July 17 & 18, 2004 - Los Angeles, CA

"So I get home last night, and Purified In Blood was in my basement lifting weights in their underwear. I guess I have a weight set at my house."

That was how my day started off, having Bill tell me this story. It was a bright spot in an already shitty day. It was only 2pm, too.

I still hadn't packed, and didn't have a suitcase to pack anything in, so after a little looking, I finally talk Boise Surprise Babe into loaning me her sweet hiking backpack in exchange for a couple of cd's. Punk Rock is So Totally Sweet Volume 1 (title copyright me) among them.

The more the day wears on, the more depressed I became until I finally was ready to just get the fuck out of town. We stop at the store before we leave to get some snacks for the 11 hour drive, and this is when everyone in my band finds out that...
A) I don't like pennies, but if I must carry change, it needs to be silver.
B) I will not share utensils for making sandwiches.
That said, I had to buy a whole bunch of plastic knives for when my craving for a PB&J arose. Dan also bought some drinks, one of which was a Fred Meyer brand fruit punch that I immediately re-named "Stomach Ache in a Can."

As we drove away, we saw a paper mill out by the highway on fire. It was pretty huge, and we all talked about how the authorities would probably blame all the vegan kids in town for the fest for it. Sure enough, the next day the police stopped by Bill's house looking for him. According to federal reports, our singer is the leader of a "terrorist cult" because he's vegan. In case you were wondering.

As we drove through the night, Austin told me another story to brighten the day. It goes like this...
We re-named SLC Grudge City, and Aftermath kind of adopted it as their hook. Their shirts say "Grudge City Straight Edge" and things like that. As Austin was driving with one of the Italians from Purification, Aftermath was in his stereo and he asked what it was.
"Aftermath of a Trainwreck."
"Oh yes. Grudge City, right?"
"Yeah."
"Is near here?"
"What?"
"Grudge City. Is close to Salt Lake?"
Austin then had to explain that it was merely a nickname for SLC and not a real place. He still didn't get it, then hilarity ensued as Austin attempted to explain what "grudge" meant to a car full of Italians.

Around 4am, we roll into a rest stop and as we get close, it looks as if someone is doing pushups on a bench and another is doing sit-ups. We were confused until we realized we had caught up with Purified in Blood, and it all made perfect sense. We shoot the shit for a while and head on our way.

We roll into LA around 7am and head for a coffee shop. We find one just off Hollywood Blvd. and take a seat. Coffee shops in the morning are one of my favorite things to do on tour, especially in California. I love watching all the people in LA pretend how important they are as they order their complicated drinks. We hung out there for a while then decided to look for something to eat. Nothing with vegan food opens until around 11, so we mill around outside a Guitar Center waiting for it to open. Guitar Center gets boring pretty quick, so we head to Real Food Daily. We have to wait for it to open for a little while, too. This is where I learned that Austin despises, not just dislikes, but harbors full on feelings of hatred towards Bluegrass Music. During the entire meal, he could not stop talking about how much he hated the background music. It was barely audible and not bothering anyone else, but he was about ready to march in the kitchen, find the controls and change the station himself. I think it made him hate his food, too. Too bad because it was delicious.

So after a few hours of tomfoolery, we head for the venue with our fingers crossed. The venue was on the fourth floor of a building, above a Thai Massage Parlor and a flea market in the heart of South Central LA, just around the corner from MacArthur Park. How stoked were we?

In addition to all this, it's completely unorganized. We were supposed to play on Sunday, but then we were moved to Saturday, then back to Sunday, then maybe we should do both days. After a half an hour we were finally told Sunday. They made a list of who played when for that day and it got underway. Four hours later, we had made it through 5 of 11 acts. No one had given time limits to the speakers, and they were just rambling about whatever for an hour each. Austin and Clint kept telling me to just decide to be in charge and get this thing moving, but I declined. Finally Tim Generations took over and everything began to run smoothly. And Make Move played. That was the highlight of the tour.

Funny side not about Tears of Gaia real quick; they broke down on their way from Chicago to SLC in Grand Island, Nebraska. We were so stoked. At the show Hector asked me if we went swimming in the awesome lake they had while we were stranded. I looked at him for a second and replied, "It was fucking January and 13 degrees. I was afraid to leave the hotel."

The LA show was a bust as far as people went. We were basically playing for the other bands and about 15 fans. Then we heard that the Oakland show was having problems and the Seattle show had fallen through. We were heading home after our show the next day.

The next day, we drive an hour to the venue only to learn that something broke and we had to relocate back 5 minutes away from where we had stayed the night before. We were no longer in South Central but instead in a Mexican Civic Center. Again we played for the other bands and a few randoms, and we started to pack up the van for the ride home.

I wasn't going to go home, though. I'd had enough of SLC for a while. It was stupid shit, but I wanted a vacation. I made some arrangements and as everyone left for SLC after the show, I went back to Sascha's house with Foek. The next day McCall picked me up and drove me down to San Diego. I was meeting some friends from SLC down there and we were going to nerd it up for a week at the San Diego Comic Con.

But first, I had to find a used clothing store. All I had was shorts, and there was no way I was spending the weekend at a comic convention showing off my Batman tattoo. I'm not that much of a nerd. Okay so I am. Fuck off.

July 15th, 2004 - SLC, UT

Total Liberation Tour, or as I call it, worst idea ever.

So Ian Liberation, the guy that booked the awesome fest in Erie, PA tells us he's going to take that show on the road. He tells Purification (Italy) and Purified in Blood (Norway) to fly over, do the tour and he'll reimburse them for their tickets and have a van ready for them. He gets in touch and asks us to be a part of it. Everyone else in the band was stoked, but not me. I wasn't feeling it at all. All I could think of was: So, a dude that can barely book a show in his own home town is going to book two days in 15 different cities and everything is going to go smoothly? Not a chance in hell. I try my hardest to talk everyone out of doing this, but they don't listen to me. They think it's a good idea. It sounded like one, but every time I tried to e-mail this Ian guy and ask a question, it would take him two weeks to get back to me, and even then he'd just avoid my questions and ask if I'd set up the show in SLC. I told him no, as I had no time to do it, nowhere to do it and no way of getting the $2000 he was asking for in each city. I hand it off to a couple friends of mine and they go to work.

Three days before we leave to drive straight to Syracuse, NY (Where the tour starts) we have a band meeting and decide to skip the first half of tour and pick it up in SLC. No one doing the tour has told us anything about it, where the $2K from each show was going and generally just avoiding all questions about it. I was confident in my decision, but everyone else was a little bummed about it. Two days later, the day the first show was set to happen, I log on to the TL website and this is what it says...
Total Liberation Day 1 - Cancelled
Total Liberation Day 2 - New Venue TBD
Hate to say I told you so, but I called everyone in Cherem and told them. It started to look like we made the right choice.

Ten days later, the SLC show happens. Colby, the dude in charge because I refused to take part in organization of a large fest, greets me as I show up to the Library Ampitheater. He tells me he needs help, I say sure and ask why. He says, "Ian quit the tour and went home."

I couldn't fucking believe it. Colby then proceeds to tell me that every show has been a disaster. No one had advertised or done any type of promotion for any of the shows and not one band, or the tour in general, had seen a dime. Add to that, when the European bands arrived in NYC, they had no van. Ian totally fucked them out of everything he promised them, been called out by Undying who told him to apologize or go the fuck home, and went home.

So here I am, now in charge of getting a PA system set up, scheduling bands, finding bands to fill in for the ones that decided to quit when everything went to shit, and essentially run the fucking show. The one thing I didn't want to do. No slight to Colby or Jake N, because they did an amazing job of getting everything set up, they just had a little trouble executing everything.

We get everything together by 2pm and the show, that was supposed to start at noon, is up and running. Gather opens and tests the water followed by Tears of Gaia. After that we dive into a three headed dragon of SLC hardcore: Skieff D'Bargg, Aftermath of a Trainwreck and Cherem. A few other bands play and some speakers give a little lecture and the Europeans tear the place down.

We took donations all day and Colby had been getting them for weeks, and at the end of the day he was able to give roughly $1200 to anyone on the tour not from SLC. That was fine by us, we made enough to get to LA for the next show.

We had talked about dropping off the tour altogether, but decided we'd just do one show at a time. Meaning we were going to drive to LA, and if that show was a bust, leave, but if it wasn't, keep going until we couldn't afford it. After the show, everyone was stoked and the turnout had been way more than we hoped for so we were off to pack and get ready for LA.