Cleveland-day off
checking into the hotel I ran into jess margera from cky, one of the nicest dudes I know. Their tour had just been cancelled and they were sitting around letting the bus driver sleep for an overnight drive home. We ended up watching one inning of the world series and it quickly turned into a lopsided blowout. not worth watching, especially with beckett on the mound so we went across town to a couple different bars. Ended up singing “ain’t talkin’ bout love” with a heavy metal karaoke band that kicked it really hard. From there everything else is a blur. I have a 2 inch bloody cut on my ass today and I have no idea how I got it. That should pretty much tell you how hard we raged. I was supposed to be interviewed this morning on NPR’s “All things considered” but it got cancelled thankfully. I just wanna lay in bed all day and get ready for tonight’s show.
cleveland-house of blues
there was just something in the air today. I didn’t feel quite right from the time I woke up, just sort of, off. Later on I found out it was a full moon and I’m a real believer in that shit, it makes me tweak pretty much every time. We played another house of blues, this one was pretty small though, maybe held 1200 people—we sold it out. I made the huge mistake of eating a ton of food before we played, I was famished. I could hardly move when the show started. This was a long, strange show for us but I think we rocked it pretty hard. I had a great time and Aaron was in great form, he made me laugh out loud onstage like 3 times during the gig, funny shit. We had an overnight drive to Toronto, where I am now. I woke up at 3pm today and now I’m getting ready for soundcheck. There were 2 girls in our dressing room after the show that were so high on cocaine that they could barely stop chewing their teeth down to the gums. I hate amateurs when it comes to drugs. If you know you’re losing your dignity in public then you need to try something else, like weed or pills or something. I hate when someone attempts to make conversation in that position, it’s like please don’t waste my time, we both know you got nothing to say. Red Sox won a close game 2, got to see the last inning.
Toronto Canada-the docks
Wow. We have a lot of history here and really expected a rowdy night and all we got in return was a totally complacent, indifferent, lazy, city audience who gave us little minor spatterings of applause after the songs. I’ll be the first to admit if we have an off night, and I don’t expect anyone to cheer madly if I think we’re playing a sub-par set. But we absolutely came to kick ass, and we did. You guys were surprisingly dull, this is usually one of the rowdier cities for us. I have to say that the staff at this club were very kind and courteous though and extended us top notch hospitality, so thanks for all that. The best part of the whole night was that afterwards upstairs there was a Russian fetish Halloween party going on. Just thousands of Russians everywhere. I fell in love like 30 times. My mother is a Canadian Ukrainian in case you didn’t know and Ukrainian is her first language. I totally understand these people and it touched something in my heart on an otherwise dark evening. I tried to make conversation with a pretty girl but I was dressed in my stinky, smelly olive drab stage clothes and she couldn’t understand why I was at this rave if I wasn’t a Russian, or in costume. I wanted to marry her but it seemed like too forward a proposal given the circumstances. Instead we drove overnight to Detroit, where I am now, waiting for the final show of this leg of the tour.
Detroit-Fillmore
Slept in til 4pm today. Went to soundcheck and they cooked us the best meal of the tour. Tori Amos was playing next door at another theater. I thought this show kicked ass but for the 2nd night in a row the crowd was kinda flat. It didn’t really matter that much to us, we were having a good time up there. I’m gonna keep saying this over and over until it registers. Do not fucking throw anything at us while we’re playing. I was staring at some fucking dumb bitch straight in the eyes from the front row and she was like “DEANER!” and then proceeded to throw a whole cup of ice water on me, my guitar, and my pedalboard. I think she thought that I would be into it or something. The whole night we were getting hit with glowsticks too. What the fuck? Don’t fucking throw shit at us, we are gun shy. After you’ve been hit by one beer bottle you’re never the same. The whole show becomes a total loss after you get nailed with something. You can’t concentrate at all on the music, you’re too worried about getting your skull fractured by some drunken cowardly asshole throwing shit. We can’t distinguish a beer bottle from a sock when it comes thru the lights at head level and it doesn’t matter. The next day we flew home and had a 3 hour delay which turned into 5 hours at the Detroit airport. We have a few days off now before tuscon.