We stopped to fill the van in a little town called Yuma, Arizona. That city is really nothing more than a giant retirement home and military base. At least I think. My Grandpa lives in Yuma from October to April every year, and from the stories he tells, there’s not many people under the age of 60 down there. As we pulled back onto the street heading towards the freeway, there was a small group of kids—probably 12 or 13 years old—standing around on the corner. They saw the van and trailer and figured we were a band on tour. One of them started yelling, so Jake rolled down the window.
“Hey, what band are you guys?”
“Taking Back Sunday,” said Jake.
The kids flipped out and started yelling at us to stop, but we just kept right on going. It was probably the funniest thing Jake did the entire ten days we were gone.
We rolled in to Phoenix and it had been raining most of the day, and much like Southern California, people in Arizona are afraid of the rain. I think they feel it’s a sign of the apocalypse or something and they won’t leave the house out of fear. That said, the turnout was a bit mediocre.
We did hit Chopstix on the way, but I wasn’t feeling too well so it was kind of ruined for me. It was a bummer, because that BBQ tofu is delicious and I totally missed out. I tried to save it, but after a few hours, it wasn’t even remotely edible.
Back to the show, we had been wondering all day whether Bring it Down was going to show up or not. We were all a little bit surprised when we got there and their van was behind the venue. Clifton, another band from Salt Lake, was just heading out on tour, and they were on the show as well. It was a like someone took a weird Salt Lake line-up and just moved the whole thing to Phoenix.
The tensions between Bring it Down and Cherem and Aftermath were running a little bit high, so we kind of avoided each other the entire night—or at least until Bring it Down left. They were supposed to co-headline with Cherem, but they talked to the promoter, switched with another band, played second and bailed as soon as their set was over.
Aftermath and Cherem played, the sets were both solid, but nothing special. One of our friends from down in Phoenix talked us in to playing Life of Agony for the final time on the tour, so we did. Again, no one knew what the hell it was. Fun song to cover though. We just couldn’t ever get away from it.
After the set, a few kids came up to Bill and told him they were bummed that he didn’t talk much during the set. They were so excited to see us play, and hear him say something awesome, but it was the last show, everyone was a bit burned out and the vibe just wasn’t there. Sorry to those kids that were looking forward to hearing a speech of some sort, but sometimes it’s just not going to happen.
After the show, we hung out and spent the night at an apartment that like 7 people lived at. I stayed up most of the night watching Family Guy and trying to find Bad Boys II, but never did. Finally fell asleep around 5 am, woke up at 10 and were back on the road to Cedar City for the final show of the tour.
