January 5, 2004 - Grand Island

Chris and Clint got up at 7:30 and went to the transmission shop to see what the damage was and how much it was going to cost us. They said they'd take a look at it and call us in a few hours. We try to keep sleeping, but at 10:40 AM the door opens and some lady walks in. Now, had we been rock stars or movie gods, this story might take some kind of eventful turn. But no. The lady looks about 40, about as unattractive as you can get, and wears stone washed jeans and a flourescent yellow parka. She asks what the hell we're still doing there and that we're supposed to be checked out. Nick asks what time checkout is, she tells us 11. We tell her we have 20 minutes left, she mutters something about too many people in the room and shuts the door. We get all our stuff, load it in the van and head across the street to our new home away from home: Fazolli's.

We're all starving because we haven't eaten anything but frozen bread and shitty Walgreen's chips for the past 16 hours. Thank God for this place. Spaghetti and all you can eat breadsticks. Plus, we took over the part room in the back so the rest of the GI population wouldn't get mad at Lil Nick swearing. Clint gets a call and we find out what the damage is. The transmission is shot. A new one is going to cost us $2,000.

We think about our options for a minute, and figure we're renting two mini-vans, ditching the trailer and driving back to SLC. Then Clint's mom agrees to loan us the two grand and our trip starts looking better. So we sit at Fazolli's for a while, then hit up some of GI's finest. Like the mall and K-Mart. Then we returned the van and got another hotel room. We were right next to Fazolli's, so we went back for dinner. The transmission shop tells us the van will be ready by 11 the next day. That gives us barely enough time to get to Milwaukee for our show with Wings of Scarlet. We hang out at Fazolli's until it closes, and try to convince Nick to hook up with the breadstick girl. She asked if we were a band. Brook told her we were. She asked what we sounded like. He said "Kinda like Dave Matthews Band, but heavier."

I guess she wasn't into it because she didn't come back to the hotel with Nick.

Omaha, Nebraska - January 4, 2004

We were invited to play the Total Liberation Fest in Erie, Pennsylvania. We'd never been east of SLC before, so we were excited with the exception of one thing: Who the fuck decided it was a good idea to schedule a fest in Erie in the middle of January?
Either way, we were game. It's not like any of us had anything better to do, and it sounded promising with Undying, Purification, Freya, etc... So we set up a little tour to get us out there and we were set. We just had to buy a van and find someone to play bass, because Chris had real job, and a wife and like a child scheduled to be born the week we were gone. You know, grown up stuff. So Brook Aftermath decided to fill in on bass. He doesn't actually know how to play or anything, but he wanted to come. Plus, who really needs the bass? I saw Unearth once without a bass player. They sounded fine.

We got a van like three days before we left, and we rented a trailer the day we were leaving. It was a 13 hour drive from SLC to Omaha, and it was snowing, so we left Saturday night. That gave us about 24 hours to get there. We figured we'd need it. About 45 minutes into our trip, I started getting cold in the back of the van. I told Bill to turn the heat on in the back. He said that it was. Guess what? The only part of the heater that worked was the defrost. Score for us, eh? I was the only one that brought a sleeping bag, so I was the only one that wasn't freezing to death during the night.

Somewhere in Wyoming we get pulled over, and four cops surround the van. We had to scrape ice off the inside window to see, but we did. Apparently there was a new law that you're supposed to change lanes if an officer has someone pulled over. We didn't know, and so that's why the entire Wyoming police force stopped us. They gave us a warning and we were on our way.

Around noon on Sunday, Brook is driving and the engine makes a weird noise and we stop accelerating. Our transmission is out. In the middle of fucking Nebraska. Brook uses his brother's AAA card that he stole and we call for a tow truck. They tell us that only two people can ride in the truck and they won't take a trailer. Which means 6 of us on the side of a highway with a trailer in the bitter cold. The tow truck guy gets there, feels sorry for us and tells us all to stay in the van. He puts the van with all of us in it on the back of his truck, hooks up the trailer and takes us to the nearest town.

Welcome to Grand Island, is what the sign read as we passed by. The tow truck dropped the van off at a transmission shop and charged Brook $45 for hooking up the trailer. It's sunday, so the shop is closed. Clint, Bill and Chris head out looking for an auto parts store. The rest of us wait in the freezing cold van and try to watch Family Guy on Brook's mini DVD player. It gets too cold and we set off to find somewhere to hang out. You know what the only thing open in Grand Island, Nebraska on a Sunday is? Fucking McDonald's. Eight vegan kids stranded at McDonald's for 4 hours. Finally we get ahold of a rental car place, get our heads and guitars out of the trailer and haul ass to our show in Omaha which is two hours away. We get there and there's a storm East of Omaha and all the roads in, except the one we came on, are closed.

7 people at the show. I fucking counted. The promoter, his girlfriend and five friends of the opening band, Bloodcow. Let's talk about them for a minute. Imagine somebody really, really liking Pantera and someone else really, really liking the Dead Kennedy's. Well, put them together and you have Bloodcow.

We make $17 and head back to Grand Island to get a hotel and find out how much our van will be. The only hotel still open when we get back is infested with Roaches, but we stay there anyway. Semi-warm hotel with roaches vs. freezing cold van wasn't a tough choice.

August 12, 2003 - Corona

We get to Corona around noon, but don't know how to get ahold of anyone at the venue. So what do we do? Go to the record store. I fucking hate record stores. Now, I know they are similar to comic shops, but here's the difference. I know what I'm looking for when I go to a comic shop. I have list, a small list, of things I want. I don't go in there blindly for hours at a time looking for obscure colored records of bands that aren't very good anyway. I started collecting records back when I thought it was cool. It wasn't and I quit. Fuck records.

Anyway, after an hour or so at the record store, we went to the other place to kill time, the mall. We wandered around there for three hours or so then went to the venue. We sat around outside for another hour and a half before the doors opened for load in time. I was a little nervous for a few different reasons. I've never played a real out of state show before. I've played a few basement shows, but nothing with an actual stage, sound guy or over 50 people. Plus, there's been bad blood between SLC and California kids for a long time. Most of it started over the damn internet and it was all stupid. It ended up being fine, though. We cleared up whatever problems were there and everything went well.

It was Cast In Stone's last show, and we played with DEATHSTAR, so there were a lot of Christian kids around. Thom from DS used to play drums for us when he lived in SLC, so he came and played on Slit Wrist. It was fun, even if it was a bit sloppy.

After the show we decided to head home. Chris had to work the next night so we had to get going. We all tried to stay awake, but it wasn't happening. We made it to Primm, NV and got a hotel room at about 4:30 am. I jumped in the shower, because I hadn't showered in two days and had hung out in 110 degree weather and played two shows. I felt disgusting. No one else showered. After that, I wasn't tired anymore so I went gambling. 20 minutes later I had lost 30 bucks and called it a night. We slept until 11 when we had to check out, and that's when the fun began. Chris' car kept over-heating, so we'd have to pull over and let it cool down every 1/2 hour or so. It took us forever to get home, so I ripped the sleeves off my shirt and cracked open a cold one every time we pulled over. Nothing like the open road and Cherry Pepsi. You should try it.

August 11, 2003 - Phoenix

Our first time on the road with Cherem. We had a whole tour mapped out and were planning on going with my and Bill's other band 78 Days After Death. It was going to be about a week and a half, but then we suffered a series of setbacks. Let me explain.

1) 78 Days broke up. That was a long time coming, as it was just Bill and Jake that actually cared. Even they had started to lose interest, and I was just playing bass so I didn't really matter.

2) None of the shows came through. We ended up only getting one and a half shows out of what was supposed to be 9 or 10.

3) The kid that was going to let us take his van decided against it a week before we left.

All three of those left us with a house show in Phoenix and a real show in California, but no way to get our stuff there. Fortunately our friend Chris said he'd come along and take his 4Runner and that if we rented a trailer, we could fit everything in it. Sounded like a plan to us and we went for it.
The day before the Phoenix show, Clint and Chris rented the trailer and we ended up getting on the road at about 8:30 pm. We were going to drive through the night because the A/C in the 4 Runner didn't work. Nick, Bill and his brother drove down in a seperate car to leave more room for the rest of us. Three of the seven people on the trip were named Chris. Things got confusing at times.

We split up with the car about halfway there and ended up beating them to Phoenix. We were going to spend the day at Nick's girlfriends house, but we didn't know where she lived and none of us had ever met her. We called Nick and they were an hour away, but told us to go to her house anyway and gave us directions and her number. We show up, fall asleep and then head to the mall after everyone gets ready.
One thing I learned about tour was from someone from BoySetsFire long ago: Shower whenever you get the chance, because you never know when the next one will come. I took that advice and showered in Phoenix. I think I was the only one.

We'll skip that stuff and talk about the show. We played in Ian's basement. A lot of people actually ended up coming and it was a good time. Everyone was skeptical about it, but it turned out really well. And Ian made us all spaghetti that was absolutely delightful. After the show we went back to Kelsey's house for sleep. At 5:30 AM, Nick woke me up and said that we had to leave. Her parents had said not to let us stay there, so we had to leave before they woke up for work. We walked outside and it was already 90 degrees. We were off to Corona.

This is the first band picture of the second incarnation of Cherem. There might be a couple from when Nic, Thom and Jesse were in the band but the only place I know of is the back of the first t-shirt. And I don't want to scan a t-shirt.

A new use for this...

I've been reading alot of Henry Rollins the past few days. I have The Portable Henry Rollins, and it has sections from most of his books. They're good, and I strongly reccomend you check them out.

My favorites are Now Watch Him Die and Get In The Van.

These are where he recounts all the shows he played with Rollins Band and Black Flag. They're really entertaining.

It also gave me an idea for this blog. Basically, I'm going to keep a blog of the shows we've played out of state. I started doing it long hand a while back, because I knew I'd do something with it one day, but never got around to it. So starting in the next few days, this thing will probably become a tour journal of sorts. Hopefully all three of you that read it will enjoy it.

Birthday Presents...

So, my friend Chris needed a birthday present for his wife. He decided to make a website for her. She has a bunch of art, photography and writing that is really good and needed a place to show it off. She's been begging me to get her a job at City Weekly, but like I keep telling her, I pull no weight at that place. So he made a website for her, so she can show it off and he can brag about how talented she is. This way, he has a surefire way to prove it without having to run home and grab stuff.

So, if you like awesome stuff you should go to her website.

www.candacejean.com

I'm pretty sure once they get back from their trip there will be stuff on there. Right now it's just him proclaiming his love for her. Kind of cheesy. Go there anyway.

This is what I do.

So, I write an article for Salt Lake City Weekly. If you aren't from here, the City Weekly is a local alt newspaper. Basically written by people that want to make fun of others and talk shit on the daily news services in Utah.

This is where I come in. I don't normally talk a lot of shit, so they let me review comic books. You can look at my latest article here.


Good times. I promise.

Things I did today...

So today we recorded. It was a good time. Shit gets a little crazy when you listen to the same three songs over and over for 7 hours. I don't know when we'll have new stuff up on our page. Hopefully soon. The new stuff is really good.

If you want to, all three of you that know of this site, go there to listen to things. Those two songs have the old bass tracks, though. We changed bass players and re-recorded, but haven't put anything up yet.

Tamerlane

We had some good news this weekend. New Age Records is putting out a compilation cd and they asked us to be on it. It should be pretty good. Aftermath of a Trainwreck is going to be on it, too. Should be good times.

That's it for now. I have to learn Spanish.

Come Visit...

I'll be on tour for about a week next month. It's on spring break. If you live somewhere else and feel like it, come visit.


Cherem

All of our tour dates are posted there. We're still getting venue confirmation on a few of them, but for the most part, that's where we'll be.

Today.

Today I had a wonderful idea. I was at work, so I couldn't write it down. Every time I went to do so, we'd get busy again and I'd have to do something. It was foolish.

But anyway, I've been thinking of ideas for comics. I've been thinking about it too hard, and that's what the problem has been. But today, things just started to hit me. It felt good, just to have those new ideas floating around in my head. It was almost too much. I didn't have my notebook either, so I couldn't even take notes. Why I didn't just use the loose paper that was lying around I'm still not sure. But they stuck with me, and now I have the painful task of sorting through all of them, and turning them into coherent thoughts.

Getting the idea is the easy part, shaping it into something is where it gets hard.

I have all day tomorrow to think things through. I tend to get alot of thinking done at work. One of the perks of having a job you don't have to think too hard about.

Maybe by next time I'll have some of those ideas to share. Don't count on it though.

P.S. I added my e-mail address to this. If you feel you have something worth while to tell me, take a chance. I won't promise you anything.

Slowly Learning.

I've decided to learn HTML all by myself. That way, when I run accross things on the internet I can post them here. I think I just found a cheat sheet on the internet that I can use.

Because I want this site to be good. It's got to be. There's way to many websites that people can go to. They need a reason to come here, and that's what I'm working on.

I need a hook. Something special that brings strange people here. Not just my friends.

That's what I'm working on. Finding new ways to get people here.

Maybe naked women. I don't know. It worked on the erotic poker game the other night.

First things first

I stole the blogger idea from Casey. Livejournal got boring, and I liked the idea of being able to directly link people to this site.

I'm keeping Livejournal up, but I'll probably just use this one more.

So, basically you'll get to hear more pointless rambling from me. And at no point will I discuss feelings of any kind. That's what LJ is for.