Day Seven (Milwaukee)

Up early, no hot water at the hotel. Oh, everyone was so pleased!

Rebecca, morning girl that she is, drove us all the way to Milwaukee through the cold Wisconsin air. Beautiful countryside it is, despite it being Cheneyland. (WTF is their obsession with waterslides in this state, DAMN)

We stopped for gas in Delafield, WI which I would call a mixture of Stepford and that small town from Back To The Future. A little creepy but, frankly, the most California-like town we’ve been in since leaving our beloved.

Last night’s show in Minneapolis was totally encouraging, especially on the technical front, so we had a headwind on our side for tonight. Stopped at the hotel to catch a shower and admire the Clockwork Orange/Incredible Mr Limpet themed bar in the lobby and then off to the club. The Shank Hall. Named after the fictional club in Spinal Tap. True story. They’ve even got a tiny little stonehenge thing hanging at the back of the stage.

I forgot to mention that last night I did have a weird issue with my volume. Anyway, figured it out tonight and it made things a lot better and tonight’s show was, in my view, one of the best we’ve played. Count’s laptop crashed during ‘Clipped’ but being the fucking solid music pros we are we just trooped through that shit and people still threw their panties at us. Hell yeah.

I think that ‘Hollywood Ending’ will be the grower on this tour. It is totally different live - in a really cool way - and there’s a lot of room for dynamics. The new songs from the EP are just the dogs bollocks, too, for us. I mean, love the old stuff, but the sustained energy is what we’ve been craving and didn’t *quite* nail on the Wholeness album for live purposes.

Anyway, I’m here typing as Bob and his band are just killing it out on stage. They are an absolute pleasure to tour with and we are lucky as hell to be in this spot.

I hope you catch us out here at one of these shows.

‘Til tomorrow,

RYAN