These guys – these are the guys. Just this past weekend I returned from a two week stint with some of the greatest fellows a fellow could ask to be crammed into a van with. Left to right, top to bottom you have myself, Matt, Bobby, Derek, Joe, then Justin, Bo, and Conor. Before I left I already appreciated the dudes in Deep Pockets for being my favorite group of guys to work with as far as personality mash ups go. Now that I’ve met So Adult I’ve met our west coast alternate universe counter part.

Straight off the bat the trip started with Conor, Matt, and I meeting up in Jamaica to take the air train to JFK and hop on a plane to Seattle. The funny thing is the second we agreed to do this Justin wrote us an email that said like “well I got my tickets guys!” And the rest of us sort us just said “ooh, um ok. Cool Jwow, we’ll just get our tickets at some point too then.” Even though he was an eager beaver I think it related to work somehow but it was funny regardless.

We were greeted by Bo at SeaTac and headed back to his place with his girlfriend Cecelia and Derek. We had an hour and a half back up to Bellingham to get to know each other. We crashed after some more jittery excited discussion. The next morning we went for a walk around downtown B-Ham. Check out the old Karate church around the corner from Bo’s.

Hey look, a real life Bob’s Burgers!

Once we got to Everyday Music we spotted the poster for our first show, the tour kick off, in town. Conor was honored with having his face not only on the show poster, but also two of So Adult’s t-shirts. More on that later.

Everyday Music was pretty sick. I copped a og version of …And Justice For All and Exile on Main St at a discounted rate. My bust though for stepping out to catch a bite because the dudes who worked there were buddies of Bo’s and let Conor browse the more rare crates that were behind the counter. Oh well.

We headed over to the bowling alley Bo worked at so he could get some practice in. The very same theatre that was the backdrop of the S.A. “Citizen’s Arrest” video. Bo’s a league bowler so he had to get some practice in. Me, Matt and Conor bowled a few rounds too. All of varying luck and skill.

Usually I’m not the best but once I remember to slow down my aim I do a lot better. I did end up nailin a straight edge strike which was cool.

The set up the Soda Lutzes have there at that bowling alley is fuckin rad. They have a sweet job that seems to keep them pretty happy, then they are able to rent out the basement as a rehearsal space.

Conor and I got into the inevitable conversation comparing the two lifestyles of the west vs the east after a while. I love the demeanor out there but NY always wins.

I think I’m just too impatient to live in a slower paced place.

Then again when you step outside and feel the cool, breezy air its pretty intoxicating (even if Matt mucks it up with cancer)

Walking back toward Bo’s (and past Cecelia’s job) we noticed a ‘welcome to Bellingham’ piece up on a building and grab a shot of Conor out front.

I guess this is a weird self portrait?

So after a while we had to make the one and a half drive out to Seattle to pick up the split tapes up from the Most Gross label. Joe was designing a cover as the days went by. Most Gross are just down the street from a Whole Foods so you know Matt stopped in and used his discount. After we had a bunch of time to kill so we went to a huge video store where Conor scored the original only Star Wars trilogy on laser disk. He doesn’t have a player but we figured we could buy one on eBay.

Bo took us down to a place called Gasworks (Shitty Beatles were not playing unfortunately) where were able to catch a sweet view of the space needle thing and tooons of sail boats.

The place reminded me of something you’d see in a romantic comedy in the background, especially cause the boats weren’t sailing to any destination, they were just going back and forth like they were hired extras. I’ve got some more shots to scan from this spot coming up soon. From here eventually we’d be on our way to grab Justin and the story will continue.

Last weekend Deep Pockets headed south to Philadelphia to begin recording an LP at Permanent Hearing Damage Studio. We packed the van slightly differently and Matt was confined to the far back, or in Youthviolence terms, the isolation chamber.

We brought Charlotte with us because her family was gracious enough to let us crash at their place just outside the city in Conshohocken. Many thanks are to forever be bestowed upon them.

Strawberries were the food of choice as we left Woodside. The trip down wasn’t terrible, but the traffic in Staten Island kept us from arriving on time.

By the time we got to Philly we met Steve and his intern Jack and loaded in and almost immediately started micing and getting tones. I was so exhausted from the traffic and being in the car for what seemed like 6 hours I had no energy left.

For most of this time Matt had nothing to do and just walked around looking for food for us. Apparently that’s how he got poison ivy?

We spent the first night getting tones and the second day doing bass and drums with a bit of guitars.

Matt continued to walk around.

Here’s Steve’s control room. Conor is eating some Whole Foods which took us forever to get. We drove around forever looking for parking.

Those chairs were dangerous

Matt got into some vocals.

Justin having some deep thoughts

This was a place we kept driving past in North Philly, imagining the behind that “door” there was a junky man with a needle in his hand that would just repeatedly stab you while shouting “TAILOR TAILOR TAILOR! YOU’VE BEEN ALTERATED!”

I got nothing else to say about the rest of these because we are just doing some dubbing.