i don’t remember who first suggested it really, but the morning after we played the box in charlottesville we figured out there was a waffle house not too far away from where we were. we, along with girlfriends, boarded into our vans and headed in the direction of one of america’s finest establishments

nick and pat ordered the biggest plates of stuff, while i stayed with a buttermilk waffle and sausage. i think nick got the all star breakfast which basically consisted of one of everything on the menu

and i think pat got grits and gravy or some sort of something

this was to be the first of a couple of waffle house visits, and goddamnit do i wish they had them near us in nyc… they would make a killing

the food was heavenly and the portions and prices were just right

when we walked in scott the waiter did his best to accommodate the 7 of us together but for some stupid reason we split up. i was pretty miffed by that because here this nice fella goes and moves things around for us and we just ignore his efforts. i would’ve liked to sit with the lady friends too

i ordered a “nice glass of water” and scott made a note of it on our check

the girlsfriends

after breakfast i made it clear i wanted to take a group photo in front of the magnificent restaurant, making use of the tripod i lugged down from nyc. of course my self timer tricked me into thinking it hadn’t taken to the shutter release so i sat still between nick and laura for a second but then turned back to check it and “click” i was mid walk behind nick. kind of looks like i’m hiding or much worse

after a while on the road the gfs called us to tell us that they spoke to the kid who set up the show and in order for us to not get lost we should put “clemmons” into our gps, not winston-salem… which is where we were told the show was. unfortunately it was in a suburb of the city. i really wanted to spend some time in winston-salem because a lot of the good folks i work for on clothing photo shoots reside there and describe how beautiful the city is. we eventually arrived to what looked like a normal apartment building. the venue’s name was “incognito-dojo”

aaron and his wife invited us into their air conditioned, smoke filled living room where we met their cat and rested for a minute. the space was tight… incredibly tight. we learned it was basically a two-bedroom apartment where the bands play in one room… as many people as possible squeeze in with the band and the rest overflow into the living room and kitchen. we all then walked over to starbucks and walgreens with our spirits slightly down. the staff at walgreens didn’t much prefer our hijinks and asked us to stop playing football in the aisles.

we got into starbucks and the friends made use of the free wifi while the other hounds took advantage of the board games. at this point for some reason i decided to walk back to the dojo. don’t ask me why because i have no idea. it might’ve been because i wanted to get food from the van the dojo was closer than starbucks was. i got back into the apartment and started conversating with aaron about hip-hop. this turned into a wu-tang dvd marathon where i schooled him on everything there is to know about wu. let me say that he lifted his shirt to reveal a wu-W on his chest… then told me 36 chambers was his favorite record. flash forward only three minutes and he contradicts himself saying he couldn’t listen to about 4 of the songs at all on the album. he then tells me he can’t even listen to forever, the w, iron flag, etc. why did he have this tattoo on his chest?? his friend, and my fellow performer p.t. bernum then showed up and started talking to us. i took my leave shortly after to find the hounds. aaron advised us to check out a used record store in winston-salem called edward mckay.

this place was great. i got a grand master melle mel and the furious five lp that i’ve never seen before, a live mamas and the papas record, and a copy of the traveling wilburys volume one (for only five bucks!) there was a ton more stuff i coulda got but i was trying to conserve cash. this place was amazing though, and they didn’t really seem to know what they had or what it was worth. they also sold books, vhs, dvds, vintage video games and a bunch more crap.

after edward mckay we stopped off at a best buy so laura could pick up a guitar strap. pat found the music section was stocked with a healthy looked 3-string guitar that fed into a tiny little pice of shit pink amp. he cranked the volume to max and started wailing until the manager asked him to stop

the most annoying part about this experience was laura picked up a damaged fender distortion pedal that didn’t have a price and had the tightest security thing strapped to us that it took us about 40 minutes to leave with the pedal in hand. they had to first look up what it was worth and then devise a way to get the security device off. pat slipped under with a set of keys and we were on our way back to hell the incognitio dojo

there really wasn’t much to clemmons. a one horse town in you will. i still regret not spending more time in w-s.

we played a rushed-to-start set to about 6 people. it sucked the big one. more people (including aaron) were standing outside of the apartment building listening in apparently, but you wouldn’t have known it from the inside. the best part about the experience was probably when i met josh. josh was one of the most genuinely nice dudes ever. he loved metal, and loved nyc. “no homo man, but i got something to show you” he lifted his shirt and showed me a kiss tattoo on one shoulder blade and a motley crue tattoo on the other. in the 12th grade he was assigned a report on something he loves so he chose to do it on l’amours in brooklyn. this guy was fucking awesome. a shitty sketch of his exists in the tour journal. “aw hell yeah”

girlfriends played after us to about 12 people and really killed it. i think the bum-outness of the show boosted them to try harder maybe.

i really like how these photos turned out of them though

i admit i’m being a bit hard to aaron and his crew at the incognito dojo. they tried their best to hook us two touring bands up with a show and all. you gotta be thankful for that. oh, but  the part i failed to mention is that SIX bands were slotted on the bedroom bill. ALL touring bands. the gig didn’t end until at least 2:30. then… every band slept on the floor like sardines.

again… i appreciate the fact he tried to help us out, but man that was a low point on the tour and in my life. he was telling me that he has a new space on the way for shows so if you’re ever in clemmons maybe you should check out a show at incognito dojo 2.0 and let me know how it went

EDIT: so originally i forgot to add a section. after we both played our sets we wound up jumping in the gfs van in search of food. we ended up at wendy’s. after eating some mediocre food we wanted to waste some time. benny had bought some smoke bombs and we decided to try and find creative ways to light them off.

the real goal was to get one in the road before a car drove by so that when it ignited it would smoke as they drove through it

this was the best thing we could come up with at first

eventually though we successfully lit one while a car drove through

but the highlight of the night was when we put one in a newspaper box and opened it up shortly there after. the way the smoke poured out was almost mesmerizing. we then headed back into the show which was still going on for a few more hours, only now there were even weirder characters… one who made lots of joke references to being raped, or raping… FUN! when the show ended i went to sleep in a room alone. i woke up with about 5 people surrounding me feeling like i was trapped in a sardine tin. /EDIT

after we woke up tired and smokey (and me cold/sweaty) we discovered the kitty had peed on pat’s laptop case. dude was probably annoyed their were so many people on the floor. still doesn’t make it ok for him to pee on pat’s laptop case. oh well, at least the computer wasn’t in it. we collected our handsome pay and got the fuck outta dodge. on our way to asheville because we heard from the folks at the birdcage in knoxville and the show had been cancelled due to a police raid of the venue or something. blergh. more to come

so part II… charlottesville, va. at this point i was already confused as to where we were headed on what day. i didn’t know that charlottesville was even in virginia until a day later when we passed out of virginia. the drive wasn’t too bad but the heat when we got out was rough. surprisingly enough it was 102 degrees in nyc. we got out of the van and began walking to the venue, which was called the box

pat and i stopped off for some free peanuts and peeing at five guys. the fellow behind the the counter got wise to our schemes so we walked outta there

when we made it to the box we noticed a cool little poster announcing that girlfriends would be arriving in town with us as supporters, it was a really cool little poster. i think the photo was from andy’s friend’s parent or something? anyway we had a whole mess of hours to kill so we walked through “the mall” where laura purchased some stuff at urban outfitters and i  got a two for one gatorade deal at cvs

we were told by the bartender at the box that we were entitled to some free fried rice whenever we wanted it so we came back and got our fair share. the food was incredibly tasty, especially because it was free. i had the tofu and covered it with hot sauce. it was delicious

oh and they had an enormous painting of mr. miyagi behind the bar. unfortunately the light in the bar did not allow for the depth of field i had hoped for, but here’s a blurry vision of him… you get the drift

in an effort to waste more time we went to another bar that had billiards and played a best of three tournament.

i forget the outcome but i was on lc’s team. i think we may have won? the only reason i assume this is because during our third game the strangest dude came out of the woodwork and introduced himself as randy (a drawing was made in the tour notebook which i may try and scan later) randy proceeded to ask if he could play the winner of the game, but because it was two on two it made it hard. he didn’t quite get the drift that we were happy playing on our own and we told he we guessed he could play whoever won. he then told us he was originally from new york… new jersey, ny. and then he started doing what i think was supposed to be some sort of brooklyn slang and kept saying “‘three fingas’ …am i right? hahaha. ‘gimme three fingas’.” and we were quite lost. add in some awkward conversation attempt to laura with an aversion attempt by me, a completely pointless story about his father’s death being “one week to the day” from september 11th and some weird praise for the connection he felt to us and you have the factors that lead to us filing out one by one.

pat was the first to go just on his own, followed by (or nick and i thought) laura, then nick and  then via phone call / “something important is happening!” me. nick and i hurried back to the safety of the venue and expected to find pat and laura, only pat was sitting alone. laura had simply walked off to the restroom without the knowledge we left so when she returned she apparently saw randy on his own staring into a mirror. she tip-toed outta that bar and made her way back

the pool game was fun while it lasted at least. we asked the bar tender back at the box if there were any cool parks with rivers or creeks and she gave us a general direction of how to get to one. at first we followed her exact instructions and ended up in private property, but then by scoping out a sign marked “one lane bridge” we came across this really amazing park with a river running through it.

the landscape was beautiful. we took our shoes off and headed it, because there were already a few others bathing so we knew it was ok to not die in

the light was really amazing as it passed through the opening of the brush. i kept trying to capture the others as they mingled in the right spot.

the river bed was rocky, but well worth the stop. laura had sandles so her feet were ok

this was definitely one of the highlights of the tour for me, stumbling across something like this. being from long island you really don’t get to experience rivers so i was really looking forward to these type of findings

at this spot the light was really amazing. too bad my scanner kind of sucks right now

nick scaling the high peaks off the river

the one thing about the 6 is the focal range on the lens is just over arms length so any arms length self portrait is bound to be out of focus, unless you’re a long armed basketball player or something

we made our way back to the venue because girlfriends let us know they were approaching. i got some really delicious and messy ice cream from a mom an’ pop store

the show got started pretty late, around 10 or so, but to our surprise adam and cousin ari made it out again with a few friends. they rule. we were introduced to his local friend maureen. she offered to let us all crash at her place which was perfect

we went on, then girlfriends went on. we both played well i think

i took a few 3200 shots with the new camera, but was surprised that i still had to shoot at a relatively slow shutter speed for some reason. normally i can get away with something a bit faster

it still yielded some cool, art-crappy looking fotos. i kid, i actually like them

especially this one of jenny. we were headed to winston-salem, nc the next day and the drive wasn’t supposed to be too bad so we headed back to maureen’s to hang and eventually get some sleep. i did well on my loaner air mattress (that chuck d provided me with). however, this was the first night i learned of the southern sweat-night-heat-chills. no one really calls them that, but i made that up right now. the phenomenon i am trying to describe is that when you go to sleep it is so damned hot you are drenched with sweat, then right around 5 am to wake up freezing without any blanket or coverage and you have to change you shirt or whatever you got on. this would happen to me almost every night for the remainder or the trip and would become the reason i lost a lot of sleep. the next update will be from the true best city in america, clemmons.