With hours to kill before the show, we all part ways to wander. I stop into a thrift store. Thrift stores outside New York are always a pleasure, because things you like might be less cool and therefore cheaper. I can’t have been there more than five minutes when a man approaches me. Shaved head, all visible skin covered with tattoos, including his hands and face. Big black and red flame design around his right eye. “Alexis” on his neck and the number 19. Too many tattoos to

The drive from Fargo to Spokane is 17 hours in good weather, but it is not good weather. The first day is all right, freezing cold but not actually hazardous. The second day is pure hell: mostly downhill, foggy, snowing, hailing, half a lane of highway unusable, surrounded by semi trucks that could easily kill us with the slightest wrong move. There are actual runaway truck ramps, which are provided in case a truck’s brakes fail. You steer towards the ramp, and gravity makes

After Minneapolis, it’s on to Fargo. We drop off our stuff at The Aquarium, which is the upstairs of Dempsey’s Public House, a bustling Irish bar with karaoke and free popcorn, serving affordably-priced beverages to young and old alike. The guy who helped us set up the show invites us over for homemade curry. His living room looks like this, and I am immediately won over. Neil Young, pictured, on the stereo when we arrive. And that is a real live Hammond organ. We help chop v

Gas stations are an important part of tour. Depending on your gas mileage and average bladder capacity, you’ll be stopping once every one to maybe three hours. Some gas stations are minimal affairs, a single booth the size of a toll booth with a crappy little cooler of soda. Some are ambitious one stop shops, housing all manner of fresh and semifresh food items, tchotchkes, car parts, and video gambling interfaces. Here’s one of my favorite fixtures: This is a F’Real smoothie

Milwaukee gave us a warm reception. We played at the Riverwest Public House, a place I would absolutely hang out if I lived in the area. Positive and community-oriented in its approach, LGBT-friendly, solid drink specials every night, plus $1 shots of rotgut whiskey all the time. Good books, comfy places to sit on whilst reading the books. Plus a proper stage and reasonably good sound. But most notable was the pizza we got towards the end of the night, when we remembered that

In Chicago, the venue is up four flights of stairs. Four amps, a drum set, several boxes of records, and all our instruments must go up the stairs. It takes a few trips, and I am exasperated by the end. I don’t have much time before people start showing up, and it is still very likely my amp is broken. I spent twenty minutes on the phone with Ziv earlier that day describing the problem, and he gave me some sage advice about what might be wrong. Ziv knows his stuff, and has se

Oberlin ended up being pretty much the best college show we’ve played. The venue had big delicious cookies and the best root and ginger beers (Virgil’s and Reed’s, respectively). Opener PEAKS was fantastic, and segued nicely into our thing. I even knew the guy running sound from college times. The setup was such that we couldn’t see the crowd at all, but we could hear them oohing and aahing and generally freaking out at the appropriate times. Sometimes a college crowd is kind

Preparing for tour is a drawn-out, stressful affair. No matter how many times you’ve done it, you always forget to pack something, and neglect to account for some crucial errand you have to take care of before departure. We planned to leave the city at 1, and ended up doing it around 4. Stops were made to clean out the van, and pick up gear, and people, and more gear, and a pizza, and merch, and at every step we were confronted by the deeply antisocial behavior of our fellow

Working on a long post about abstracting the fretboard, but the visual aspect is taking a while. In the meantime, here’s another road story. Our friend Neil is an itinerant musician. He has friends all over the country, and travels around pretty much nonstop with some clothes and a laptop playing shows wherever they’ll have him. We have a night off on the way to Chicago, so when Neil invites us to play a show in nearby New Lenox, it’s perfect timing. When we arrive, I am skep

Ava Luna is going on tour! We will be accompanied by Krill, who are an excellent group of musicians and humans. I look forward to backstage hanging, van DJing, and guiltily satisfying trips to places like Sheetz. Sheetz is the dystopian future of fast food, but sometimes it just hits the spot. If I’m hungry and I’m several hours from the nearest fresh vegetable, you’d better at least give me a lot of choices, which Sheetz certainly does. However, excessive consumption can lea