October 5, 2013 ... I'm doing this much earlier than the last few days... Papa Roach just took the stage here in Seattle. We have wifi at the venue and there's no guarantees where we are staying tonight... so I'm just gonna make sure I'm able to post while I can. Remember... don't take internet access for granted! ... I got about 3 hours of sleep last night. I woke up around 6:30am and was wide awake... so I did some emails/web stuff until breakfast... that awesome buffet breakfast. I over ate. It was worth it though... Egg's Benny with spinach, hash browns, bacon... so much bacon... waffles for dessert. Yes... have dessert with your breakfast! Why not!? Ok... onto actual "stuff". Today was our first border crossing. I've played in the US a few times but it's always been fly dates/showcase stuff. This was the first time really coming through with a longer tour, all our gear and whatnot... I figured it'd go either way... a couple taps on the roof and away we go... or "different gloves". We left Richmond/Vancouver at 10am. It's a 2-3 hr drive to Seattle. We also factored in some wait time at the border just in case. There was the debate of leaving last night to skip the potential line up... in my opinion, it makes more sense to get a decent nights sleep (yeah I know...) and then just wait it out the next day, than skip a nights sleep and be messed up the next few days. We're still in the routine of night/day on this tour... let's keep it that way as long as we can. So we pull up to the border crossing and the officer seems really nice. We're... brb... Where Did The Angles Go is being played. ... such a good song. ... so anyway, back to the border. The officer looks over our paperwork and says we need to get another piece of documentation before we're good to go. All good. So we pull over to the lot, enter the building and it's basically a giant room of two massive line ups. One (well technically three) for paperwork stuff... and one for the bathroom. Bathroom line is just crawling. I never really thought about how long it takes people to go to the bathroom... like without a cell phone. It was unreal though... the amount of ground we covered in the paperwork line vs bathroom line... what are they doing in there. Brent braved the line first... we'd been traveling a couple hours now and there's no real good place to just hop out and pee... while you're stopped in traffic... assuming there's cameras everywhere. So we work our way through the line up... people are staring at us... like... people naturally look around at other people when you're in line but this was that kinda "kung fu fight to the death" style staring... that and smiles... I like the smiles better. We get to the next customs officer and it turns out we just need another card or something... and they scanned our finger prints. ... it's crazy how nervous you can get all of a sudden for no reason at all. He also asked about merch... we paid a couple fees and away we went. One more officer checked over our paperwork and we were officially on our way. It was awesome how smooth (including the 2-3hrs of waiting) it was to get through the border. As soon as we got back on the road, my first thought was... I wanna go to McDonald's. I always hear about how cheap fast food is in the US so I'm curious to see for myself. I've already seen a few ads up for places like Subway... $2/6inch... that'd be unheard of in Canada. We'd probably politely protest those kinda deals. Made it to Seattle... found the venue... super tight parking... not really a parking lot designed for 2 tour buses to say the least. They made it work though. The venue is really nice... the setup is a little funky for two bigger bands but the crew for Papa Roach and Pop Evil are awesome. Super accommodating and seem to favor logic over pecking order and politics. My kinda people. We had time to run out before sound check so we found this pub-ish type place down the street. I think it's across the road from the first ever Starbucks actually. Everyone went chicken/burgers and fries. I went BLAT (Bacon, Lettuce, Avocado, Tomato) sandwich. Trying to be healthy here! Minor highlight... our waitress had an amazing voice. It was like... that TV commercial mom voice... or a super calm GPS... or audiobook reader. Someone should sign her. I'll skip ahead a little... Seattle or at least what we got to see seems awesome by the way. The hills are nuts... I think we drove up a 45 degree angle several times last night. Our set went well... crowd response was amazing... we went over a couple minutes (30 minute set tonight) again so we'll either chop a tune or really chop out the jibber jabber. It's always good to let people know you think about these kinda details. Amateur is about just assuming everything is cool because hey, it's just 2 minutes, right? Wrong. There are schedules posted everywhere for a reason. Hear that Toronto? Pro shows run on time. Don't tell people 9pm and you go on at 9:45pm. Screw that unless there's a real reason to postpone... like tech related. Waiting for more people to show up is not a good reason... it's a sad excuse. It's the excuse of the hobbyist trying to fend off reality just a bit longer. ... when it matters... people show up. On time. Post set we had our stuff off stage soooo fast, down two flights of stairs, and into a sketchy back alley. How do I know it's sketchy? Because multiple people saw people doing drugs in it earlier in the day, several venue staff mentioned it's sketch... and a security guard came by and doubled checked we knew it was sketchy. That's sketchy. Packed up, loaded up, re-parked the van and we're back in the venue. Response from the show has been awesome... it's always fun signing stuff and taking photos. More fun making new fans and selling some merch/cd's... merch is the lifeblood of bands. If you're not touring, you're in trouble... or at least you're missing out. Papa Roach's set is almost over... going to catch the last couple songs then we're off to the hotel hopefully. Still trying to decide if we're going to drive across US back to Calgary or straight up through Vancouver again. Maybe try the US route... gas is much cheaper down here. ... hopefully the hotel has breakfast. ... day off tomorrow means waffles. - Mike P.S.
... ended up at a Days Inn last night... breakfast and WiFi! Good times.
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October 4, 2013
... Gamblor... damn you. It's 2am... finally pulled myself from the casino across the road... excellent post show entertainment though... I must admit. This will be pretty short... well as short as one pass will allow since I need to get up in a few hours... boarder crossing tomorrow. I think everyone was up pretty early this morning... I was wide awake around 6:30am. I'm still sorta on Toronto time so while it's 2am here (right now), it's 5am in Toronto... and yes I'm sorta tired. I met up with Matt and Tim to grab breakfast at the buffet. Buffets are awesome. If you find a good one, you'll eat better AND eat less. Which sounds counterproductive but eating well is better than eating more. Quality over quantity... and the food here is really good! I spent most of the afternoon in my track pants, doing web stuff and prepping a few things for the show. It would've been nice to head across the road to the casino to kill some time but 1) that costs money and 2) I had a bunch of things to get through online. Even though I'm away from work, there's still lots of work to be done when you run your own business. If you neglect it, you're gonna have problems. Matt and I took another trip to the buffet for lunch... it's pricey (thank you food vouchers!) but again, it's totally worth it. They had a soft serve ice cream machine... it was painful not being able to do anything stupid (funny) with it. We headed over to the venue around 3pm. It was an hour drive... through shitty traffic. I think we almost missed our exits about 5 times, went through about 9 construction zones., and were almost taken out by vehicles changing lanes about 15 times. Felt like Toronto except there wasn't as much construction. (cough) So we're playing another casino. Apparently these places are like a chain or all under the same umbrella. We have been treated amazingly at the hotel and it was more of the same when we arrived at the venue. Speaking of when we arrived... nothing shrinks your coin purse like parking your forest green safari van between two tour buses with trailers. It's not a pissing contest... but it looks nice.... the tour buses... not the piss. (someone is doing it in the room next to me... I wish I was asleep right now.) ... back to the tour bus thing. I understand 100% it's a logistics thing over appearance thing. It makes sense to have a place for everyone (band and crew) to stay and travel. It's a place to sleep and relax a little to, from, before, and after shows. It doesn't make sense for us to have anything like that right now since it's just 5 guys and 0 crew... although it'd be awesome to have a driver and a guitar tech around. We were spoiled with Brad (Brad is the man!) back in June. Having an awesome tech around just made everything better... and as I've learned, better is better. So we arrived just after 4pm... our sound check was at 5:30... or whenever Papa Roach and Pop Evil are done... we know the ropes by now... and we're quick with sound check.. The venue was a pretty big theater... more suited for actual "theater". It was 88% seats... like actual "sit down" seats. This is fine for old guys like me... but it makes for a weird rock show at times... especially if the crowd is somewhat behaved and respectful. Skipping to the show... it was great Tim didn't have to do much convincing to get people out of there seats and down to the front of the stage. All it takes is a few folks to get the parade started. It's a rock show... go have fun people! We only had a 20 minute set tonight... which flew by. It's 5 tunes. It felt pretty good though. A couple hiccups but they're the type you iron out over breakfast the next morning. ... I gotta sleep soon... can't wait for breakfast! The crowd and staff seemed to really enjoy the set. It's often we meet people at the merch table who say they've never heard of Age Of Days before and really liked the set (picking up a cd and or a shirt)... while others mention we're one of the better opening acts they've seen in a while. I take that as a huge compliment. Oh... our dressing room was awesome too. Huge room, enough seating for everyone... snacks (ketchup chips!), drinks, fruit basket, showers, two toilet stalls! It was like having our own bus! (cough) It was a really nice room though... and honestly it's been a really kick ass start to this tour. There's a lot of driving coming up over the next couple weeks... but I think this is all really good for overall morale. We packed up, watched Pop Evil, and Papa Roach. Highlight for me was when Papa Roach played "Where Did The Angles Go"... it sounded ridiculous. I'm a tough critic... but they threw down on that song... I was laughing after at how ridiculous I thought it sounded... SOOO good. Post show, we settled up, then headed back to the hotel/casino. Plan was to bum around the casino for a bit to eat and also feed Gamblor. Matt won a bit today on slots after lunch... I think it took him all of 19 seconds to lose his $14.93 cents he really should've cashed out. ... but that's just my opinion. Oh I met up with TJ Moreau at the show as well. You might know the name (through my blogs) since we worked on a few songs last winter. He seemed pretty stoked to see the show and I'm glad he could make it out. He tagged along back to the casino to hang and chat... good times for sure! ... TJ and I were the last ones standing/sitting at the slots tonight I'm pretty sure as well. In short... we walked around, tried a few machines... I lost $10 in about 14 seconds. He lost $10 in about 3 minutes. ... we just couldn't find the right machines though. TJ pointed out the machines we should go to but two side by side weren't open... there was some girl (half in the bag) sitting there... giving us the eye. We were eying her too... but like... the "we want you... to leave" eye. I told TJ he should go hit on her, then hurt her feelings to she runs off all dramatically... he wouldn't go for it though. What a jerk. We walked around a bit longer, lost a bit more money then she finally left... thank you Gamblor! So we start playing these machines... $0.02 machines BUT you have to really up the anti to make it worth while odds wise. This might be all common knowledge to you... but I'm new to a lot of things normal adults do regularly or have already done. :-| ... so I'm down to my last little bit... I decide to just go for broke. Max bet. $$$. Yes! ... then I lose the rest of it. TJ cashes out what he has left, throws it over to me, then pops another $20 in the machine. I ask him if he's sure about 50 times... he insists. I keep rocking max bet... and then it happens. Some free spin/bonus thing. The machine is kinda going nuts... I'm laughing since it's sorta embarrassing at first but noise is going on everywhere around me... and I'm technically winning money. So the bonus thing goes on for a while, then it starts paying out all crazy... I think I was up $45 now (minus the $20 I spent and the $15 TJ threw at me. So I guess only $10. I rocked this for a while... got the bonus thing a bunch of times. Long story short(ened). I think I was up $145 at one point, cashed out at $101.83. I was thinking I'd cash out at a new hockey stick ($160) but then I decided $200 was my goal, but AFTER a certain time (1:30am) I'd cash out if I was about to dip below $100. TJ was on his last spin, went for broke with max bet... ended up cashing out $40 or something. It worked out pretty good in the end. Gambling isn't a good career choice but it was a fun hour of entertainment that's for sure. I'm off to bed... 7am alarm clock, breakfast for 7:45, van call for 8:45. I can do this. Wish us luck on our boarder crossing. May the rock Gods be smiling on us. - Mike ... just to get this out of the way. This is what I sat down to this morning. ... always try and leave things better than you found them. That's how I was raised. ... moving on. October 3, 2013
Travel day. That's all days like today are... a day in the van... chewing through the 'time remaining' on the GPS... stopping every few hours to pee and/or eat. It's nice scenery driving through the mountains though... especially if you've spent a fair amount of time driving around the prairies. Everyone woke up around 8am, got cleaned up, and then headed over to Ricky's for breakfast. Rule of thumb, if the place ends in y's, it's a safe bet for breakfast. On travel days, you might as well load up on food in the morning... since it could be a while until you're stopping some place decent again. Also, when you have multiple drivers, you should take advantage of it, and not stop for long (more than 20 minutes) periods of time. It really adds up when you have a 10+ hour drive to do. Bacon and eggs for breakfast. Good start. We ran a few errands, picking up some more merch and stopping at Long & McQuade. L&M had my snare skin of choice in stock in Calgary... Evans Super Tough... they don't carry them at my local L&M anymore (it seems)... I grabbed something that was close, but after putting it on last week and trying it... not the same. I like a bit of a 'ring' in my snare... without it, I feel like I'm playing a phone book... a really loud one... but it's missing that extra thing I like. A lot of a drummers personality is in their snare sound in my opinion. I think we left Calgary around 11am... 10-ish hours on the GPS... a walk in the park for me considering Matt, Brent, and Trevor have been driving for 3 days already... while I flew in last night. If you haven't been in the van as long as the others who have been in the van, you can't complain about anything related to being in the van. Nothing too much noteworthy today... lots of stupid jokes and staring out the window at the scenery to pass the time. Minor highlight was this raven (I think) that swooped down at me while we were stopped in a town called Golden. I was just standing there... watching this giant black bird flying towards me. Part of me started thinking... "that bird is getting pretty low..." Then I started thinking "I hope it doesn't poop on me... because that's a big bird." Then as it got closer and closer... getting lower and lower... "This bird might swoop down at me... this bird might attack me... I might have to fight this bird." Part of me was totally down with fighting this bird... I mean... if that bird's got questions... I'm sure I could find it some answers. Bring it bird. ... while the other part was thinking... I don't really wanna fight something that doesn't really have arms... I'd feel obligated to only use kick attacks. So the bird skimmed over my head (missed me by 3ft maybe), it was pretty loud... landed behind me... then standing sideways, started giving me stink eye, and hopping towards me. Kinda reminded me of the Igor type character from Young Frankenstein. I guess I was standing near some sandwich droppings in the parking lot it was after. I moved out of the way and let it chow down. It was a really funny bird though... it had a lot of personality... almost as if a very tiny person was in costume controlling it's movements. If I could have a pet bird, I would pick that bird. Sorry Big Bird. More driving, until an Arby's stop for dinner. It was between that and Carl Jr's. I've never had Carl's before... but when I'm hungry, I want to go with a safe bet... taste wise. Too hungry to be disappointed (just in case) so Arby's it is. Driving, driving, driving... and we're finally in Vancouver/Richmond. The hotel here is super nice... and there's a casino attached. If it wasn't so late I'd wander around just to have a look... but it's been a long day and I have a bunch of things to catch up on online in the morning... it adds up quickly not having email (or cell reception) majority of the day. ... buffet breakfast tomorrow... quick acoustic/vocal rehearsal... then it's off to the venue. Since we're opening on this tour (first of three) the set will fly by. Short sets are really fun to play though... and it'll be nice to get the rust off in front of a few people the next couple nights. ... for now though... time to get some sleep. - Mike October 2, 2013
I'm kicking myself for not documenting the Halestorm dates from June. I have a picture diary on my iPhone but it's not the same... although I probably remember most of it pretty well... there definitely was a lot to talk about. Today was a travel day... packing and travel day... the day didn't start out to good though. I was making breakfast while chatting with my mom on skype when my blender broke... well more exploded... causing my would've been delicious mango banana smoothie to fire out the bottom, all over the kitchen counter. It was pretty disappointing... and part of me was hoping it wasn't foreshadowing the engines on my flight later. That's how my brain works. Before I knew it, I was at the airport. Minor highlight was going through security. It seemed to be a bit busier at Pearson than usual. I put all my metal-ables in the tray, took off my shoes, and walked through the metal detector. It went off. Well that's new. The security guy says "you've been randomly selected for a pat down screening." ... I'm guessing the other non-white guy in front of me was also randomly selected as well. I laughed and said ok. The security guy then said I had the choice of public or private? I asked him which one he preferred. (... honest question I thought... he does work here, right?) This was bordering on airport security humor... he seemed kinda stunned... so I asked what the difference was... is public kinda like at a club? If private involves different gloves, I'll go public. He just sorta started doing the pat down without really saying anything else. He didn't really seem to enjoy this part of his job to be honest... I could tell by the expression on his face... then again, maybe I wasn't his type. Keep in mind I'm wearing cargo shorts and a T-shirt... there isn't too much to pat down... he could've probably visually patted me down. In short, if you ever win the pat down prize, it's not a big deal. I figure if you ever have to go through extra security stuff, and you have nothing to hide, staying in public view is the better call. The flight was decent... West Jet usually is. I was looking forward to watching the Leafs game since they had TSN and TSN2 on the TV. Little did I know as soon as the game started, we were no longer in range to get the station... not cool. So I spent half the flight watching Love It Or List It, and the other watching the Detroit/Buffalo game. Tim picked me up from the airport... we're both really looking forward to the tour. I held off asking him to stop at the McDonald's by his place... I know there will be some McDonk stops on this trip... no need to start now if I don't have to... he has a bowl of Halloween candy here I've been snacking on (aka dinner) the past 30 minutes. I'll live. We're off to Vancouver tomorrow (12 hour drive I think) then the first show is on Friday. To anybody asking, I have no idea what is going on with guest list(s). We're an opening act and there is a pecking order. We do our best but you gotta understand sometimes you just don't have the pull... and sometimes it's just not that easy to make requests. I've written a blog about this already... please be understanding. :-) - Mike P.S. I'll be loosely proofing these daily. Please ignore obvious spelling/grammar issues... some of these days are going to be long! |
Mike Langford - Official BlogBeing on both sides of the glass, I get the chance to wear many hats in the music industry. This is a place to share my thoughts, views, predictions, rants, stories and news! Categories
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