Denton... is a blur. We were an hour late to the show. Set up as fast as we could possibly manage. Ate free pizza at J&J's. Watched the glory that was Western Giants... then loaded up and headed to Austin. We were probably there 3 hours and then it was Austin or bust. Drove through the night in order to beat the morning traffic and head to Husband&Wife's 1:30 showcase at the Buzzgrinder day party and our 2:15 showcase with Thunderhawk at the Standard Recording Label day party. And somewhere between the Denton departure and Austin arrival, Bryant managed to get a touch of the stomach flu. And by touch, I mean more vomit than I've ever heard come out of a human being in my life. All night. All morning. Husband&Wife somehow managed to play their 1:30 show and just when it seemed like Bryant was down for the count, he picked himself up outta the van and played our bands' evening show at the Space12 gallery. Day 1 was a complete blur, but a success none the less. We ended the evening watching Danielson's Space12 performance. Totally. Amazing.

The Husband&Wife van took a dump on us today—setting the H&W'ers back many a bone, delaying our departure by about 5 hours, and making us about an hour late to our show in Denton. 

The bar we played reminded us of the classic scene in Blues Brothers...minus the cage. 1/2 the crowd was made up of students taking part in the Oklahoma U "UniverseCity" concert series—1/2 the crowd were the locals. To quote Ben Stiller in "Heavyweights," we could feel a "life force" in the room. Sometimes touring with another band just means that no matter what city you end up in and what kind of energy the crowd has, your better half is there to sing along, hoot and holler or just clap louder than anyone in the room. And in turn, even the locals start wondering if they're missing something in those moments. "This doesn't sound like Kid Rock, but all those kids up at the stage sure seem to be having the time of their lives. Maybe we should get a little unruly too." And next thing you know a mismatched audience has turned into one of the funnest shows of the tour. We made some friends, made some fans and left just before what looked like was going to end in Nate getting his ass kicked for reciting Edgar Alan Poe's "The Raven" from the stage and playing "Don't Stop Believing" two times in a row on the juke. Some choice words were shouted by a few guys at the bar who apparently had had their fill of the shenanigans. The night ended with a $58 Taco Bell order (between our two vans) and a full night's sleep.

Husband&Wife had tried to describe for us what our night at Vertical Violet was going to be like, having played here once before. And we were still floored with everything that was Vertical Violet and the Barnhardt family. The most gracious and hospitable people one could even dream to come across while on tour. Truly. The free spirited Barnhardt family hosts house shows (called Vertical Violet) several times a month (and often several times a week)—puts the bands up in their basement which has been modified to hold 9 people (how lucky for us) and has its own shower—a back yard that finds itself somewhere between a magical mini golf course and a whimsical the labyrinth—and home cooked meals for both dinner and breakfast. Dinner meaning.. everyone who came to the show. Which was easily just under 100 kids. 

You feel like you're one of the Barnhardt's before the night's over. And by the time you leave—you are. There's a pole in the basement signed by all the bands that have played at the Barnhardt's Vertical Violet shows. Reading through what seemed like hundreds was pretty incredible. Bands that have gone on to achieve greatness like Gentleman Auction Band, Dignan and our great friend Timbre—and a whole slew of bands who have somehow found their way to a beautiful home full of beautiful people in Wichita, Kansas.

Oh.. and they have a pet pig named Ethel who cleaned up on all our enchilada leftovers—as well as the paper plates they were served on.

The venue gave us a discounted rate on the downtown Fort Des Moines hotel. But the cheapskates that we are, we only purchased one room. Andrew, Kevin and Nate purchased the room and got settled in. Then 2 or 3 at a time, we wandered through the dark corridors of the hotel, taking emergency exits and carefully walking through empty ballrooms of the way-to-reminiscent-of-the-Shining hotel bowels—working our way back out to the street to sneak in all 9 of us. In the end, I'm sure the hotel security was well aware of the entire plot and just chose not to bother with some idiot kids who thought they were getting away with something. But for us, it was a great way to close our night. 

The Show was indeed..."one of those shows." As it ends up, the ill fitting denim crowd isn't too into keyboard driven post-rock with live videos. At all. Sadly, the club was basically empty by the time H&W took stage. But what could've been a disaster turned into quite the memorable evening. Hours late for load-in and with groupies in toe came, "Rhonda is a Dead Bitch." A description of what we encountered at the close of the show will only grace what we experienced. Five members. And quite possibly 3 of which who just joined the band and/or learned their instruments two weeks previous. This is based on a number of observations but mostly the fact that the lead singer mentioned that he was one of those three about half way through the set. Their lead guitarist seemed to be the "ring leader" of the group. Barking orders and shouting count-ins throughout the night. Occasionally tapping the singer on the shoulder to inform him he had missed a cue or to remind him of something coming up. Picture the guy at your office that routinely does a disk repair on your computer or installs anti-virus software on your machine while your at lunch. Now put him in pleated khakis, a button-up Las Vegas bowling shirt, and the ability to play more notes on the guitar then even Buckethead. Ok, now just in case the Buckethead powers were a little much.. remove any sense of key or timing. This is our "ring leader." Musically reminiscent of the longest, most drawn out Yo La Tengo songs ever written.. injected with an overwhelming amount of stage fright. Actually, not even stage fright.. just this feeling that everyone on stage except for "Las Vegas" was going to either throw up or run off at any moment due to either the thought of disappointing their leader or the fact that all their friends were staring at their sweaty faces for such a long period of time.

But these are all the surface level impressions of Rhonda is a Dead Bitch. The things that turned our heads and brought us deep into the cluster of Rhonda fans in front of the stage. After the first song, they announced from the stage something about that going went so well that they were going to with the rest of their set. Before then, the members were actually breaking down as if they were finished. Most memorable lyric (although incredibly difficult to narrow down): "I saw you at the movies, I saw you at the mall, You had a blonde hair-do, You put lipstick on...I want to know you. I want to touch you."

Ty sat up in the balcony next to the member of the band who was projecting colored slides through a canister of oil and water onto the stage. Awestruck and euphoria were the words he gave us. "Every moment of their set was easily the greatest thing I've even witnessed at a live show."

Just when a long day of roaming a deserted Sunday in Des Moines couldn't get any dimmer—we find we are "the evening show" at a club who's spent the better portion of the day hosting a southern rock and metal show. Ill fitting denim and "NRA" tattoos were the names of the game and we and H&W were very quickly realizing this was going to be "one of those nights." 

To kill time and get our blood sugars back in order, we ended up at "Fong's Pizza." Des Moines' downtown Chinese pizza parlor. It was recommended to us by a man we met outside the Science Center who approached us to ask if we were in that night. A few hours later we saw a playbill for "Jersey Boys." Had we been on our toes, we would've broken into an impromptu rendition of "Big Man in Town" with Mike Adams taking Frankie Valli's parts and Cheek doing a brief dance number. We rehearsed it later on our own. 

Orders at Fong's:

Tim, Kevin and Ty - Fongolian Beef

Jared, Mike, Will and Bryant - Crab Rangoon

Nate and Andrew (the adventurous ones) - Pineapple and green olive :(

For a $30 deposit, there was talk about getting the "Funky Monkey"—which comes in a massive monkey head—or the "Kamikaze"—which is drank with a vintage Japanese Kamikaze helmet. Why a $30 deposit is going to keep someone from walking out of a restaurant with a helmet on or what a Kamikaze helmet is doing in a Chinese pizza parlor was beyond any of us.

The first leg of our trip to SXSW was lucky enough to spent with both Husband&Wife and our great friends in Rodeo Ruby Love. The morning after our second show, we took some time to consolidate gear and managed to pack all the equipment for tour in the Beauville. Husband&Wife added a bench seat to their van for more body room and we were off—9 dudes strong, 2 vans, merch hot off the flash dryers and a quick repair on our muffler with an untwisted coat hanger. Jared Cheek, owner and founder of Flannelgraph Records, taking on the role of tour manager and Kevin Rose, XRA multi-tasking in-fielder, as our resident "merch guy."

The first three nights with Rodeo couldn't have kicked it off any better. Great turn outs and a whole lotta pillow talk. We met a 5'3" singer-songwriting acoustic punk powerhouse named Houston who opened the Peoria show and put us all up at his place for the night. He and his lady were amazing—cooking us pizzas and providing and endless amount of Seagrams until the feature film, "Heavyweights." I think there were 15 people snugglin on top of one another in Houston's living room watching Ben Stiller at his finest. 

Houston, you're amazing. Sorry for all the "Houston, we have a boner" jokes.

Larger view here - http://www.tackfilm.se/en/?id=1259092439689RA38

The evening was too perfect for any of us to remember to take any photos or video. You'll have to watch Heima ... and then watch Home Alone. It was probably somewhere in between those two.

One year later, we've booked two shows in New York. Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. Aside from being eager to play in New York again, we couldn't wait to experience the city a little deeper this time around.

To kick off the visit, we set up camp at a pizzeria in Bushwick and in a matter of minutes, we were reunited with Steve. Apparently Steve is working on a novel right now in which a band loosely based on Metavari are among its characters. That's scary. Scary and hilarious. I think we love Steve more than NYC itself. Below are a handful of photos from the two days we spent there. Discovering amazing food, hauling the van through Times Square, climbing up onto the roof of the apartment we stayed in, and taking audio recordings of the sounds of the street.

Andrew captured the audio from a few songs in Greg's set here:

"My Girls"


"Two-Headed Boy pt.2"


"The Deepest Blue"