Further proof that I have an innate ability to look at a map and think that a place looks cool based on its cartography alone, but then realize that in real life it is a piece of crap.

If Charlottesville was the infra-red end of Virginia living, then Norfolk, would certainly be bathed in ultra-violet frequencies. Keep in mind, I am already saying this even though we have just arrived. As I sit and type this, however, we are in a cool independent coffee shop using their free internet and talking to their baristas about record stores and what not.

So, Norfolk is first and foremost a port town. It is second and secondmost a Navy town. That’s all you need to know right there. It is gristled. It has endured the tests of time. And it has emerged, apparrently, worse for the wear.

We’re not trying to sweat it though, the show must go on. We headed out from the womb-like coffee shop and went to downtown Norfolk. It looked kinda like a little big city downtown, except there was a battleship parked at the end of the street we stopped on. The record store was cool i guess (what exactly makes a record store cool?). The dude who worked there was nice too (gave us free bottled water) but I always hate having to pretend to know some bullshit random bands like “Disco Teeth” or “Blue Steve Contraption” or “The Drapes.”

This town is just creepy!

On to the venue. Again, we’re playing in a restaurant/venue for the 2nd night in a row. The good thing is that they hooked us up with food and wine. The bad thing is that we were playing in a restaurant/venue. I mean, you gotta respect anyone who’s trying to carve a new market for quality live shows and managing to keep their doors open by alternate sources of income (a swanky italian restaurant), but you never look cool playing in a swanky Italian restaurant. They did have a bunch of good beers, which we got hooked up with too. Evidently, bands on the road don’t pay for stuff. I can dig that.

Just as we were ready to leave, Stacie and I were propositioned by a guy at the bar. For more details, read her alternate tour blog (you’ll have to friend her to read it).

Have I mentioned that this town is creepy?

Random thought : The necessities of being on tour are the same necessities of being a baby : Eating, sleeping, playing, and shitting. They are the only 4 things you ever think about.

We got a hotel out by the naval base. When I booked it, they said it was a Comfort Inn. When we pulled up, we noticed that it had been changed to a Quality Inn. This led to the debate over which was better, Comfort or Quality. We decided that Quality encompassed Comfort, so the change must be better. Wrong.

The hotel was pretty nasty. Well, it wasn’t dirty per se, it was just CREEPY. Have I mentioned that this town is creepy? I’m sure Stacie’s alternate tour blog will mock my discomfort in the creepy hotel, but whatever. The whole room smelled like some caustic orange disinfectant spray.

Can’t wait to get out of this place.

Day 7
Norfolk to DC

Thank god we can get the F’ out of Norfolk. Boring drive to DC. Boring, until we made one last turn and saw a mini cardboard cutout of Washington DC. There was the capital, the monuments, etc. (it wasn’t a cardboard cutout. Please take a moment to observe my not-so-subtle use of figurative language to describe seeing DC for the first time from a distance).

Driving into town was a spindly random mix of curves and turns that drove us thru a big park/nature area bordering the city. We drove past the Watergate and the monuments, it was pretty cool.

We’re staying with Stacie’s friend, Olivia, who lives in a sweet apartment in what she described with ire as the “hipster neighborhood.” We met our friend Steve’s old friend Sam for dinner at a sweet little Greek hole in the wall. Delicious!! Vegetarian Gyros w/ meat substitue?? AMAZING!!

Load in time. The venue is up a treacherous flight of stairs. Thankfully, we shared gear with the last band (Olivia’s side-project, who was flippin sweet), so the transitions were quite easy.

Evidently, one of Olivia’s bandmates is friends with all these bike couriers, who are all crazy drunk loud assholes. They seemed to have their own bizarre sub-culture cult and they were heckling us the whole time. I felt like we gave it back to them just enough to not get our asses kicked. Also, they all had weird names. One dude was called Gadget Man and he was covered entirely with random metal shit (photo to follow soon).

I made the faux pas of mentioning how good it was to be out of the south and above the Mason-Dixon line. Apparently, this isn’t true, and the entire crowd made me aware of this immediately. I got them back, though, by telling them to make sure they write their congressman about the show (DC doesn’t get congressmen).

DC was a real experienc.e The area we were in seemed to have all these great quiet neighborhoods right off of major thoroughfares. It was really cool.

One last thing. I noticed all the planes were landing at the DC airport (which is right next to the Pentagon for some reason) in a really bizarre pattern. Turns out all planes now have to follow this erratic procedure as part of FAA regulations. This way, the F-16s in the area will know which planes are piloted by terrorists (they clearly won’t either know or be able to perform these maneuvers). Not sure if it will really work, but hey, who knows.

Day 8
DC to New York City

Mindfuck! 7 hour drive from DC to NY. It’s only 220 miles. 7 hours!~!!! The traffic was horrendous. We did get to cross the Delaware River, though. We’re having an oil painting commissioned of Morningbell crossing the Delaware for our next record. Once we arrived, we had to fight our way thru the cluster fuck that was the entrance to the holland tunnel. One thru, we had to hustle and bustle our way thru the NYC streets. It’s amazing how fast you switch from your usual polite driver to a total horn honking, middle finger flaunting asshole. Not to mention that we had a caravan of 2 cars that had to stay together. One minor stroke of luck came when the venue we were playing at had a huge construction dumpster right out front, blocking the entire right lane of traffic for us. We simply pulled up, unloaded, and weren’t in anyone’s way.

Parking. How do you park 2 cars in New York City? Well, it takes about an hour. After a literal hour of driving around the blocks surrounding the bar, I managed to find two sweet spots (one a block away, one 5 blocks away). Yes, I parked both cars. Jake tried valliantly for about 35 minutes, but gave up so he could help set up his kit.

This club had a bar on the ground floor and put the bands downstairs. So, it was the opposite of last nite, however, it had an even more treacherous flight of stairs.

We met up with the Oh No group and ate at the Thai restaurant next door. It was quite delicious. Then, it was time to set up and play. Please note that these last few senteces describing our nite have periods and spaces between them. The events that transpired, however had absolutely no pauses in between. It was a first class whilrwind.

The set was loud and sweaty, and the room was full. It was actually excatly what any band could hope for in a NYC show. Also, about 15-25 GVL friends have moved up here in the last month or so, so we brought a big crowd for ourselves. Additionally, Steve’s old roomate Beau actually drove frcm Connecticut and our Dad and cousin Johnny actually FLEW up!!!! The club owner was impressed, and the pay was more than triple what we’ve been getting all the other nights.

As with any big city experience, we met a whole cast of insane characters.
1. Random bar worker who appeared out of a secret door that our gear was blocking as we were actively moving it around. Upon seeing him, we said, hey man, we’ll get this out of your way in just a minute. His reply “How bout in like 10 seconds.”
2. The sound guy looked exactly like Izzy Straddlin (the other guitarrist in Guns ‘n’ Roses). It’s good to see Izzy still in the music biz. He was actually really nice.
3. Other band’s singer. “I was singing Sade at “trendy club name” when I saw “trendy girl’s name” making out with “trendy guy’s name” and I got so mad.” I dont’ know what that means or how it translates online, but it sounded like the biggest pile of crap i’ve ever heard. He also was aggressively protecting his amp whenever we’d walk anywhere near it.
4. Random wasted bum who aptly pointed out that there were 5 of us standing outside together and then asked for change. What happened to playing the harmonica?

Seriously, my god. This city is too much. I don’t know how people can fall in love with it. I mean, it wasn’t horrific, but it was really stressful. Also, we were working, so there was no leisure to be had. The hotel we’re staying at is next to the Newark Airport. Evidently, Newark smells like crap.

The train rolls on.