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.