show. If I thought I'd be seeing huge arenas packed with thousands of people, I might as well hit up my friend who plays drums for the Jonas Brothers and ask if they need any help. The thing is the same routine never gets old to me, because no matter the situation, you're in a new part of the country every single day. In reality, though you do the exact same things each and every day, no day is like the last and that is the best part about it. I've been across the country about 4 times and I still get excited every time a tour approaches.




I love music. Not just hardcore music, but all types of music and I decided that instead of doing what a normal person my age does, I'd rather be in a van with good friends all the time as much as possible, touring the united states of america. If you're reading this and you're thinking, "Hey I want to do something like this," then get off your ass and do it. Find a band, make friends, and fucking roadie. It's a decision you will never regret for as long as you live. If you can't roadie for a band, then like the first sentence says, start a band and get noticed and bring your act on the road. I had a near brush with death with this line of work (i use the term work very loosely) and I thought I'd never be the same again, but here I am. I don't want to be remembered by anyone, but I do want to remember these times for the rest of my life. If I've ever hit you, punched you, stage dived onto you, jumped on top of you, choked you, held the mic for you to sing along to, or anything else, just know I did it because in some weird way we're all the same. Whether you look up to any bands currently or in the past, never forget that those people were just like you at one point, no better and no worse. They were just regular people who decided to get in the van and change some people's lives. They changed mine and now instead of talking about the drama and bullshit that surrounds us on a message board behind a computer, I'd rather carry on, in the long tradition and just making the road my life. Here's to seeing you when I get there.

The Ball is Dropped Again (Fireworks Interview)

Hail the laziness of my life. I intended to compile a zine with some new material I had been working on for about a month. The material was good and I pulled together just about enough for a decent sized zine. Alas, I ended up playing Call of Duty in my underwear and focusing on trying to do the least amount of work to get passing grades in college. I decided to post most of the material here and get this blog going again for the simple fact that my boredom has gotten the best of me, and I feel like Ray Cappo would be pretty upset with my lack of an active lifestyle. The posts will probably be in rapid succession. I'll do my best to keep the pace up with new stuff to look through. More articles and stuff I guess?

Anyways, here's a quick interview I did with Chris Mojan from the band Fireworks. They just recently signed to Triple Crown Records & recorded a full length album. Check it out:

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FU: Tell us the tale that is the beginning of Fireworks…
FW:We all have been friends for years, a few of us since about 12 years old actually. We all played in other bands and decided to start something together that was fun and had the same feeling of the shit we'd all listen to when we got together and stuff. The rest is just progress.

FU: Being mostly a group of hardcore dudes, what made you guys want to write this style of music?

FW: I don't really think any of us would consider ourselves hardcore dudes. Hardcore may be pretty big right now, but I think that close knit, "work hard to find stuff out" feeling still goes along with it. It seems like whenever somebody listens to it, goes to shows, or just follows it all together, it's assumed it's their main focus in terms of music. We all love hardcore just as much as we love punk rock and say indie rock, but I can definitely say hardcore has never driven any of us to write a Fireworks song. That doesn't mean we don't mosh though, so don't even assume that. I'd like to consider each of us individual kings of the pit. got that?

FU: Fireworks recently signed to Triple Crown Records. How did this come about and what's the plan?

FW: After we recorded our EP and started touring more and recording demo's we basically just sent out press packs to all the labels we could think of. Eventually word started getting out and our shit made it's way into Fred's(triple crown) hands. We've been life partners with the Hit The Lights dudes even before our bands really did anything, so I'd assume they bugged him enough as well. The plan is to just continue to write music and tour.

FU: You guys are recording a full-length soon with Chad Gilbert of New Found Glory fame, how did you guys get hooked up with this dude and when can we be expecting it to drop?

FW: We came to realize we had a few mutual friends with Chad and that he has been starting to produce records. The dude's obviously been around and has been in the position we're in now a million times, so a little overseeing could be nice. The idea of Chad producing our record actually came from Fred at Triple Crown, it sounded good, so we're just running with it.

FU: You recently ended a tour with Hit The Lights. They definitely seem to have a following that is much different than Fireworks. What was it like playing to these crowds?

FW: Some nights it was mainly older dudes, some nights it was a way younger crowd comprised of mainly girls, so every night was interesting. I'd say playing to the younger crowd ruled, although they didn't know us, most of them seemed to really appreciate that they were seeing a band play and really showing interest in the shit we were saying between songs, even the stuff that makes no sense to anyone but us.

FU: I gather you dudes are quite the filmmakers, what's your favorite project and is there anything coming from Fireworks Studios us you-tubers can look forward to?
FW: I made a video in high school called, "We Came To Get Down" that is probably one of my favorites. It was a story of 3 gymnasts trying to make it in the gymnastics world. "Club Drugs" rules as well. We will be starting a video blog showing our recording process starting in the next week or so. This may not be a movie, but I'm sure we'll make it interesting. A few of us were in the same video production class in high school so there are definitely a few gems to be found.

FU: So, we had a very random run-in with one another pretty recently very late at night, care to tell the story?

FW: I'm dying to tell it, it's one of my favorites of recent times. After a show in Baltimore we decided to stay with a friend of ours in DC. We arrived to DC at about 12 and decided we'd like to go to the mall and check out all the monuments. At about 1am we were on our knees praying to Abraham Lincoln and you decided to walk up. So we're from Detroit, you're from Florida, yet we both happened to be at the Lincoln Monument at 1am in Washington DC though, without any previous planning. What are the odds. Fuck life man.

FU: Run For Cover just put out a new 7" titled "Adventure, Nostalgia, and Robbery" what's the info on this release?
FW: We wanted to do vinyl with Jeff before we recorded anything else for somebody else. The idea had been talked about for awhile so we decided to run with it. We recorded a Kid Dynamite cover that the world seems to hate for Copper Lung Records "Carry The Torch" Tribute record. We thought that would be of 7' fashion as would 2 old demo songs that a lot of people haven't heard. Lastly we figured we needed one new song to keep things interesting and the rest was history. We called it "Adventure, Nostalgia and Robbery" because the new song is pure adventure of doing something new, the old songs are nostalgic, and we stole a KD song. Funny. They're almost gone but there's talks of a re-press.

FU: On your most recent tour, you stopped in Tampa. The real fun began after the gig. What's your recollection of this gem of a night?

FW: Well the fun really began when we ate Alaskan Tacos down the street from all the gay clubs right before we took pictures in front of the multi-colored cassette tapes after we watched the girl puke but before we hung out with a twink and daddy about 200ft away from where a lot of people die. make sense??

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There's that folks. Chris is also in a hardcore band called Sister Cities. Download the demo here. Tomorrow I'm posting an article from my pal Nick Fit of Trash Talk road dog fame. Don't miss out on that, dudes a real nut.

I'm Stupid

For those who were into the Road Journal, I'm sorry. I'm a completely unmotivated turd who doesn't follow through with anything. I'm home now from the tour, so I'll due a retrospective review from where the last post left off. Once again, I apologize. I'll be updating this blog alot more now since I'm home. I'll also be making Issue #1 of the zine available very soon. Be on the lookout for some really cool interviews/tidbits in the upcoming week.

Looks like I left off while we were in Spokane. Fuck. That was a long time ago. I'll do my best to recollect all the cool shit that happened from then until now.

After Spokane we headed towards Portland, Oregon. Man, that was a really cool city. We stayed with our friend Jessica. I knew Jessica from her previous stay in Florida. Cool chick with an even cooler dog. We saw Dark Knight that day, such a solid movie. Harvey Dent was awesome. Klint Got a tattoo with his friend Gus that says "Fuck Work, Lets Party". That was pretty funny. If you have any questions on that way of life, feel free to direct them to him.

Once we left Portland we headed into California, a place I had yet to visit. First show was in Sacramento. A band called Bastards of Young played this gig, and they were really fucking great, check them out if you get the chance. The next show was in San Francisco. We stayed at our buddy Nicks house. He's in a band called Crucified that recently signed to Double or Nothing Records out of South Florida. do yourself a favor and check out them & their labelmates Meantime. The city was really cool. Lots and lots of Toyota Prius's rolling around. I think the count was 30 or so in the first five minutes in town. Wyld. The vegans split with the carnivores and we went off to find decent veg food in the city. Klint suggested a place a few miles away so we trekked on foot. This made me realize how utterly out of shape I was. Once we got to the place it was closed, so we settled for this horrible indian place down the street. oof.

So we drove to Tijuana Mexico after San Fran. What a wild place that is. We spent the day walking around the beach. We collected 10 dollars and told Bob (Letdown) we'd give it to him if he jumped the border, touched a flag on the US side, and ran back into Mexico. All of this in front of the Border Patrol truck about 100 yards away. There was a tall wooden fence that stood as the border. There was a gap in the fence and Bob squeezed through. He took off towards this flag, touched it, and ran like hell back toward the fence. The border patrol got out of the vehicle and before they could get to Bob, he was across to Mexico. He makes his way over to us to collect his ten dollars, and one of the locals pointed out a helicopter and explained that whenever there is a jump, they dispatch a helicopter, so the helicopter was for Bob. The show was cool, but the drive across the border was blast. While sitting in traffic we had a bunch of people trying to sell us souveniers from Mexico. One specific guy would just linger around other dudes, not saying anything, with a statue of a turtle, an extremely blank expression on his face. What a dude. San Diego was pretty cool, we stayed at a friends and she made us vegan breakfast. Very sweet. We were all pumped cause Sound & Fury was up next.

Sound & Fury was ill. I got to hang out with a bunch of friends, as far away from home in the states that I could be. Three days of moshing side by side with some of hardcores greatest heads such as Nick Fit, AV, and Sammy 3B. 'Sup doggies? End of A Year blew me away that weekend. What a wild dude Pat is. His stage banter is second to none, I'll just say that. Trash Talk fucking killed it. This band is great. I know that too much hype is a killer to the "cool crowd", but I say fuck that. TTC '08.

After S&F we headed to Sin City and played this dudes living room. real fun. I have the worst luck in this city, maybe that means I shouldn't gamble. Last time I was in the city the van I was in flipped off a small cliff and rolled 6 times. Not. Fun. This time around I just lost my wallet. Not as bad but still blew. After Vegas was Denver again, then to Albequerque where we met up with The Carrier. Great band even greater dudes. I was pumped to see them every night.

Texas was great cause I got to hang out with a true coreman, Zack. What a master of disaster this dude is. One of my favorite new people. Austin was sick. Dallas was sick. Scott Corbin shredding for Bitter End was sick. Band fight at party house and Klint telling homeowner hed beat him with a rock 'till he stopped responding was sick. Oklahoma, not sick. I liked the venue though. Up next was Nashville. We ate like pigs in this city. The girl we stayed with gave us tons of food, so we stayed up all night stuffing our faces. ATL was the next night and I was pumped to see some old friends. Alex and Nate of Overdose fame were in the building holdin' it down for ATL straight edge. What sweet dudes. The Shop is such an ill venue. My band played there a little less than a year ago and had a ton of fun. If you're ever in Atlanta, make sure you check out one of the gigs these dudes put on. Great time.

Anyways, after Atlanta, we were going to my homestate, Florida. Needless to say, I was psyched. I hadn't been home since I made the retarded decision to jump in my car and head to philly. First stop was Orlando. I had heard about this new venue, Black Box Collective, and I was pumped to finally see the place. The venue was cool but one thing really stood out. IT WAS FUCKING HOT! Someone has GOT to get one of those retardedly big industrial fans in there or something. The show was cool, other than the fact that there was some stupid fight. Yuck.


The next night was Tampa, something I'd been looking forward to the whole tour. The turnout wasn't bad and kids were going off and having fun. I've been pretty fortunate with my shows at Transitions. The Staff is the best thing about it. Ill dudes.


So while we were in Florida, The Carrier and I crashed at Sammy B's pad. What a fucking pad it is. We watched tons of movies, and spent alot of time poolside, getting in some pool dives, practicing for the next gig. Someone ate Mike's burrito. Dude was pissed. I fell in love with Bacca even more on this weekend. What a dude. I already miss him. Zac Wolf came to the pad for a night of chill. Love this head. Check out his photos: http://flickr.com/photos/zacwolf/



Anyways after Florida we went straight to Johnson City, TN where we picked up Wes to take over my Road Dog duties after we got back to Philadephia. This is a pretty cool city. Home to Dead End Records, who happens to be releasing the new Learn Nothing 7". The show was pretty cool, afterward I said my goodbye's to The Carrier and we hopped in the van onward to Philadelphia.

So, that's that. Overall the tour was pretty ill. I had a good time meeting alot of you, and I'm sure I'll see you all again someday. Peace & Love.

-JP

RS Road Journal #4

Day 7 – The Drive
With all of us pumped about hitting the waterpark,(Dave and Mikey were pumped about going to a reptile and puppy store) we finally started the inevitable trek 20 hours to Tacoma, Washington from Denver, Colorado. There was a whole lot of sleeping involved. I was poked awake with all kinds of ‘JP’ acronyms like “Jesus Petunia”. This was Dave’s way of asking me to drive, so I took a No-Doz and got behind the wheel. When I started driving we were in Utah. I drove through Idaho into Oregon. Man, the view this coast has to offer destroys the east coast landscape without a doubt. Being from Florida I barely ever see mountains, so traveling down an extremely steep winding road was pretty intimidating at first. Skipping ahead, we finally got to the Seattle area. Man, what a beautiful place.

Day 8 – Tacoma, Washington
Getting out of the van after this drive felt like I was entering a parallel universe. My legs barely worked and my head was spinning. We went into downtown Seattle, and we all got to hear the rants about how weak willed people from this city were. We got to that Pike Market place. It ruled. Dave, Klint, and I got retardedly large vegan cookies. I got a snickerdoodle and it tasted like heaven. After poking fun at those less fortunate, we took the drive to the venue. The place was called the Viaduct, a newer venue that hardcore shows have been going down at. The place is pretty cool and the dudes who run it seem legit. After the show I met this dude Mike from Furious Styles, dude is seriously hilarious. He told us where we could get a pair of nice house shoes. He also explained that people with face tattoo’s that can’t get jobs are simply retards that couldn’t get one without them. A good philosophy if you ask me.

Day 9 – Spokane, Washington

Upon arriving to the venue, Jackie and I realize there is wireless In

ternet. Goodbye social skills. Throughout the entire show I stayed in the room where merch was and had chats with the locals (one of which let me know he enjoyed this blog. Big ups to that dude). Rifkin (playing drums for Letdown on this tour) kept ranting about this homeless guy who claimed he invented The Matrix. The show was extremely short so we decided to drive to Portland over night. On the way to get some food a couple dudes in a Jeep stopped next to us at a light. Here’s Klint with the play by play:
We pull up next to them, and the highschool bro in the passenger’s seat says “Hey, what’s up?” My natural response is, “Fuck you, I’m eating.” He’s appalled, but I repeat, “Carl’s Jr. Fuck you, I’m eating.” He asks where we’re going, and I say Del Taco. He invites us to Subway and demands that we race. Dave starts driving like an absolute maniac, and the race is on. We absolutely crush them with rallye-inspired aggressive driving and a barrage of “Suck it, nerds!”
After the race is over, I proceed to give them the goat. For the uninitiated, if you grab your dick and balls, pull them behnind you, then pinch your legs together and moon someone, that’s the goat. They speed off, and we keep chasing after them. More asses, more yelling. One of them comes out of their sunroof to moon us, and I tell them that some old lady is calling the cops on them. They speed off and exit the freeway never to be seen again.
Fuck them. And there was no Del Taco, anyway. They turned it into a fucking Taco Time.
We settled for Carls Jr. and Green Burrito. Man, that place is absolute shit. Anyways, after eating we started the trek to Portland, Oregon.

RS Road Journal #3

Day 5 – Omaha, Nebraska
We got the venue, a place called Sokol underground, a little before doors opened. This venue was awesome. The layout was really cool. It had a perfect stage and a lot of room for merch, which saved me the hassle of trying to shove everything into a little corner or something. I felt pretty good aside from the long drive. Something about staring out into an open field and being able to see for miles is pretty calming. So the first band comes on and they were horrible. Two singers, one pea sized dude and some big doofus, one doing high and one doing low. That ended quickly, thank god. An old friend caught my eye and it kinda caught me off guard. It turns out Signs of Hope was also on this show so I got to hang out with Paul for a bit. Great dude. SoH just released a new EP that’s definitely worth checking out. Skipping ahead to Let Down’s set, I’d like to delve deeper into the stage persona that Bob acquires. At this show he kicked a dude in the chest and ran around at a rapid rate. This dude reminds me of a pissed off raptor on stage, if I hadn’t spoken to him aside from seeing him at a show, I’d think he was out of his mind. I’m liking this band more and more as this tour goes on, their new record is outstanding. Anyways we started a chant that went something along the lines of a sports team chant like “Lets go Phillies *clap*clap*clapclapclap*” except it went “Letdown Straight Edge *clap*clap*clapclapclap*” Needless to say, Bob absolutely hated it, so we’ll be doing it as much as possible from here on out. After the show, we stayed at this dudes crib for a couple hours, got as much sleep as we could, and left around 7 am for the 8-hour drive ahead to Denver, Colorado.


Day 6 – Denver, Colorado
We got into town pretty early, so we headed to Dave’s friend Memphis’ house. He had just returned from Europe the day before and was heading out for two months again with his band Death Before Dishonor. Completely awesome guy. He had a really cool dog named Spaghetti that kept me entertained for awhile. It was at this point that I really caught the grasp of Dave’s love for dogs. While watching Reno 911 I looked over to see Dave in an intense make out session with Spaghetti showing no signs of coming up for air. We left to get to the venue, the underground. The venue itself was pretty cool, lots of graffiti and plywood. The show started off real slow, not too many people. We played soccer outside until the show started. I gotta say im probably the worst athlete in the van. I looked like an idiot. Once Letdown came on kids started coming. When RS played the room filled up and the show ended up pretty well. We found out the Twin Falls, Idaho show the next day was cancelled, and after searching for a house and failing, we realized we had a 20-hour drive to Washington, but we had two days to do it. We slept over Memphis’ place, and hung out around Denver for the day. When we left, we got some lunch and hit the road. On the way out we were stuck and traffic and saw a waterpark called Water World on the right off of the interstate. Klint and I got out of the van to scope out the sneaking in possibilities. We came up with a few feasible plans, but we didn’t think anyone else would be willing to try them. We walked up to the entrance to check admission prices. Too high. As we’re about to give up, Klint decided to barter a bribe with the dude working the gate. The Dialogue went something like this.
Dude: Tickets?
Klint: Oh, we don’t have those.
Dude:…
Klint: So, we’re from Philadelphia, and broke. There’s about six of us. Do you think if we threw you like 20 dollars would you let us in?

Dude: haha, okay.
Klint: Fuck yeah
We ran to the van and collected the others. I put on my newly acquired swim trunks and it was on. We only had an hour until the park closed so we ran as fast as we could to each slide. What really made this trip was Jay’s sparkly purple Speedo. Un-fucking-believable. All of the slides were great. After the park we started the inevitably sucky drive to Washington. We’re currently in some mountains about an hour or two outside of Denver. This road is not ready for the Supreme Team.

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.

Reign Supreme Road Journal Entry #1

So, recently I made the abrupt decision to spend the summer in Philadelphia. I called my friend Klint and asked if I could crash on his futon, and there it was. I was drudging through an eighteen-hour drive from Tampa to Philadelphia all by my lonesome. Klint plays bass for Reign Supreme. As it turns out RS needed someone to roadie for them, and just like that, my summer plans changed.
As I write this, we’re sitting in front of the “colonial pantry” somewhere just outside morton, illinois figuring out what movie to play on my laptop, heading to the third show of a (whatever) day tour.

Day one – Cleveland, Ohio
We leave from Joe’s house around 9 am to head to Cleveland, Ohio. The show was pretty cool. This dude Nick who does Hope This Helps booking booked the gig (big ups to those tank tops). The venue was called “Now That’s Class” and apparently has a daily vegan meal served, which I didn’t get to experience this time around. Just outside the venue Joe had a run in with a local cruising on a mountain bike, equipped with a blue tooth headset. I believe the words she uttered went something like “Move your punk ass out the way”, “Get out the middle of the street”(it was a sidewalk), and “You better not have no money in ya pockets”. All in all it was a good run in. We met up with the dudes in Letdown at this show, who happen to be traveling in a mini van.
The show went pretty well. Not the best turn out for a Friday night, but a cool vibe. Letdown killed it. I’m so excited to be able to see these dudes every night and witness Bob jump off whatever he can find. RS played well. There was a point that Justin (bassist of Letdown) pointed out in which Jay looked like he was preaching to the crowd with his arms stretched to the sky, and everyone bopping up and down in unity with him. After the show we went and hung out with our new friend Taylor. Dude rules.
So, that’s day one. I’ll try and update every couple of days with pictures and crap from this trip. Keep an eye out. (always) Keep the faith.

Day 2 – Louisville, Kentucky
This show was in Louisville, KY. After a brief stop at the ever so delicious Chipotle, we left Cleveland and trekked to the venue. Once I was finished shaking off my cramps from sleeping on the floor of the van, I walked into the venue. The place was called the Brick House. From the back entrance it seemed a lot like a storage unit from the early 80’s, with Rifkin lying on a couch in the smoldering heat that encompassed the venue. I got to see a couple friends I hadn’t seen in awhile, so that was pretty cool. The show went pretty well aside from the heat. Everyone played in their underwear and Klint got naked. During load out it started pouring rain so we all stood around and picked our butts until the rain let up. We drove straight to Indianapolis from there and slept at this girl’s house. She had a pretty rad pool. Klint and I teamed up for some extreme chicken fighting. Titty twisters and kicks to the chest of the base DEFINITELY help you win. After eating random items from this generous girl’s kitchen, we hit the sack. In the morning we said our thanks and were on our way to Peoria, Illinois.