1/16/2011

Chris: "So Jordan is sleeping on the floor, Joe is on the couch, Andrew is in the guest bedroom, Stevie...are you sleeping tonight?" I guess that should be a red flag that I have a problem. I actually laid down to take a nap today on the way to the venue. Then we got there and of course I felt like I needed to go see the city instead of catching up on the sleep I have skipped out on so far. 

I never will catch up on sleep. I do not really feel like I need it. There is way too much to see and way too much to do. I would have missed looking at a battleship that was docked! How could I have gone through life with missing that?? 

Tonight was the best kind of weird night! We showed up to the venue which was a wine/beer bar and art gallery. There was no stage. A mini sound system. One person in the venue. This spells out nightmare to me. I talked to the guy and explained that we were a rock band, not a solo act. He suggested we try a venue down the street. The manager at that venue was super nice, but they said they had a full night. 

We went back to the wine bar and said we would do a scaled down version and jazz it up a bit. Easily done. We play clean, I throw in some smooth guitar licks and BOOM. We are a different band. It worked unbelievably well. We played a song or two and people started filtering in. By the third song, we had a full house. We ended up selling a bunch of CDs and getting tipped ridiculously. It averaged out to what we are making playing 300 person venues. 

That is where normal people would stop, pack it up and call it a good night. But I am clearly not a normal person. Sure, we packed up our stuff in the RV, but there was still a show going on at that other venue down the street. So we marched our merch booth down there, set up in the venue, and started a full-scale assault on hustling our stuff. That also worked. The manager there loved our tenacity so much that he said whenever we are coming through to let him know and he would make a show happen for us. 

Tomorrow was supposed to be in Richmond, VA but that venue canceled on us at the last second. Undaunted, we threw together a last minute house show and fully intend to put on a show like no other! Tomorrow is MLK Day, which means school is out, which means people will be in the malls. So we will be in the malls, walking about with our credit card swipes and headphones so people can listen to our stuff. We are going to make the most of our free time and sell CDs until we get kicked out. Then we will just go to another mall. 

I am actually going to sleep tonight, believe it or not! I am ready for it! Goodniiiiiiiiiight.