Greetings my fellow mutants! Well its official I’ve been on the road with EastonAshe for the past few days. We started out from Phoenix armed with an arsenal of food donated by the band parents which seriously kicks ass. Although the snacks only go so far when you have 7 hungry people on board. Other than that I’ve been enjoying McDonald’s, brownies, and other gas station goods…So I’m on the tour diet for the next few months! On Tuesday at 11am we packed up our vehicles. We use a Suburban which toes our trailer with our gear and an extra van to fit everyone else comfortably. We drove about 12 hours to Amarillo, Texas which went pretty smooth on the way I saw a sign that simply said LIGHTS as a reminder for drivers to turn their lights on. I made a note of the mile marker to get a picture on the way back. I didn’t drive the first day so I basically slept and designed a custom road case for my console setup when I update my rig which will hopefully be sooner than later. I really focused on where I wanted everything to be at the easiest space for me to get to it. I’ll share my design whenever I get it completely done. I have been researching Light Factory PC from Stage Research based out of New Zealand. It’s a great PC lighting program. So we get to Amarillo, check in, made some texts, and called it a night at 5am. We were waked up at 9am by the wake up call I asked to cancel! Then an hour later by our investor and we got up and packed back up to head to Illinois.
I took on the task to get us to Topeka, Kansas which pretty much meant I drove 9 hours today. Now we have about four more hours to pull into Moline, IL. So about an hour ago we pulled out of Topeka and in the process Ryan threw a stink pack into the trailer… Let the prank war of the tour begin! I will be sure to let you know who is victimized next. So once we hit Topeka we got some food and continued to Illinois.
So we pull into Moline, IL around 3am and its friggin’ cold Mister Bigglesworth! To warm up a bit we got a 24 pack of Miller Lite and drank til the sun was up. Whenever we woke up we all hopped in the van and dropped by the local mall shopped for some clothes and hit up best buy to get some electronics. In Best Buy the whole band was mezmorized by Guitar Hero for Playstation and XBOX. You can actually use a guitar that has buttons and you can play along to all kinds of hits from bands like STP, Rush,
G n R, etc. I however got a cool inverter for my laptop. The inverter can be placed into the cigarette power jack and at the other end there’s a three prong input where you can place you power supply. I highly recommend it for the road.
Later on after some Long Island Ice Teas we had lunch and stocked up on beer before we went out that night. We got to check out some cool bars around town to plug the tour to all the people who were out that night. I even got to get behind a dimmer board and run some lights for a band based out of LA at a cool bar.
So I got to have some fun and drink good beers that night. I think Matt our guitar player told me if I ever left he’d kill me in a very funny drunk way. So we had our financial tour investor Tom drive our drunken asses back to the hotel.
Today we headed over to the gig to load in at 2pm. We got everything set up and did a little bit of programming and cue run through to make sure everything is looking good. I’d definitely like to give a shout out to ClearWing Lighting for helping with my gear maintenance, particularly Nick their repair tech for making sure I was ready to hit the road. I got to observe him service the gear so I could gain more personal knowledge of repairs, and it was a valued session. You rock bro….. So here are a few pictures from my light check. Tell me what you think:
After sound and light check we sat down for some great grub from Snoops bar and grille. That cat can grizzle, for RIZZLE! Now I’m finishing up the blog in the hotel and about to get ready for the gig. We play there two nights in a row so it should be a crazy night. I’ll keep you all posted on how it went and there will be more pictures. Sorry for the delay this week the friggin’ hotel doesn’t have internet! Go figure huh? Well bear with me and I’ll post as soon as I can. I can assure you these blogs from the tour are going to be fun. Later on and shine on. ~Toe-Knee
Album of the week:
Long Beach Dub All-Stars- Wonders of the World
Movie of the week:
Blades of Glory- “Chaz Michael Michaels is figure skating.”
Cool Product of the week:
My new EastonAshe gobo from Apollo mofos!
EastonAshe URLs:
http://www.myspace.com/eastonashe
http://www.myspace.com/squints4
Don’t for get to email me at:
