Keyboard for my iPhone!

I've always hated typing on the on-screen-keyboard on the iPhone. The buttons are so tiny and there isn't any tactile response as to when you've successfully entered a keystroke.
That is the reasoning behind this wonderful bluetooth keyboard!
In other news, today is our first day on the Trespass America Festival, and so far everything is awesome! There is a ton of new faces that I'm going to have a hard time remembering at least for the first couple weeks. I have the All-American tour shirts in finally! They look great! I'm super excited for this tour! Be on the lookout for new videos and shenanigans coming VERY SOON! Trust me this time!
Stay tuned for more!!

Burger ... Krazy?

So either this Burger King has some immensely huge issues, or they were just screwing with me.

I pull up to the drive through and the speaker is just intermittent static, so I wait like 30 seconds and it continued, so I ordered 2 double cheeseburgers and it popped up on the screen. I said "yeah" and drove around. The girl was having a full-on conversation with the guy behind me. She sniffs around herself for a few seconds before asking me if I smell something burning. I tell her that I did not, so she walks away and mutters "Man, I am tripping balls!" Then I got a free pulled pork sandwich.

Spring? II

So I feel a little bit early, but the bus is scaring me, so I'm sitting in the trailer scanning merch forms and I thought "Hey!  Why don't I continue that blog post from earlier today?"  So here I am, Listening to Pennywise and typing up a storm in the trailer.
So we wound up December with some shows around home right before Christmas, and then New Year's in Madison, WI.
After all those shows and miles in between, our trailer had taken quite a beating.  We spent the majority of January at home measuring some new on-stage gear and playing some garage Tetris trying to figure out exactly how everything would fit in.  After we got those measurements, we took a few trips to Lowe's and bought a lot of wood and screws.  I now have a floor to ceiling shelving unit custom built by your's truly to hold all of my tshirt boxes and cables and such, while Bobo and Blinker have more floor space that they can take up with all their large rolling boxes.
With that all done, we set out for a 10-show mini tour with Lansdowne through VA, WV, OH and so on, where we had the worst bus of our relatively young careers.  It seemed that almost every single day something was broken with it.  Hell, the night it came into town to pick us up, the batteries died and I had to jump start it with my truck.  On our way to show number 7, the engine felt that it was a good time to die and threw a rod through the block at about 7am.  The rest of that morning was filled with finding a rental van and a haul truck and then driving the two 4 hours through the mountains to get to Lynchburg, VA.  Luckily after driving back to the bus the next morning, there was a shiny new one there waiting to carry us swiftly away from certain death.
That brings us up to the present, touring with Otherwise, Man Made Machine and Lansdowne.  MMM left us a couple days ago, and they will be missed.  Hopefully we run into them again soon.
Any of you out there thinking about coming to one of the upcoming shows, stop thinking, just be there.  It is definitely a great bill and you won't be disappointed!
Ok the batteries are dying, I've got to pack up, but hey!  I'm gonna post this one in the morning, so the timing will feel a bit off, but just go with it.  ;)

Spring?

I'm sorry, everyone, I can't seem to keep up with this silly thing!  Now that we're in a running bus and steadily on the road, I think I'll have more time to get it done.  The same goes for tour videos!  I've got #18 in the works, but I can't seem to finish it to my liking.  Maybe I'm getting too picky.  What do you guys want to see in it??  I'm trying to get more of our behind-the-scenes type of stuff in there, but Chachi has been covering most of that in his daily videos.  Should I put some of that in mine to have like a re-cap of the highlights?  I feel like I have a lot of questions, tonight.
So tonight we're in Toledo, OH.  The weather has been very warm and sunny for us for the last week or two, it feels like we didn't even have a winter.  I can't believe it's March, already!  I guess I should go back to October and fill you in on things.
We were touring with Theory of a Deadman and 3 Doors Down and it was almost Halloween.  Right?  The rest of the tour, every show was packed and we became great friends with 3 Doors Down.  We all really look forward to seeing them and hopefully touring with them again at some point!
We'll be touring with Theory of a Deadman again starting in April, we're all looking forward to causing some mayhem with those boys again!  If we're coming to your town, you had better be there!  Remember to check out our TOUR DATES page on Facebook!
After 3DD, we played some dates with Puddle of Mudd and Lansdowne as far west as Missoula, MT, the others went further, all the way to Washington I think, but we were back home for a few days and then picked back up with them in Iowa.
I feel like I shouldn't do this, but I will have to continue this tomorrow, hopefully, because I have to go inside and sell some stuff!  But don't worry, there's lots more to share!  Don't miss out!


To Be Continued...

Halloweeeeeeeen!

Well it's October 30th, 2 days off in a row and we're driving from Corpus Christi, TX, to Rockford, IL.  Matt, Chachi and Tony flew to Chicago this morning for a little visit to the studio, it seems like we just can't get away from that place!  For some reason, the Lions game is blacked out on our TV, which sucks, but it's whatev..
I finished shopping for pieces to my Halloween costume earlier today, not sure what we're going to be doing tomorrow night, but I felt that I needed to make one for tradition's sake.
We drove through our first snowstorm of the year a few nights ago and had a show cancelled because of it.  We were driving to Denver, CO, with Theory of a Deadman and we both got stuck in a McDonald's parking lot somewhere in Wyoming due to the roads being closed down.  It was cold.  Only 3 days later, we were in Corpus Christi, TX, and it was sunny and warm!  The weather can change so quickly from one part of the country to the next.
There will be a new tour video featuring the song "Purple" posted very soon!  Stay tuned for that, it's really good! (I know, I made it...)
It's been so long since I've blogged that I barely know what to talk about!  This last month with 3 Doors Down and Theory of a Deadman have been a lot of fun!  There are always smiling faces backstage and people riding by on longboards and scooters and what have you.  It's a very friendly atmosphere on this tour, you can never be too sure who will be lurking around the next corner!
In 5 days, we'll be in Grand Rapids, MI, our hometown, but just for a day, and just for a show.  It's gonna be a weird visit, for sure, but that's the life of touring, I guess.
We have these sweet rugs in the bus!  I am not a fan of hardwood or tile floors in living spaces.  They're just so hard and cold.  Carpet is a much better feeling when you dig your bare toes into it first thing in the morning, or afternoon, whenever I happen to get out of bed.  Shoes suck, and I'm going to be stuck in them for the next 5 months.  Ugh, that's the worst part of winter!  I can't wait to get out snowboarding, though.
OO!  Matt is giving away one of his basses!  How sweet is that?  I made up some flyers to hang around the merch table for it and I even put those little 2D barcodes on them that you can scan with your smartphone and they take you right to the sign-up page for it!  CLICK HERE! to enter!
I want to watch a movie, see y'all soon!