March 17, 2005 - Redlands, CA

We pulled into Redlands about 2am, tired as fuck and ready for sleep. We were staying with Thom Green who played drums for Cherem in SLC a long time ago. As soon as we got inside pretty much everyone fell asleep, but a couple of us sat around and caught up with Thom for a little bit. Clint and the Rookie refused to wake up, so we left him in the van while everyone else got situated on the floor. After about half an hour of chit chat and Thom deciding it was time to turn in, I felt bad so I went outside to wake him up. I didn’t have the keys with me so I was reduced to knocking on the window. It took a good three minutes of knocking before they woke up, but as soon as they did, we headed back inside and fell asleep.

His daughter came over early the next morning, but she played in Thom’s room while everyone gradually woke up. The rest of the dudes rose and got ready, and while they did, Thom’s daughter, Maryn, asked me to play Polly Pockets with her. Since I am a sucker for little kids, she and I rocked Polly Pockets for a while until it was time for her to go to school. After Thom left to take her, we set out for Chico’s. Brook had been raving about it since we left SLC, so we were anxious to get there. It was about half an hour away, but came with a promise that it would be well worth the trip.

As we pulled into the parking lot, the house next door to the restaurant was having a garage sale. There was a guy standing by the back door keeping an eye on things, and when Austin got out of the car, the guy noticed Austin’s tattoos and said, “You get any of those in prison?”
“Uh, no.” Austin replied.
“Damn. Those are the best kind of tattoos.”
Austin wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, but it didn’t matter, because his attention had turned to Brook in the drivers seat, wearing just a jersey.
“Damn! You’re homeboy’s all blasted, huh?” He said.
“Yep,” Said Austin, “pretty blasted.”
At that point, Brook had parked the van and gotten out right next to his yard, within shouting distance, and the guy yelled out, “Hey, what’s that say on your throat Homes?”
“Dedication,” said Brook.
The old man nodded his head, took a drag of his cigarette and replied, “Hell yeah it does.”
We tried to contain our laughter until we got inside, and barely made it. Even if the food wasn’t as good as promised, that scene was well worth the trip.

The food was all that it was promised and we left feeling very satisfied, but then we noticed a problem. The parking lot behind Chico’s was too small for us to turn around in and too long for us to back out of. After about 20 minutes of trying every trick possible, the waiter from Chico’s came out with a box of Tofutti Cuties for us. At first we thought it was a sympathy gift because we were having such a hard time, but then realized it was probably more because we had left a very generous tip. While we snacked on those a few other drivers took a shot at getting us out of the parking lot. After over half an hour of trying, we finally unhooked the trailer with everything in it and put it back on after the van was facing the exit. Everyone was pretty irritated, so it was a quiet drive back to Thom’s house.


Back at the house, while everyone was taking naps and watching Anchorman for the seventh or eighth time, Maryn came home and she and I and Clint picked up right where we left off in our PP game. That got old pretty quick, and she came up with a new game that consisted of little more than her killing Clint and I and bringing us back to life. This was about the time that she re-named me Clayton for some reason. Not sure why, but that’s what she called me for most of the rest of the day. After and hour or so of that, her babysitter came so Thom could get to his church early to set everything up. Maryn and I and her sitter decided to let the dudes nap for a bit longer while we walked to the store for popsicles. When we got back it was time to go. We climbed back in our home on wheels and drove to the show.

Thom is the Pastor of an Alternative Christian Church, and has a place that doubles as a venue for bands when they need a show. It’s a nice place, and probably the only church I’ve ever seen that has Star Wars murals on the wall. It was still early, and no one was really there yet, so we all walked across the street to Barnes and Noble to kill some time. By the time we all got back, the show was ready to start and there were quite a few kids ready to have a good time. Thom’s band played and it was fun to watch him play drums again. He’d been singing in xDEATHSTARx for a while, but quit when they started touring. He’s a drummer at heart, so it was good to see him back behind a set. Aftermath played and kids were going off making it probably the best response of the tour. Cherem was up after them again and it was definitely the best show we played on tour, despite my string breaking halfway through our best song. We made up for it with an otherwise good show. After we were done, xDEATHSTARx came up and finished off the night. A good time was had by all, and after the show as we were all hanging around, this girl walked over to the merch table and sent several of the dudes into a lovesick haze.

As we got back to Thom’s, a bunch of the DS kids were hanging out and Thom put on a DVD of one of the funniest stand up comedians I’ve ever seen. I’m not much for stand up, but this guy was hilarious. It was a hell of a way to end the night.

March 16th, 2005 - South Gate, CA

We woke up around 7am and Dan and I decided we should drive to find a coffee shop somewhere. I think hanging out at random coffee shops is a staple on any tour we take, especially in LA because we like to sit around and watch how important people pretend to be. As Bill jumped into the driver’s seat, we started wondering how we were going to get out of the parking lot. It wasn’t big enough to just turn around in, so Bill had to pull off quite an amazing three point turn by backing the trailer into a covered parking spot. He did it much to our amazement and we were on our way. We drove to a Starbucks down by the beach and set up camp for a little while. Austin and Brook opted out of the coffee shop for more sleep in the van, but the rest of us had wonderful conversation that resulted in the formation of the greatest band in the history of the world. All I can really say about it is the name, The Guitarmy. Don’t be surprised when we take over the world someday soon.

The Rookie had never seen the ocean, so after a few hours of Starbucks we headed down to the beach to give the kid a look. Dan, Jake and Clint all got in their swimming suits to take a dip while Bill took a long walk on the beach talking to his girlfriend on the phone. We pretended that they were taking a virtual walk on the beach together while we watched the other three take a cannonball run into the water. It was March, so the water was pretty cold, but that didn’t seem to matter to any of them. While we were at Starbucks, our friend Kodee had come down to meet up with us, and offered up his apartment for a shower. We piled back in the van and drove to Long Beach to get cleaned up. When we were all ready, he took us to Native Food before we left for the show.

As we left Native Food, we stopped by another shop to see a friend of ours at work, but he wasn’t there, so we decided to head on to the show. As we were on the freeway I saw the exit for Compton, and after years of listening to NWA, I decided it would be a good idea to get off and drive around for a minute. That idea was immediately shot down the second I brought it up, but it didn’t really matter, because the exit that we needed to take for the show was the first exit past Compton. As we exited the freeway, we saw a homeless guy on the side of the road staring at us, a few seconds later we heard a loud “BOOM” and were convinced that the homeless guy was jealous of our sweet van and had thrown something at us. We didn’t think much of it and continued on our way.

The show was in South Gate, California, which is like a small Spanish city within LA, and about two blocks from the venue, I noticed that we were driving on a flat tire. We pulled through a parking lot on to a side street to get it changed. Thanks to our brilliant planning, we didn’t have all the tools we needed to get the tire off, so I set out looking for a hardware store that might have something we could use. A few of the other dudes went down to the venue to let the promoter know we were only a block away and to borrow some tools for changing the tire. Brook and I sat on the curb eating rice and soy sauce watching Clint and Austin struggle with the tire for about an hour before it was finally changed and we could continue to the show.

The venue was actually an old movie theater that had been slightly renovated to accommodate shows. It was definitely the creepiest venue we have ever played. The stage was huge and it was the only part of the room with any light to it. It looked like the set of an old horror movie. Aftermath was up second, so we set up our stuff and started to play. After the first song, the sound guy told us we only had time for two more. We were confused, but just made the best of it and rocked the two best songs in the set. As we finished, we tried to get Cherem set up as quick as possible to use as much time as possible. As we were setting up, Jake walked up to ask the sound guy why they got cut short and the promoter walked up to the stage with Rob from Bring It Down. Apparently, BID was to share a set with Winds of Plague, but the sound guy got it mixed up and thought Aftermath and Cherem were supposed to share. They started apologizing to me and I told them they were going to have to talk to Jake, because he was furious. Cherem played a full set and everything went alright, but after we were finished, I walked out to our merch table and Brook said, “Jake just took Aric (Bring it Down singer) outside.”

I got a little nervous at that thought because Jake has a pretty short temper as it is, and he had been trying to keep his cool for three days. He finally lost it. A few minutes later, Rob comes walking up to their merch spot, which was right next to ours and told their merch guy to pack everything up because they were leaving. They started getting ready to go and Jake walked back in with smoke coming out of his ears. None of the kids would look at us and we just sat in awe as they put their shit away and drove off. After the show was over and we were packing up, we decided to take bets on whether or not they’d come to the Phoenix show. They weren’t getting very good odds. We jumped back in the van and back on the highway towards Redlands.

March 14th, 2005 - Redding, CA

When we wake up the next morning, everyone was pretty rested. Driving all night then playing a show took a lot out of us, so we were in need of a good rest. We heard about a burrito place that had good vegan stuff, so we gave it a shot. After we were full, we debated about what to do until the show started. We had a few hours to kill and our options were kind of limited. There was talk of seeing a movie, but since we had seen one the day before, no one was really into it. The Redding kids told us there was a skate park not far from where we were staying, so everyone thought that sounded like a good idea and we went back to the apartment to get boards and head over.

Now, I’m not much of a skater, so I opted out and went back in the apartment with a couple of the other dudes. I was looking around the apartment for something to entertain me while the rest of them played video games and hit up the Myspace. As I was looking at the movies, I noticed a book that I had been looking at the day before at Tower Records: “How to Make Love Like a Porn Star” by Jenna Jameson. I had read an excerpt from the book In Rolling Stone a few months before and it seemed interesting, so I picked it up. Two hours later I had read about 70 pages of it. I stopped for a minute to hear a story of how Dan ate shit two seconds after getting to the skate park and acquired a huge bruise that covered his entire knee. I read for most of the day while Austin schooled the rest of the dudes at NBA Live2005 and the other dudes chatted on the internet to random girls.


At about 6pm, we decided to go eat again because this tour was more about food than anything else, and there was a Thai restaurant near the venue. After we were through, we got to the venue just in time to meet up with Bring It Down. Brook went over to square everything away, and it went much easier than we thought it would. We played the show, and like Sacramento, since we weren’t old school two-step, we didn’t go over too well. We started packing up, and Matt was nowhere to be found. He was on his cell phone the entire time we were loading the trailer, and that’s about the time we decided his new nickname would be Rookie, and that’s what we called him for the rest of the trip. When we were done loading, we headed back to Harry’s apartment for another night of video games. I was relieved that we weren’t going to see Bring it Down again until Phoenix because tempers were still rising.

The next morning, we found out that our Long Beach show had been cancelled, so we had a day off to spend playing video games. While Jake was browsing through the bulletins on Myspace, he found a flyer for our show in LA the next night, but with another band added to the bill: Bring it Down. This is about the time that tempers rose through the roof and a few kids became irate. Around 3pm we left Redding to drive down and stay with a friend in Long Beach, but we hit some bad traffic right around Sacramento and it took us a lot longer than we expected. Finally around 1am, we rolled into Hollywood with nowhere to go so Austin got off the freeway to drive around the city until we found a place to go. We couldn’t get a hold of anyone, so we started looking for hotels around Huntigton Beach. The cheapest hotel we could find was about $75, and we decided that since it was already two in the morning, and we would have to check out by 11 it wouldn’t be worth it. So we drove behind the hotel and fell asleep with the homeless guy that was camped out by the dumpster.

March 13, 2005 - Sacramento, CA

The drive from Portland to Sacramento was by far the worst of tour. Everyone was tired and trying to sleep in various spots of the van. I was the last one to get in after buying gas, so I got the shittiest spot in the van. It’s right behind the passenger seat and there is no way to get comfortable. I tried for about an hour. Finally, I just bit the bullet and tried to squeeze down to the floor between the first and second bench. It was hard, but at least I could stretch out and fall asleep. After about an hour of driving through canyons and mountains, it started to get really cold on the floor. I looked around and found Clint’s blanket, so I wrapped myself up and fell back asleep. About 45 minutes after that, Clint is reaching over from the seat in front looking for his blanket. I decided to be hospitable and give it up, but as he was pulling it off he realized that I was using it and felt bad because I was on the floor, so he let me keep it. Apparently, while Brook was driving he encountered fog that was so thick he couldn’t see more than five feet in front of his face. Didn’t really matter to me, because all I wanted to do was sleep. When the sun came up and we rolled into a gas station, Bill decided that he wanted to drive. He was really excited about it and jumped into the pilot seat and we headed the rest of the way into Sacto.



We got to Sacramento about 11am with nothing to do, so we repeated our form and went to Tower Records & Books. It’s a good place to kill an hour or so. After that, we hit up the Thai restaurant that we skipped over the last time we were in town. This one was much better, and we regretted our decision from last time. Still having several hours to kill, we found a mall with a movie theater and watched HITCH. It was alright, but not $10 alright.

After the movie ended, we piled back in the van and headed over to West Coast Worldwide. A few of the bands had already shown up, including Bring It Down. Now here’s the thing about BID: I like them as people. I’ve never had any problems with any of the kids in the band, and they’ve always been nice to me. But on this tour, they started getting on my nerves a little, and everyone else’s nerves a lot. Apparently, when they found out we were going on tour with Aftermath, they started setting up a tour of their own. The only problem was they were going on the same tour we were. Wherever we had a show booked, they’d get a hold of the promoter and get on the show. We were both working with Mike Hood, so when they got on the Sacto and Redding show, we didn’t mind, but they got on our Phoenix show and our Cedar City show. I still can’t place why this bothered the hell out of any of us, but it did.

The show was good for a Sacto show. There were about 50 people there. That’s pretty good considering we aren’t an old school two-step band. After the show, Mikey Hood hooked us up with the kids in the band Set it Straight who were down to let us stay at their house up in Redding. We played there the next night, so we were fine with driving up there, and they seemed like cool kids. After we got paid, we piled in the van and headed on our way. About 15 minutes after we’d left, Brook got a call from Mikey Hood. Apparently they door guy had given us too much money, and Bring It Down was acting like we stole from them or something of that nature. That added a little more fuel to the fire, but we told them we’d work it out with them the next night.

About 20 minutes outside of Redding, we were driving behind Set it Straight when all of a sudden we see sparks fly out from the bottom of their van. They start losing control and swerving back and forth across the highway. We keep our distance just make sure everything is okay, and they pull over to the side of the road. A few of us jump out and take a look. None of us are car experts, so we just kind of guess at the problem for a minute, but the bottom line is that it’s not going to start and they need a ride. We decide to roll it up the highway about half a mile to the next exit. They didn’t want to leave it on the side of the highway all night, and I don’t blame them. So, Harry gets behind the wheel and me, Clint, Dan, Matt and the other two from their band start pushing. We get the van going pretty fast, and we try to ask Harry how fast it’s going. One second, the guitar player is next to me pushing, then the next I look over and he’s gone. I glance back over my shoulder and all I see is him rolling head over heels down the hill on the side of the road. We all notice it at about the same time and start hysterically laughing. We laugh so hard that the van starts losing its momentum and we struggle to get it up the off ramp. As we finally roll it into a restaurant parking lot, we look back and see our van just pulling off and their guitarist walking down the side of the road. We load all their equipment into the van and we get everyone to Redding no problems. I’m still not sure what happened to their van.

March 12, 2005 - Vancouver, WA

After the house show in Boise, we found a kid that was willing to let us all crash at his house for the night. It was actually his parents’ house and they were out of town for the week. We stopped by the grocery store to get pasta and made a hell of a feast for everyone, and talked about old fight stories for a few hours. We always seem to do that: spend hours at a time talking about shit that happened five years ago with kids we’ve never met. The stories are funny to us, but to the kids hearing them, we must sound completely insane. Oh well. I guess that’s how Salt Lake gets the reputation it has.

The next morning, we were on the road to Vancouver, Washington. It was about a seven hour drive, so we weren’t sweating it too much. We hopped in the van and were on our way. The drive was uneventful, and I mostly retreated into the back and rocked out to my sweet tunes.

Vancouver is only about 15 miles away from Portland, so we decided to stop there to see our friends in the Dead Unknown and find something to eat. Brook is probably the coolest best looking guy I know. We got to Justin’s house and watched a terrible movie on the Sci-Fi channel for a few minutes before we set off to eat. He told us about a place called the Vita Café that was a bit like home style cooking. He said they had biscuits and gravy and we were sold. The biscuits and gravy was true and we all spend way too much money, but we were full as we set off for the venue.

Vancouver is just over a bridge and the place we played at was the basement of a church. We seem to get these places a lot. For some reason, Cherem and church are like peas in a pod. Not sure how it got that way, but it probably won’t change. Well, it might, but only if we start playing huge stadiums and I don’t see that happening. So we’ll take church shows. Brutal Fight rolled up just after we did in a sweet/deadly looking school bus and started unloading their Hot Topic worthy merch display inside. They had a credit card machine, which is a good idea, but easy to make fun of. We decided that we now accepted checks, but they had to wait until we got home and the check cleared before we could give them anything. No one really went for that idea when we pitched it to them.

Aftermath and Cherem were up first and second so we hit the stage to set up. Aftermath didn’t get a great response, but there were a few kids singing along, and it was fun. That’s all that matters I guess. Cherem got a little better response, I think mostly due to the Dead Unknown kids hyping us and we had met a few of the kids when we played Olympia the last time we were on tour. We decided to give the Life of Agony song a shot up in Vancouver, and to our expectations, maybe three people knew what it was. I think that made 6 kids in three cities that knew what we were playing.

After we were done, I hung out by the merch table for the rest of the show. The highlight of the night came when two girls started fighting in front of me. I was pretty excited, but I guess that kind of thing doesn’t happen up there too often, so it stressed everyone out. I enjoyed it though. After the fight, one of the girls came up to talk to me about touring and said she’d be down to help out if we ever needed it. Austin dubbed her my Vancouver girlfriend for the rest of tour.

We had a long drive down to Sacramento, so we piled in the van grabbed some cold soda and hit the road.