kent and columbus
since 2002 we have been hauling around an enormous trailer for our gear, affectionately referred to by our fans as “the horse trailer” although it never did move horses and is not properly equipped for horse transport. but it does look like a horse trailer and traveled with us for long distances to faraway places. on friday, we retired it, taking out two bench seats in the van and cramming all our gear packed floor to ceiling in the back of the van. gas prices have made it almost impossible to tour, so we’ve been cutting corners wherever we can. we are traveling with a lot less guitars, half of the bass amp stack, etc just to fit it in the van. (as always if you want to do something really nice you can help us out with travel expenses at www.joehedges.com/help)
i am not sure what other bands are doing but it must be getting hard on everyone, even nationals
here we are on friday saying goodbye to the trailer, loading into the van
“hmmm i don’t know if this is all going to fit”
okay i’ll lift this heavy stuff and you just stand there and take pictures
cb coil cable
friday we drove a few hours to kent ohio to play a show at fat jimmy’s. weirdly, we have never played in kent.
unfortunately my photos are no longer coinciding with a written narrative of our adventures, this is my weak attempt at making it work as i am beginning to regret not typing more in blogs.
so much loading and unloading.
into Fat Jimmy’s at ken state
i did not meet anyone named jimmy nor were there any fat people hanging around who possibly may have been jimmy, unless he has lost weight which could happen
after load-in we went and ate dinner at a mexican restaurant. in the parking lot, T did this
we don’t know what it means and cannot remember the context
the food was delicious. mexican food is my favorite “ethnic” food. t bought a pitcher of margaritas and shared with everyone, which may or may not have been a good idea before the show.
after dinner we went back to the hotel where for a while we allowed ourselves to be transfixed by meaningless rabble and cheap sexual images on the TV. watching tv is like watching someone die. i know it’s wrong but i can’t stop looking.
the show went well. we had a decent turnout of fans and old friends from the cleveland area, as well as some people who drove all the way up from georgia for both shows over the weekend. crazy. we have been playing a good cross section of swim, nostalgia, and curvature, as well as “say it now” and sometimes another song or two from the new album. the set is basically the “best of” which is a good way to do a set i think. i guess it would be dumb to play all your worst songs.
the next morning we found some of these guys in the parking lot and played with them for a while. what are they called? they are caterpillars but they have another name that is more affectionate, like army worm but not. anyway t and i pet him and kissed him and grossed out dan and brian, who have a lower tolerance for crawling things.
these are from load-in at the newport in columbus
the venue bathroom shot slow shutter speed
after load-in we went to the wexly and saw some art, then hung out at the Quad for a while where we were repeatedly attacked by a little dog.
there are no photos though, it all happened so quick
i am still not sure what was up with the white shirts.
i love playing on that stage. always sounds great up there. and whoever was running lights did a nice job too. that was last weekend.
maybe you want to hear about the new july for kings album. well, honestly there has been little progress in the last few months. but now that i am out of school for the summer, i hoping to get the ball rolling and get it wrapped up. the bulk of the recording is finished. the big hurdle now is just getting the drums edited and getting it mixed. blumpy is going to mix it, but i am getting worried about his schedule with nine inch nails. i do have some contingency planes so we will see. mixing is very important if not the most important part of making an album a good listen. i just want it to be right. i will be doing everything i can in the coming weeks to speed this along and get some new music to you guys. we have a month with no shows, so this should be an extra good time to get it wrapped up. i’ll let you know what happens next!
