a couple weeks ago deep pockets geared up for our first tour.  the original plan was to do long island, new jersey or philly, baltimore, pittsburgh, buffalo, albany and boston. we couldn’t get a nj/philly date set up so after the beery’s show we stayed at matt’s and loaded up. the day before the baltimore show was scheduled we found out it had been cancelled. two locals dropped off so they just dropped the show. pretty fucking lame.

we took a couple “before” pictures in between loading

we then figured maybe we should just head towards philly and perhaps we could jump on a show, and if not at least just cut down the driving time to pittsburgh

that morning we gathered our shit up

matt gathered his ice and provisions

and we loaded everything in and got on our way

on the road we go

conor set it off like madball

once we got to philly we weren’t sure what we should spend our time doing so decided to look for food. we settled on some vegan pizza

the pizza was delicious. we got some rita’s warter ices and took a walk to repo. i tried to hold off on the spending so early in the trip but i did buy a used cd. can’t remember what it was now.

matt met up with his buddy for a minute while we drove around for an hour looking for parking. eventually our stomachs got the best us of so conor, justin and i got thai food from this joint in west philly i’ve eaten at with chuck’s family. there was a tranny waitress with a huge adam’s apple working in there. it was funny. passing except for that. we met back up with matt and walked around olde city a bit. conor tickled some penis

olde city is one of those locations that makes you feel like you’ve time traveled.

we walked over to aka music and shopped around a bit more and then decided we should make a move

we didn’t have a place to stay but figured it would be best to drive an hour towards pittsburgh and find a cheap hotel room. our options were a closed holiday inn, a red tick inn and an econo lodge. econo won the bid. justin claimed he could talk them down in price and giggled for about 20 minutes over jebus knows what in the parking lot. i think we were all exhausted at that point.

the room was pretty damn nice and cost us each about 20 bucks. i slept pretty well that night. it was a good time hanging with the dudes and it felt like even though our show was cancelled we were still making the best of it

the next morning we got to checkout by 11 so matt woke up and gave me two fingers. we made some jokes, showered and a few of us headed over to the continental breakfast. yo that shit was not just some toast and coffee. i made a cinnamon flavored belgian waffle in a d.i.y. waffle maker son! shit was bangin.

justin went through the many details of hair care with us. we learned valuable lessons

i walked around the place for a minute and noticed it kind of felt a little shining

matt stressed over ice for a few minutes before we left

after all that we got our all shit together, loaded up, got gas and headed out toward pittsburgh

back on the road. sometimes i forget that a lot of the east coast is in the hills. rolling low mountain peaks. it just doesn’t stick in my mind for some reason and i forget until i get in a car and plow through

i did the early leg of the drive i think. justin was up front with me for a weird experience (no photos, my apologies). i was driving along when i saw what looked like a squirrel walk out into the middle of our side of the divided 4 lane highway. the traffic was fairly crowded and moving so i couldn’t slow down or swerve too hard to miss it. i had to think pretty fast and decide what to do… as we got closer justin and i came to the conclusion it was not a squirrel but rather an otter or a… beaver? yes a beaver. look at that huge tail! i am about 200 yards away when i slow down about 10 mph and make a move off slightly to the right near the shoulder. i say “i’m sorry little dude” as i think of the potential of ending this little one’s life. i continued to swerve until i felt that the little beaver (who seems to have pulled a dear in head lights) is right in between the two wheels of the van… we pass over and through the rearview i see the little critter unharmed, alarmed, and running back toward the woods! i saved the little guy from being squished and i felt terrific because of it. if anything he might have lost a few of his hairs as they were combed over.

driving through the u.s. is always great because you just see things you’d never see back home. like a trucks filled with trucks

or anti-abortion billboards

while justin and i powered through conor passed the fuck out

during the drive i was trying to entertain myself with my camera and the scenery

i took some of these dumb pictures and minded my business of watching the grass plains roll by until i heard a crashing scrape noise from under the van. “so it begins” i thought to myself.

we got out of the van on the side of the road and what do we see? our muffler has detached and the exhaust system has sort of rusted through. welllll this is great. we try to determine how to fix it and along comes hank hickey. i can’t remember who first dubbed him that, probably matt, but when a desperate situation rears its head conor springs into action and takes on the manhood of a man full of manhood, someone like rollins. he was on the ground and under the van in a split second making decisions and jerry rigging something to get us back afloat in an instant.

justin was put to the task of finding wire cutters to fashion a link in the exhaust system with soda cans

that little sucker in the foreground is what fell off the van

it was hot and humid out there in the sun. there a ton of truck traffic rolling by as well

conor took off his non-vegan belt and looped it around the pipes of the van’s underbelly and strapped it to the muffler. we took gaffer’s tape and bridged the gap with with the cut soda cans

about three cans later and we were nearly done

we waiting for hank to give us the go ahead and roll out from underneath the van. once he felt it was secured as well as it could be we headed on back down the road with our fingers crossed.

the pocketeers got back in the basement on the 13th of this month. we’re getting a couple new tunes ready for a split with make it plain and recording some others for the fun of it

we got an early start and loaded in the gear. justin brought like three amps and conor brought about four

that’s not true but there was a lot of equipment. it’s a good thing because it took us forever to work out the bass shit. at first we thought that justin’s stuff shit the bed, then he tried burt’s bass cab. that one sounded too “metaly” i believe, so we went to a third one. later we found out the issue happened to be a faulty cable. isn’t that funny

conor really did bring three guitars. i don’t remember the difference in them, but one of them had a really “hollow” tone to it. i dunno how else to describe it.

we ran through the first track, cyclone cellar, in one take. (technically three because we were setting up and warming up before we hit record)

did some cool overdubs that you may not even notice when listening back, but we’ll know they’re there somewhere buried in the mix

the dudes relearned foggy riffs and we continued on. hey, look at that… real mic stands! justin brought some boom stands so i didn’t really use old drum stands this time

“pharaoh nanos” doin that tracy morgan christmas dance

something was funny but i can’t remember what

oh there’s the old guitar, the hollow one. check out the ill racing stripes.

has there ever been a better candidate for the “airheads-extra lookalike of the year” award?

conor was in rare form that night. it was funny to see what a few hours of being stuck in a basement will do to each of us

but we got four songs down, two for the split, two for whatever. some more photos are probably on their way.