The Journey Begins

Our treck around the country began today. Started off getting picked up at 9am (not to mention I slept that 4am cause I started packing at 1am...had to go on a wal-mart run for tour things at 2am...). Then we drove down to Olympia and stopped at my parents restaurant for free food before we went down for a 6 hour drive to Bend, Oregon. Our set just ended...the amazing band, Elliot is performing now. Please, take like 5 minutes of your day and check them out, you won't regret it. www.myspace.com/weareelliot.

It's our first show of the tour tonight (excluding our tour kick off in Seattle) and we couldn't have asked for a better way to start it. Picture time!

Here's our ride

Soundcheck/setup at "Oneighty"

Crazy kids.

Tour Starts Tomorrow

After 6-7 months of planning, our first ever nationwide U.S. tour starts tomorrow. That has a nice ring to it. It's a bit surreal because it crept up so fast. I'm anxious and excited.

I'm determined to update this as much as I can while on tour so that friends back home...if they wish..can see what I'm up too. And I'll try to include a picture taken from my phone every post.

Watch

HAHAA...

remember my previous post about going to the Tim Hughes live cd/dvd concert recording?

this is the trailer for it...and you can see my face..hahaha.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWBV9CNaEKQ

press pause at 31 seconds and my face is the one on the lower right corner of the screen. can't miss it. hahahaa. 

Oh Happy Day!

I'm pretty excited for the new Tim Hughes Live CD/DVD (recorded live in London) to come out. Actually, I'm really excited for it. Mostly because I'm in it. Haha. Well, parts of my face and maybe a hand or two lifted in the air in the front row. I was ecstatic to find out 2 days before I left for London that Tim Hughes would be recording a live CD and DVD during my trip there. Not to mention only about 15 minutes from where I would be staying. So I bought my ticket. Only 5 pounds. About 10 US dollars. That is ridiculously cheap. I think just the experience of a live CD/DVD concert recording was something that I thought was awesome. I never knew they re-did songs at the very end of the concert. The concert was about 10-12 songs, then they said "good night!" as if the concert was over for DVD purposes. Then about 5 minutes later the producer came out into the microphone and goes "okay folks, we'll have to re-do about 5-6 songs because the band messed up on certain parts" haha. So blunt. Tim was a bit embarassed and said sorry as he laughed it off. I remember when they were doing the re-do's, Tim was like "okay, let's just worship more and get into it..." then they started the song, about 1 minute into the song the producer ran out onto the stage with his hands in the air and yells "STOP! STOP! Do it again" haha. Priceless.

Seattle life

Yesterday we went to this rad viewpoint at a place called Kerry Park in Seattle. Whenever I show people around Seattle who have never been here, it allows me to fall back in love with Seattle.

Today I gave up and had soda. Two times, actually. Yes, pathetic that I only lasted one month. But, I will still vow to not drink nearly as much soda as I used too. Maybe like once a week? If that. I like water now.

Things I did this weekend:
-ate the best fried chicken of my life
-ate pho
-played music
-updated my blog (well, I'm currently doing it)
-went to the first Starbucks ever established in Seattle...for the first time...

What I will do tomorrow:
-make credit card payments
-go to work
-buy a triangle scarf (I will look at urban outfitters for a good one)

Here's my thing with wearing a trinangle scarf. I really want too, but because I never have, I feel like if one day I just start trying to pull it off people are going to be like "...why are you wearing that?" haha. But the way I see it is...we'll be going on tour in about a month...and since no one on tour knows me, I can wear it everyday and since people don't know me they won't know that I never used to wear it in Seattle. So I'm not really a poser.

Or...I can just wear it around Seattle too. Maybe I'm overthinking. I mean, it's just a scarf, right?
Plus, the way I see it is...if you're wearing it...then you're pulling it off.

Jon Foreman is playing his solo stuff in Seattle tomorrow (Feb.3rd). I'd like to go but I have work at night.

...Okay I just checked it out and looks like the show starts at 9pm. I get off work at like 9. It could work. But it's 17 dollars.

My wisdom teeth on the top (I already took out the bottom ones) are starting to really kick in. One side on the top is pretty much growing at a furiously, fast rate. I must get it out before tour. I MUST GET IT OUT BEFORE TOUR.

Okay one last thing before I end this painfully long blog post.

What I am looking forward too on this upcoming US tour.
-seeing our friends pushpushpull (a band) in norcal
-hanging with ken and ed from the ken oak band in LA
-eating authentic texas bbq
-visiting and hanging out at EMI-CMG
-getting to see some great friends on the east coast
-getting to see the US (a lot of it, at least)
-new york...if we get to make it up there
-boston...if we get to go there (as of now the only show we have in massachusetts is in Amherst...about an hour or two from boston)

March 9th is the official kick off for the tour. Little over a month left. Crunch time.

Portland

We're here in Portland, Oregon at the band, Brightwood's house. Been here all day and will be here till tomorrow night. We're just tracking two new songs for demos. It's reminding of me of this past spring when we recorded for a few months straight. There is something so tiring about the process, but so satisfying at the same time. 

I was trying to install windows vista today on boot camp on my macbook..but once again, my bad luck..and just pure stupidity on my part...I accidently deleted the harddrive where was I was supposed to install vista on..and installed it somewhere where I wasn't supposed too..and then it completely took over my computer and only ran windows whenever I started my mac. So bad...so I was on the phone with mac phone support for two hours and finally got things figured out...agh...haha. You can only just laugh it off. That's what I did. 

Hopefully the songs turn out good. 

This is one of my favorite pictures. Once again, our drummers kids. Joshua, on the right, looks like the Michellin Tires baby. =)

bittersweet

a picture of my new macbook. i really am too poor so i am financing it and will be making payments all year. this is actually my second macbook. my black macbook got stolen from my apartment last month. it really is bittersweet for me right now. i feel so... i can't really put a word to it. but so unfair. i feel like i am having to work extra hard right now in order to pay off something i just had one month ago. i swear, i had the worst luck in 08. my car gets stolen, my guitar gear gets stolen, my car broke down probably 3 times, i hit my friends car so i had to pay for that, and then lastly to top off the year in december, my black macbook. bad luck, i'm telling you.

i got a free printer though today. maybe my luck is changing.

plus, i went to costco and had a hot dog for $1.50 (thanks, anita!)