b natural. c sharp.

Hello from Johnson City, TN. We’re waiting around for the show to start at The Hideaway so I figured I’d get a blog post in.

I finished my packing last night and the majority of it is knitting stuff, but I can’t help but bring a huge stash of yarn on the road. What better time to get rid of it then when I have hours upon hours of time? Believe it or not I packed lighter than usual, although the picture doesn’t do anything to support my case.

We all met at 9am this morning to pack up and crammed a ridiculous amount of stuff in the van. We have two instruments living in the actual van at the moment so until a keyboard gets dropped off in Nashville for repair and an amp gets a road case in Dallas. We’ll have some more space once those are gone and we eat our way through the ton of food we bought/were given. My mom was very nice and made us cookies and Joe’s friend’s mom always gives us a bunch of snacks for the road.

The boys drove today so Katie and I spent the trip knitting and listening to a book on tape, also about knitting. For anyone who cares the book is Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off and it’s amazing! I highly recommend it to my fellow knitters, but it will make you want to knit so make sure you listen to an audio version.

It took us about 8 hours to get here with three stops, as expected. Although it rained this morning while loading the van, once we got out of Baltimore the weather was pretty nice. No problems and only a little spot of traffic due to road work. So far so good.

Note: I’ll be posting highlight pictures, but for the full photo album follow the link for any thumbnail and hit “View Album.”

We leave for tour on Thursday and I’m hoping to keep up a decent account of our travels this time around. No promises, but I will have my laptop with me so I’ll have a much easier time keeping up with it. I even got myself a fancy new theme in hopes of a fresh start.

We’re going to be on the road for almost a month and going to the West Coast for our first time. I’ve never been to California and am super excited! As usual, I’ve spent the majority of my free time working on booking the tour since January so I’m ready to be done with it and get on the road. Lots of contacting bands/venues and even more waiting, most of the time for no response at all. We’ll still be squaring away details up until the last minute… confirmed shows suddenly cancel like in the case of Austin, TX and some venues still haven’t booked a local band for us to play with, etc. Booking is not my favorite thing in the world, but Katie and Aaron help lessen the load… we divide and conquer. The good news is that the actual touring part is much more fun than the preparation…

Here is our most recent list of dates:

3/27 - Johnson City, TN - The Hideaway
3/28 - Nashville, TN - The French Quarter
3/29 - Starkville, MS - Wasson’s
3/30 - Pensacola, FL - Sluggo’s
3/31 - Ft. Walton Beach, FL - Coaster’s
4/1 - Mobile, AL - The Blind Mule
4/2 - Baton Rouge, LA - Northgate Tavern
4/3 - Laporte, TX - The Forum
4/4 - Austin, TX -TBA
4/5 - Dallas, TX - The Prophet Bar
4/6 - El Paso, TX - Zeppelin’s
4/7 - Day Off
4/8 - Tuscon, AZ - Sports on Congress
4/9 - San Diego, CA - The Epicentre
4/10 - Long Beach, CA - The Prospector
4/11 - Los Angeles, CA - On The Rox
4/12 - Payson, AZ - Fireside Espresso
4/13 - Day Off (or maybe Phoenix?)
4/14 - Albuquerque, NM - Atomic Cantina
4/15 - Altus, OK - The Blue Room
4/16 - Dallas, TX - The Cavern
4/17 - Little Rock, AR - Vino’s
4/18 - Kansas City, MO - The Riot Room
4/19 - Minneapolis, MN - The Hexagon
4/20 - Madison, WI - The Annex
4/21 - Chicago, IL - Quencher’s
4/22 - Wonderlake, IL - EWL House
4/23 - Parma, OH - The Davenport
4/24 - Pittsburgh, PA - The Lava Lounge
4/25 - Baltimore, MD - Fletcher’s

2 weeks is my ideal touring length before I start getting “over it” and grumpy but we’ve done it before and are much better prepared these days. Tomorrow we’ll be cleaning and stocking up the van with non-perishable food items such as an endless supply of noodle bowls from Trader Joe’s. We are even planning to get our sliding door fixed. It’s been locked shut since it fell off the track after opening it a few tours ago somewhere at a rest stop. We’ve been so elegantly climbing through the front passenger side since.

I am an organizational freak and have a Tour Packing List on file that I’ve been perfecting for about 4 years now. Between my stuff and the band food I have everything I’d ever need. My absolute tour essentials are:

1. battery powered air mattress: having the same bed to sleep in every night makes even the grossest houses tolerable

2. fan: if all of us having aerobeds didn’t make us total princesses, then Katie and I bringing a fan to share probably does. I sleep with a fan at home every night normally, so having it to keep us cool and especially to block out noise is the best ever.

3. knitting stuff: I would probably chew my fingers off (since my nails are already gone) if I didn’t have something to keep me busy. Plus it’s nice to make some extra cash every once and a while.