July 14, 2005 - Seattle, WA

We drove sluggishly through the night, with Brook doing the lions share of the work behind the wheel. I rode shotgun most of the way, but couldn’t stay awake the entire time—which is the one thing you’re supposed to do while riding shotgun on tour. Sorry about that Brook.

We rolled in to Seattle the next afternoon, and since I had a friend that lived there we drove straight to her work to say hello. She had a few hours left before she could leave, so we wandered the streets of Fremont looking at record shops and other random stores. I found a record by a band called Killed By Death, and I was a little bit upset about it. That was Casey, myself and Brook’s punk rock band that played one show. We took the name from a random Motorhead album, and figured someone had used it before, but it was still kind of a bummer to actually see. Across the street from the record shop was the greatest store on the planet. It’s called PCC and it’s what I wish Whole Foods/Wild Oats was like. There was awesome vegan food everywhere. Not one or two things that just happened to be vegan, but actually made in order to be vegan. Ready-to-eat vegan BLT’s, donuts, cupcakes—it was the best thing we’d ever seen. We hung out there most of the rest of the day eating way more than we probably should have.

Once Heather was finally off work, we met up with her and she took us back to her apartment. We were tired from the night before, so we all just kind of took it easy for a while and I caught up with Heather. I hadn’t seen her since the previous summer when she lived in San Diego (after the disastrous Total Liberation Tour Los Angeles show, everyone in Cherem decided to head back home, but I caught a ride to San Diego for Comic Con, and Heather’s place down there was our SD home).
George called first dibs on the shower, and since everyone else just kind of wanted to take a nap, we said okay. After a few minutes, he reappeared in the living room looking frustrated.
“I don’t want to sound like a dumb ass—but how the fuck do you turn on the shower?” he asked.
We all started laughing and Heather took him in for a demonstration. From that moment on, he had rightfully inherited the “Rookie” nickname.

Later that night, Heather was going out to meet some friends, so Clint and I went with her to some hipster bar while the rest of the dudes hung out back at her apartment. I felt like kind of an asshole, because we got all the way to the club before I realized I forgot my ID. We drove back, picked it up and headed back to the bar. It was a little bit boring, but everything in the bar looked extremely familiar. I mentioned something to Clint about it, and one of Heather’s friends overheard us.

“This was the main bar in that old movie, Singles.”
“Holy shit! This is the bar Alice in Chains played at.”

Dan Fletcher was the only person that would have appreciated that, and he wasn’t around. Everyone just looked at me like I was crazy.

The next day, we drove downtown and checked out The Space Needle (cool to see, but it was like $20 to go up and down), the Experience Music Project (pretty cool, but too expensive) and the Science Fiction Museum. The Sci-Fi museum was about $15, but since I’m a nerd, I had to see it, so I paid and left everyone behind for an hour or so. Totally worth it.

We were playing with another vegan band from up there called This Time Tomorrow, and they had told us about a place called Bamboo Garden, so we headed over to meet a couple of them there and check it out.

Meanwhile, this whole time, Oubliette had stayed the night in Idaho Falls and tried taking some fucked up “shortcut” through Montana or something the next day. It ended up taking them and insane amount of time to get to Seattle, so they weren’t going to be joining us.

After we ate, we headed over to the show to check the venue out and wait for The Dead Unknown to arrive. Bill and Clint had met The Dead Unknown when they went on tour with 78 Days After Death and remained pretty good friends. Any time they played Salt Lake we helped them out, and any time we were up around the Northwest, they came out to support, or better yet, play the show with us. We got to the venue, a decent sized place that was way nicer than we were used to.

In addition to This Time Tomorrow, there was another local band on the bill called Hell Promise. The sound guy asked us to backline the stage, since we were headlining, but we thought that was kind of a silly idea—especially when we saw Hell Promise roll up looking like fucking rock stars. We asked them if they’d headline instead, since this is their hometown and all, and they reluctantly agreed. They were kind of dicks about it, but at least they said yes.

The show started and there was only a handful of people there. We asked the locals if all the shows were like this (hoping we weren’t going to find out we were playing opposite another big show like last time) and they told us that if we weren’t a two-step band or a fast hardcore band, no one really cared. All the bands played good but it was still a really awkward show for everyone. We watched Hell Promise play and then started packing all our stuff up.

I had picked up a box of vegan cupcakes from PCC earlier in the day and was eating one by the van talking to the girl that sang for This Time Tomorrow. I offered her a cupcake but she looked a little hesitant.

“Are they vegan?” she asked.
“Well,” I replied, “we are a vegan band.”
She just stared at me.
“So, yes. They’re vegan.”
“Oh, then sure.”
She took one and started eating it, but after eating half of it, she stopped.
“Wait, I don’t eat refined sugar. Are they all natural?”
I just stared at her and her already half-eaten cupcake.
“They’re all-delicious,” I replied.
“Okay,” she said and popped the rest in her mouth to finish it off.

After that, The Dead Unknown dudes jumped in their van to head back to Portland. A few of them had to work the next day, but were playing with us again down there the next night. Oubliette headed out with some of the This Time Tomorrow people and we went back to Heather’s place to crash.