Wrapping up week 1

Playing Forecastle, easily the craziest thing ever.

So we've been on the road now for about a week, and I have to say I'm having the greatest time of my life. The crowd's have been unreal. I haven't actually ever seen crowd surfing, but every night, we were treated to the most rowdy, incredible audiences I've ever seen.

Grand Rapids was unreal. The crowd was going bonkers the whole show, apparently a couple guys got thrown out for pissing on people. I mean listen, I'm not condoning it, I'm just saying that if that's not rock n' roll, I don't know what is. It's electric, the feeling that comes from playing a show like that. A fan that came out that night had come to the show like a week after having brain surgery, it was amazing. From Grand Rapids we came back into Ohio for another night in Columbus, with yet another crazy crowd. It was wild!

Our dressing room in Columbus, Ohio

From there we left for Louisville for the Forecastle festival. I'd never been to Louisville

before, and I have to say it's easily one of the prettiest cities I've ever been to. Our hotel was

super cool, it was over a museum with a lot of cool art in the lobby (which at first was really

confusing, imagine you're jumping off a bus at three in the morning to get into your hotel and

instead you walk into an art museum). My favorite part was these guys:

There were a bunch of these little plastic penguins throughout the hotel, and you just moved them around wherever you wanted. Jeff ended up taking one into his room at one point. I thought it was hilarious. We also got a chance to go by the Louisville slugger museum and stand in front of the world's tallest baseball bat.

After meandering around Louisville for the day, we went to the waterfront for the festival. I was getting super antsy, this being my first festival and all. We got there in time to watch DEVO and catch a bit of We Were Promised Jetpacks before we had to come back to our dressing room. It was our Front of House guy's birthday, so we all had a cake and sang for him before the show, which calmed my nerves for a second. Then it was time to head out.

It was unreal, there were so many people you couldn't even see them all. It was a bit of a

weird adjustment because with no sound check, you don't know what you're going to hear when

you get out there. Between the lights, the shower of glowsticks and the paper lanterns flying in the air during

Tonight, Tonight, It was the most crazy, vivid moment of my entire musical life. We had an amazing

time, I was so amped up after the show I could barely sleep.

Now we're into our second week, I'll have more pics/audio from the tour soon!

-Mike