Wow, what an awesome weekend!
Here's a travel recap:
Will - Drives from St. Paul,MN to meet Erik in La Crosse.
Will & Erik - Drive to Madison in Will's car
Tim & Logan - meet Will & Erik at Madison area rest stop with the van and equipment, leave Will's car and continue on to Milwaukee
Tim, Logan, Erik, and Will - pick up Cris in Milwaukee and head to Chicago for the show.
Friday Night:
We played the Ultra Lounge (Pics below thanks to john mourlas:
www.johnmourlas.com) with Himalayan, Masses, and Hunters. First off, let me just say, what a nice venue. It was a cool cocktail bar on one side, and the perfect small room live music club on the other. The staff was great, they gave us a nice parking spot and easy access to load in. The dude who put the show on was solid as fuck and super helpful as well. As for the bands, Masses was great. They seemed to have a 90's alt rock meets prog/post metal thing going on, which we all thought was pretty rad. Himalayan was a 3 piece that sounded like a 10 piece. Great band as well. Finally, Hunters: WOAH. Think Wolverine Blue era Entombed meets Bloodbath. We've been pals with these guys for a while, but this was our first chance to get together and play a show, and it was well worth the wait. These guys put on a great, super energetic show, and are tight and super heavy, so check them out Chicago folk!
Saturday:
We stayed over at our lovely friend Kiersten's house with her and her insane-o pit bull "puppy" who's name was Doggie James Dio. He was not only our partner in crime for a VHS marathon (cuz Kiersten's hip like that haha) but also a wonderful, bounding, 70 lb alarm clock! haha.
Anyway, we woke up and headed straight for Kumas to get some breakfast. And yes, giant burgers go exceptionally well with coffee.
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| Will with the YOB |
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| My Impaled Nazarene |
I honestly can't stress enough how amazing Kuma's Corner is. We go there everytime we are in Chicago, and we always will. The food is 100% amazing, the staff is crazy awesome, the music is great, etc etc etc. This is a DO NOT MISS if you go to chicago. Thanks a TON to Luke For making this breakfast possible!
Travel:
Whole band - Leaves Chicago for Milwaukee
Cris - grabs his truck in Milwaukee and follows the van back to the Madison rest stop where we now leave his truck
Will - gets back in his car, and follows the band to La Crosse
Saturday Night:
We played one of our favorite venues, Jb's Speakeasy in good ol' La Crosse WI. Its a tiny place, but the sound is always great, we always have a great crowd, and we are good friends with the bar owner, so it always makes for a fun night. Of Conscience opened the show. They are a bunch of young kids from La Crosse, and man, they get better everytime we see them. These dudes will be making noise for a while, and I can't wait to watch them continue to grow as a band and kick ass. Sowbelly Bithhog was up next. Our previous drummer Jim Haugen joined Sowbelly a while back and we had been meaning to get a show together, and I'm really glad we did. Sowbelly has been around for a long time, but with Jim behind the kit, they've really stepped it up a notch. This band is (and always has been) heavy as fuck. They're again, a 3 piece that sounds way bigger than a 3 piece. They rocked about a 40 minute set of stoner rock grooves and slams, and it was awesome. After finishing our set and partying hard with our friends from La Crosse and Jim and Jeff from Sowbelly we called it a night and crashed on Jim's floor.
Sunday:
Blah, blah, everyone is hungover, we went to a breakfast place and waited way to long for breakfast, etc etc. lol
Travel:
Will - takes his car home to St. Paul
Erik - is home
Tim, Logan, & Cris - take the van back to the rest stop in Madison where Cris's truck is.
Cris - Drives home to Milwaukee
Tim and Logan - Drive to Practice space, unload all the gear, and then drive back to Tim's to park the van.
Logan - drives home to Steven's Point
Tim - is home, with his awesome bearded dog.
Anyway, this was a crazy long post, so I hope you found it entertaining and not as tiring to read as it was to actually do. haha. Can't wait for more weekends like this in 2012. Enjoy the pictures!
-T
