Last night had us back in Boston, MA, a city we have played more than anywhere other than NYC. Our former record label was originally based there and so we still see a few faces from our original Boston crowd– that is, people who were largely disappointed to find out we did not sound like Cave In or Isis (other, much more popular bands on the label.) But there's enough of a good reception that we feel good when we start seeing the familiar Boston landmarks. There is one big caveat we have to playing there, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Evan (Young Widows) and I traded a few jokes via text on the way up and here is my favorite of his (truncated because I have no idea if you are paying attention). It's the old times in the wild west. A three legged dog walks into a saloon. Everyone stops what they're doing and stares at him. He clears his throat and speaks. “I'm looking for the man who shot my paw.”

Excellent.

It's the little things that make life nice and the parking spot we secured sure fit that bill. Now I know it is boring to read about someone's fucking parking spot but you should have seen this baby! She was a beaut. Meter was off for the night, plenty of room to even accommodate our trailer, super close to the club … I think I took a couple of pictures of it and I'll make sure to send them along to you very high rez so you can appreciate just how choice it was. No dog crap even; this spot was pree-mo. You can imagine that we were stoked with a capital SCHTOKED to load in from that perch. What a spot!

We were playing at Great Scott which looks like it should be a kind of shitty Boston bar but is actually a solid venue. None of the schedule/volume worries from the previous night and we had plenty of time to get stuff inside. Somewhere in the middle of getting our stuff in we each gave a dollar to this clown out on the street. He who called himself the Riddler and grinned through this dumb routine (“I can tell you where you got your shoes! You got them … ON YOUR FEET, am I right?”) We set up our merch, grabbed some food for later and all was well.

Of course, a few cracks began to appear in the night's plan as Shannon Wright finished soundchecking and we loaded stuff on stage. We had to scoot along to stay on schedule and so were dancing around the stage with the soundman wiring stuff up around us. I popped off the door to the case that houses the drum machine and dropped it down stage side when

BAM

*sparks*

And the sound system went dead.

The sound dude and I looked at each other across the smoky smell of an electric short. I kicked the door to the side and looked down with a flashlight. And there was a good sized stripping on one of the extension cords powering the front-of-house speaker system. Apparently the case had hit the now raw wires and popped a circuit. Sound dude hopped off to jerry rig a solution while I went back to plugging our stuff in. What the fuck? Our gear certainly didn't grind that hole into that wire and I'm sure glad the case door hit it and not something else that doesn't like to see 120V. Like, say, my foot.

We played pretty okay. The first few songs were solid but at some point I must have rocked back and kicked the volume knob to one of my amps because ½ of my guitar sound went dead. Everyone in the crowd didn't seem to notice, Thad said he really didn't notice but I felt like I was suddenly hearing my performance from the other end of a telephone. Oh well, you power through but the tech stuff can really kill the vibe (also known as the mojo) for a good performance. A fire-breathing Austerity Program performance still hadn't happened but we've got the rest of the week to summon that demon.

I noted up top that Boston has one big problem and I will tell you that now. At just over 200 miles away from NYC, Thad and I usually say the hell with it and make the drive back home after we play. So after watching the other bands, taking stuff out, saying good bye to our really Grade A Top Shelf parking spot which I think I spoke about earlier and having some coffee, we pointed our whole deal back toward the highway and began the slog back south.

I'll spare you the details of a long drive (as there is nothing of interest to share) and skip to the aftermath. For some reason I was so wired from doing the whole drive myself (my fault for not waking Thad at the agreed-upon ½ way point) that I crept into the house a jittery mess. It was 5:30AM, I had the coffee shakes and man I could not relax. I figured I'd use a bit of whiskey as a soporific but it had no effect. So instead, I just buzzed around the first floor for an hour, then woke up my kids and got them off to school. The dad at the bus stop this morning who smelled like sweat and bourbon? That was me.

St. Vitus in Brooklyn tonight. I have to figure out a few tech problems and so will probably unload/reload the gear at home before heading over to the club. Apparently I don't do enough of that on a regular show night.

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