"Whats brown and rhymes with snoop? Dr. Dre."

5.14- Pittsburgh, PA/ Cleveland, OH

Thursday was our first day of tour and we left Philly around 2 for our trip to Pittsburgh. We had a nice "going away" party Wednesday night that got pretty rowdy and ended with broken lawn furniture and Metallica. Needless to say Dave and Jon got pretty rowdy. I miss them already....So we got to Pittsburgh around 6 and Eric, Joe, and I took a walk to probably the cheapest bar in the entire world. I got 10 perogies for $1.50 and beers for $1.00. Cant complain. The show was at our good buddy Franks house in the Polish Hill section of town. The crowd was great as it always is in Pittsburgh and I'm always overwhelmed with how nice everyone is there.
We played pretty good from what I remember and American Armada ruled as usual. After their set we said our goodbyes to them, Dan Rock (Lock and Key Collective), and the Incommunicado dudes and took off for Cleveland. We decided to break up the drive a bit and stay with our buddy Matt from The Sidekicks. If you've ever met Matt you'd know that he is hands down one of the nicest dudes on the planet and is totally cool with 6 dudes rolling in at 3:30 on a Thursday. Everyone at this point passed out while Matt and I stayed up till around 5am drinking awful beer and talking about music. The punx were clearly upped that night.

5.15 Chicago, IL

So I forgot to mention that my friend from Lake Ariel is working at a golf course all summer in Wisconsin and came out with us for the first 3 dates. I've been riding shotgun in his new $700 Ford Ranger and while I'm currently hundreds of miles away from home, there's something so familiar about sitting in the front seat and attempting to listen to every song The Mountain Goats ever recorded. Not to mention arguing about what kind of fish were in every lake we passed. See I've tought Carly a few things in my day about ranglin largemouths and tacklin rainbow trout in my time spent in Lake Ariel.... Anyways we left Cleveland fairly early and got to Chicago around 6. We met up with Toby and had a few beers at his girlfriends bar before heading over to our show at Ronnies. The show went really well and we had a great crowd despite it being our first time in Chicago. Also Brendan Kelly made it a point to get us wasted before, during, and after our set so we were all at a solid party level. After party ensued till the early morning and I somehow managed to get the futon. Sick. The next day Carly and I bought scalped Cubs tickets while everyone else went downtown to some art musems. The seats were incredible and of course we managed to sit right in front of the rowdy drunk bad dad who was ready to jump on the field when Kevin Gregg gave away 4 runs in the 9th. Cubs won and after we celebrated with the rest of Chicago.

5.16
After hanging out with Toby all day we took off for Rockford, IL with absolutely no clue what we would be getting into. Heres the deal..... Basically every show on this tour was easy to book except for Milwaukee. We had no contacts whatsoever so we met an awesome band who helped us get on this show in Rockford. We played at a bar called Marys Place for a girls birthday. Half of the bar were old regulars and the rest could care less about us. We opened up with "Sunday Morning" and I couldnt stop laughing during the set about how completely unpredictable touring can be. During the song an old drunk mexican was dancing in circles while spinning his cowboy hat. He later tried to get us to cover "La Bamba" and play his daughters birthday party the next time we're in Rockford. You got it buddy. After the show we found a cheap motel and got some much needed sleep.

5.17 Nowhere
I'm sitting in the motel watching the most disgusting/amazing show ever: Daisey of Love. We've got 5 days to make it to Spokane, WA and 20 hrs till Yellowstone National Park. I'm pretty sure we'll be camping in South Dakota tonight which should be a trip. Eric just got punxed hard by thinking we needed to check out of the motel. Silly Eric, my computer never switched time zones. Thats all I got today.