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My favorite place in the world...

Well here I am again this summer in one of my favorite places in the world; the mountains of Montana. We’re out at Camp on the Boulder this week and it’s amazing. We were here for a week last year as well and fell in love with it. This place is so remote, there’s no hope of cell phones working and the internet connection is barely a trickle. I’ll be lucky if I can up load the pictures I’ve taken. It’s made a couple other things difficult as well but I can’t complain. We’ve been playing music a couple times every day and relaxing in between. Today we’ll be hiking it up the side of the mountain as far as we can go. It should be awesome.

Saturday we leave here and drive straight on through day and the night and then part of the next day to get to North Carolina, which is probably one of my second favorite places in the world.

So far the tour has gone well. There have been a couple close calls. Luke caught a bass headstock in the nose at the show in Wisconsin, and then clothes-lined himself the other night playing capture the flag. John has had a soar throat, and we’ll all worn out, but it’s a good worn out. The kind that says you’ve actually been doing something with your day.

We’ll be posting the mastered versions of the EP songs online here in about a week. The new mixes are pretty sick. I can’t wait to get them out.

Done, Done, on to the next one...

Well the first week of the tour has come and gone. Despite the fact that I've slept less and worked more in the last week then I have in a long long time, the week went by extremely fast. We left Carlinville, IL yesterday at about 2:00 in the afternoon and headed north to Wisconsin. It was supposed to be an easy 8 hour trip between destinations, but thanks to the flooding in Wisconsin, I-94 was closed and we had to take a detour, along with the other thousands of vehicles that normally use I-94. In the end, the trip took a solid 12 hours and we got to Eau Claire around 2 am. We stayed the night at the apartment of some friends from Survive the Drive and it was a bit crowded, but it was a lot better than the van. This is what the scene looked like this morning.





Tonight we play in Durand with Bensonwells. It should be a good time. After that we take off for the drive across Minnesota and North Dakota for the 13 hour drive to Billings, Montana

Drama

Well it's day three here at camp and the Jr. High drama is starting to hit the fan. It seems like almost yesterday that I was there, living it out myself.

Yesterday was a sad day. A newly acquired friend of the band here at camp was asked to go home for certain reasons that will go unmentioned. If you're reading this man, I hope you're doing well and make sure to keep in touch. I apologize on behalf of all the fake bands out there and hope that you can see what really is important in this life.

The girls here at camp are being girls. Not much more can be said about that. If you've ever spent much time around Jr. High girls, you know what I'm talking about. They're great though. I can't complain.

Overall, The Zone, here in Illinois has been an awesome time, and we're only half way through. The weather has been awesome and the food is really good. It's a good thing these kids are so active or I'd put on a lot of weight, really fast.

Can't say I've slept a whole lot though. That's my own fault. We tried to hit the hot tub last night after all the kids were in their rooms. The water was clear, so that was good, unfortunately, it was more of a luke-warm tub than a hot one. We lasted about 5 minutes and called it good.

Tonight we play an actual rock concert, so that should be fun. It also means another late night, followed by another early morning. Thankfully there is coffee within arms reach almost 24/7.

Finally!!!

Well I finally did it.

I'm a full time musician.

We took off last night from Lincoln, Nebraska and were packed in like sardines. Considering gas is the price it is, we chose not to pull our 10x17 trailer and instead stuff everything in the back of the van. That left us 2 bench seats , the driver seat and the passenger seat... for 5 guys. Keep in mind, that's where we had to sleep last night. The back bench seat had suitcases stuffed underneath it so there was no place to put your feet. That's where I slept, wedged between my backpack and a rolled up sleeping bag. To make it even better, Luke's cowboy boot that was wedged up above kept falling and hitting me in the head through-out the night, and the AC was/is broken. Anthony ended up sleeping on the floor of the van for most of the 9 hour trip.

Overall though, I think it was worth it. Now I'm sitting here in a hotel room in Illinois, in my own bed, with a nice cold air conditioner blowing on me. The resort area we're playing this week is pretty nice. It's definitely not a place for people who don't like kids though. There are probably 700 Jr. Highers here as well (as evidenced by the yellow hot tub water, no seriously, I didn't have my phone at the time or I would have taken a picture. YELLOW.)

We're here until Friday and are playing for a great group of kids. Friday night we take off and drive through the night up to Wisconsin for a single date show, then drive through the night again to hit a camp in Montana. I'm really looking forward to that one, It's in the middle of nowhere in the awesome Montana mountains. There won't even be cell phone coverage for a whole week.

After Montana is the killer, a 30 hour trip, across 2 times zones, to North Carolina, but once we get there we'll be spending 10 days in one of my favorite places in the country, Lake Junaluska. Once Junaluska is finished we drive to Georgia for a day, then play a couple dates in Tennessee and finally its back home (more than a month after we left).

That's only the first leg by the way, the easy leg. The second leg will be 23 dates in 23 days over a span of 10 states. Then after that will be the 3rd leg. That one's still being booked.

I've probably done more work in the last 24 hours than I did in a week at my job, and I got paid about 98% less, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. This is the dream I've been trying to accomplish for the last 5 years. Now I just need to make sure and keep it alive.

I'll keep you updated.

Josh

Happenings...

This week has been an interesting one to say the least. I'm not even sure I know where to start. I'll just give you an overview.

Thursday - Leave work early, brother comes to visit, doggie wanders into our yard and we call the humane society, then we go to a comedy show.

Friday - we go to the humane society and fill out pre-adoption papers for said doggie, drive to Lincoln for practice, go to Anthony's going away party, stay the night

Saturday - drive to a small town in Kansas and play a show

Sunday -  get home from show at 4:30 am and decide not to go to bed and just go right to church to play at 6:30 am.

Monday - go to work at 6:00 am, then leave work at 7:00 am feeling crappy. On a whim I go to the doctor and have him look at a bump that was growing on my arm. I walked away from the doctors that day with whatever it was cut off. They're going to run tests to find out for sure, but now I've got 3 stitches in my arm and am going to have to figure out how to get them out when I'm on the road in a week. Later that evening I become an UNCLE for the first time, as my brother in law and sister in law welcomed Alaina Gisele into the world. I am going to be the COOLEST uncle.

Tuesday - THEE BIG DAY. Tuesday was my last day of work. I left work for good at 10:00 am to pursue my life as a musician.... and it was terrifying.

Wednesday - We find out that the doggies owners came and picked it up on Saturday. It was a sad/happy occasion. I also found out that my grandma is going to have to have surgery to remove a lump from her adrenal gland. This was frankly better news than I was expecting, but still a little frightening since grandma is getting older and I'll be on the road thousands of miles from home for the next 2-3 months. Just for good measure and to mark such a momentous week, I also went out and got my nose pierced. I really thought I might die cause my nose is so sensitive, but I barely felt it. I'm not trying to say that to be tough. He slid a tester ring on my nose to test the placement and that stung like crazy. I thought there was no way I was going to make it through, but when the time came, I really barely felt it.

Notice the ghost swimmer over my shoulder. We were actually driving down the street when I snapped this picture with my phone. I have no idea where the swimmer came from or how it came to be perfectly placed next to my head. If for some reason I'm found drowned in my bathtub tomorrow or later this week you'll know that the movie "Shutter" really was true.

I'm not sure what tomorrow will bring and I'm definitely not sure what next week will bring, but I must say I feel more like me today than I've felt in a long time. I don't have to be two different people anymore. I don't have to keep 2 separate wardrobes in my closet or an ID badge in my wallet and that's an amazing feeling; one I've been waiting for for a long time. Let's just home we can sustain it.

Until next time...

PS I've been thinking about starting to post a short story of the month on this thing. I've been writing a lot more lately and I think it would be a good exercise for me. Hopefully you can be looking for that here in the next couple weeks.