Archive Sunday #47

   From Virginia we headed south to the tri-city area of North Carolina. We were slotted to play at the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro just outside of the college town of Chapel Hill. It was an awesome long and narrow room that got a ton of great acts, but more importantly it was right next to this delicious burrito spot Carrboro Burrito. I'm pretty sure I had been there before when I used to take the train down to visit my brother who lived there for a year or two. But yeah, it didn't take much convincing to get the guys to join me after our soundcheck for a quick bite. After vegging out and digesting a bit, we played a high-energy sweaty show for the mostly young crowd.

  The following day we had a unusual day off that didn't include a super long drive, so we took the opportunity to sleep in. Then after grabbing food and the four hour drive or so to the mountain town of Asheville we found a cute little park to wander around a bit. I remember we were all playing this word game where we would each take turns spelling the next letter of any possible word, but none of us could really beat Will haha. Once we got bored, Andrew took the opportunity to film a video of all of us making fun of Will for being a "nature boy."

  It's always nice waking up in the city where we're playing that same day. Mostly so we can get to the venue early and not feel rushed during soundcheck and make sure we have something more to eat than a granola bar before dinner. We loaded in to the Orange Peel feeling refreshed and went over a bunch of stuff once we set up. I think I must have wandered off to walk around downtown after that, but the other guys told me the venue lighting director introduced himself in the green-room and talked over some lighting cues for the set list. Usually the house L.D. doesn't get paid enough to listen to the band each night and do anything too complex to match the set. But this guy seemed to be familiar with most of our songs and seemed excited to put more effort into the lights than our typical show before then. So Will and Andrew went over some stuff they had in mind and gave him a copy of the set list with some added notes.

The show went great especially with the lights matching the vibe and dynamic shifts of each song. The audience seemed to enjoy the extra visual dimension almost as much as we did. So we made sure to get his info after the show for any future endeavors, and about a year or so later hit him up to come join us on tour.

The next day we had a bit of a drive to Louisville KY where we were playing this neat southern venue called Headliners. I remember right when we got in, they told us they didn't have much food but they had like twelve handles of whiskey waiting for us in the greenroom. Later on we tried to escape the heat of the venue and spent most of the time leading up to the show chilling outside in lawn chairs with the Nap Eyes guys. Inside, it was a fairly large room with mostly just dedicated fans who came out to our very first show in the area. After the show Nap Eyes gave me a discount on one of their t-shirts and in return we gave them enough whiskey to last them a month for their journey home.

We got up pretty early the next day and drove to Tennessee to play Bonnaroo. There we checked-in at this large parking lot and had to unload everything from the van and reload it into a box truck that had access to take everything to the stage. It was more work, but I guess it prevents a pile up if someone's van gets stuck in the mud. Luckily we got to see Khruangbin's set while we were setting stuff up behind the stage.

I think we got about an hour to play, and about halfway through Andrew invited this girl who brought her cowbell to join us on stage to play Destroyed by Hippie Powers with us. During the instrumental break I tried to tell her to move closer to the mic so it'd come through, but it was so loud on stage it was hard to communicate. She must have misunderstood me because she started heading offstage instead haha. We quickly called her back to help us finish off the song as the crowd cheered her on. After the rest of the show we met back up to thank her for bringing even more energy to our set. It was such a great time, but unfortunately we couldn't stick around too long and started the unloading/reloading process. We had an early flight in the morning but were ultimately happy we capped off another successful run with an utterly awesome festival.

AK: Asheville! The Orange Peel is a special place. Not only because it’s been an awesome venue to play at but because we met our lights guy here. Every once in a while you meet someone in an industry who is hungry to make it big. I consider myself a hungry boy along with the rest of CSH. John Foresman or, “John Lights” in my phone, is no exception. It was clear when he came to us with pages of notes scribbled next to our song names that he was hungrier than the rest. He was looking to make a career out of this. I immediately knew this was going to be the best light show of the tour. It undoubtedly was. We brought John onto the team as soon as we could.

The other special part of the Orange Peel is that this is where we recorded the crappy overdubs for our Ricky Eat Acid Diss Track. It puts Kendrick’s Drake disses to shame. Actually it was just Stoney Bologne dubbed in the green room of the Orange Peel of me saying the name “Sam” over the parts where it says “Dan”. We even left the Dans in. I don’t even remember why we made it. Bottom line, don’t ever talk shit about me or my friends on the internet or you get buried. Stereogum said it was the top 100 worst tracks of that year. This is no joke my greatest accomplishment.