Ooooon the road agaaain!

Hey everyone,

Last night was our first day of a what seems like will be a never ending tour.  We haven't finished booking it but it looks like it'll be around 100 days!  Shit.is.crazy.  Big ups to everyone in Gainesville who came out to our going away show, Harvest of Hope and Ed Kellerman for getting us well on our way!  Also, before I forget, we couldn't thank Birdman enough for stepping up and filling James shoes nearly last minute!  So you'll all be seeing a new face this go around, he's a rad dude and this tour would have been canceled if it wasn't for him, THANKS BIRD!

We rolled out of Gainesville just in time yesterday in order to make it to Atlanta.  We played at an art gallery call Cornbred Gallery, owned by our old gainesville friend Chad aka "Emer."  It has tons of AWESOME artwork, a lot street art influenced, and from we understand it changes every month and from the portfolios of prints it seems pretty consistantly awesome!  See below for a couple!

When we showed up we were greeted by Chad with a cooler full of cold PBR's...he knows what's up, like I said, he's from Gainesville but I digress.  There was no one really there so we just stood around for a while because that's what being a band on tour is about, waiting for the moment in the day you get to rock for 25-30 minutes, so in the meantime we passed the time with our friend, Pabst.  Later on people started to show up, but I have to say, Atlanta...tough crowd there!  Loosen up!  Wonderroot combined their show with ours and when they said they had 12 people there they apprently meant the dudes in the bands.  I was throughly hosed by then and sat outside with Chad listening to his hog hunting story (a must hear if you ever play cornbred gallery or visit!) and how fast and furious 5 was shot next door, I think he has a crush on vin diesel.  Made $30 after a 6hr drive and all of Chad's hardwork promoting the show and buying the beer which the sales went to us as well. He made 1000 full color handbills (unheard of) and put them around town.  It's been two years since we played there because we could never get a show but like I said, tough crowd!  Though we throughly thank everyone who donated and came to the show and bought merch and especially Chad for putting on a show for us despite losing money promoting it and paying a sound guy.  Without people like him, bands like us wouldn't be able to tour.

We got back to his house and tried to convince him to smoke our Spanish Gamble Silver Surfer Vaporizer but to no avail, he knew better haha.  His dog was huge and he said don't touch his face or you won't have one anymore and he humped randys sleeping bag like crazy, then I found him humping my pillow later on.  Could someone in Richmond let me use their washer/dryer when we get there? Ha!

10hr drive to Richmond. We're on our way and almost there.  Randy and I brought our skateboards and are going to attempt to pick it back up this tour, so we're gonna shread when we get in and maybe go get a tornado vegi burg at 821 Cafe (I think its called that?).  Then it's time to party down at Empire Bar tonight with our good buds Landmines and White Wives.  It's going to be a hell of a show and hopefully Tony doesn't challenge me to a "how many shots can we buy eachother before we play and actually play" contest again.  If you saw me at Rad Fest last year, we remember how that ended up, well, you do. Sorry in advance!

-Ryn/SG

Tour Update #3!

I know this is long over due because I'm writing this from my bed after 10 weeks of touring but our video guy is lazy as hell, but he did a hell of a job! Update #4 soon!

Tour Update #2!

Tour blogs are cool and all but video blogs are much better don't you think? Here's #2! More to come!

Tour Update #1

Yeah, it really gets hard to keep up with this thing. THANKFULLY, we have Jeremy Silveria of National Underground with us doing video for us...so here I present to you the first week of touring with Nothington. Party!

Day 4 - Norfolk, VA @ 37th & Zen

On the drive to Norfolk, we were doing our usual thing, eating some saltine's and peanut butter and someone mentioned the "saltine cracker challenge." I looked it up on my phone and there's literally a wikipedia article about it. The official challenge is 6 crackers in 60 seconds. Colin, overheard the conversation while driving and says "What?! Hand me 6 crackers!" and we proceeded to time him and Randy try to accomplish the feat. Let's just say it's harder than it sounds, a lot harder, ha!
We got into Norfolk and stopped at a Lowe's to get some stuff to build a new bad ass merch display thing (Thanks Blacklist Royals for the idea) so we don't have to set that shit up every time for our buddy Jeremy to slang some merch for us. Played at a really nice restaurant/bar called 37th & Zen, REALLY nice. It seemed way to nice for us to be in, but it turned out to be just a really nice punk bar. I reccomend the green been fries for cheap eats and $2-24oz bottle Highlife and some Seared Ahi Tuna. Soooo good! We're really roughing it right? They were nice enough to give us half off so we took advantage of it. Played a pretty decent show, met some awesome people. Hung out and smoked in the van with Chris from Nothington and we were munching down on some food and Chris tells Kyle (of Nothington) to grab "Sauce Bag". We come to find out they save all their extra condiments/sauce packets and have a bag called "Sauce Bag". Being a conisuer of condiments/sauces I challenged them to a Sauce Bag off. Now we are determined to get a high variety of sauces in packets so if you know a spot we should know of, send us a msg! While sitting in the van a bum comes up to the van, that apparently Randy had already met earlier in the night and accapella'd a song with, asks us for change again. Randy speaks up right away and says "we have NO change man, we're on the road I told you that, do you not remember? Do you remember anything?" and the bum proceeded to ask him to sing the song again, just so happens, earlier Randy said we're going to steal this song and the bum said "No you won't, you won't remember 30-minutes from now. Randy drew a blank upon the question, the bum smiled and said "Told ya" and just dipped smoother than I've ever seen anyone make an exit, pedaling on his rickety ass bike into the distance. To say the least, Randy got SERVED! We had a great laugh over that one. Anyway, the singer from the first band, Alex, had us over his house, Colin and Jeremy slept in there, the rest of us in the van and in the grass. Apparently, I missed out on a rager. We got presents, too, a lot of them...THANKS ALEX! We'll need them. Woke up in the van and hit the road to Greenville, SC.

Day 3 - RAD FEST - Saturday

Woke up feeling pretty good. Today was the day I planned to hit it hard. Hit it hard, I did. We all gathered up at 1pm to see our buddies, Reverse The Curse. They didn't play to as many people as I was hoping for but they brought it none the less. So many people missed out. I'd have to say it was definitely my most enjoyed and remembered sets of the weekend. Those kids can fucking slay and it's a shame that more people don't know who they are. Check them out right now. Myspace.com/reversethecursemusic. From here out I'm going to let Randy take over writing for a minute. This shit is hard to do when I could be drinking a beer.
So we kept hittin it hard since we really had no responsibilities for the rest of the day. Got to see our wolf brother, PJ Bond play with a full band for the first time. So good, really blew me away, luckily we got to see them again later on in the night right after our boy, GDP. Shortly after this I walked outside and Ryan was obviously incoherent, asking me if he should jump through the window out front of the Soap Box. When I told him no his response was, "I'm comin to you for advice, and this is what you tell me?" So he did the next best thing and give everyone the pressed log on the window, apparently his first public wiener showing ever, that's how you KNOW Rad Fest was awesome. PJ Bond made another appearance playing Lorrie Meyer by NOFX to anyone outside of the Soap Box, and Chason naked in a garbage can. Shit was rad. Ended up at a pool party after that, where Chason was naked again telling everyone he was a "grown ass man", and dancing. Woke up the next day in our friends hotel room and rolled out early.

Day 2 - RAD FEST - Friday

Well, all I have to say is HOLY FUCK that was a good time! Rad Fest was an accomplishment of many gods, yet Chason Huggins managed to pull it off. When we woke up haggered as fuck from the pre-rad fest show our lovely host, Kelly from the Soapbox, made us breakfast but it was no match for the hangovers we had. We stumbled down town to see friendly and familiar faces everywhere and it was like we were home away from home. The Opera was already filled with a lot of people getting their Rad Fest started off the right way with a beer in hand. I actually took it easy most of the day trying to kick the headache.
After registering we rolled to the pool with 10-4 Eleanor at the Hilton to invade the mostly 60+ yr old conservative crowd in only our skibbies. Tony, the man behind The FEST, was already chillin' HARD. We hung for a bit until it was time to go check out the first band of the day, The Holy Mess, who fucking ripped and I failed to pick up their 12" before they packed up their shit, it's on my list of things to do though. We mostly stuck around 16 Taps all day and all the bands there were nothing short of amazing.
We were up right after Red City Radio, who killed it, so it was definitely time to start drinking, fast! Playing sober is almost as bad as playing blacked-out. I take that back, it's worse. Our band has a 2-beer minimum before you play, gotta loosen up! Our set was a lot of fun and so many of our friends were there it was great! Soon as we played we handed over our gear to Landmines so we could run over to check out None More Black. We love Landmines, but they understood, None More Black is a fairly rare show to catch if you don't live in the North East, even then, not too often.
None More Black were fucking awesome, they played a new song before the end, though I have no recollection at this point in the show but I heard it was awesome and a little heavier than the normal. Hmmm, I asked the rest of the guys just now if they remember anything after NMB but I just got blank faces and "uhhh's."