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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2004

About seven or eight years ago me & a friend were sitting at the juice bar in Whole Foods. We only ever did anything for it's comedic value back then, and he had ordered the most ridiculous drink on the menu. A 32 oz, concoction made of juiced beets, cayanne pepper, tabasco sauce and other super hot ingredients. The drink was called THE RED DEVIL. The importance of the RED DEVIL is paramount, as you will soon find, My friend eyed the drink; pensively, contemplatively. "What would happen if I drank this whole thing in one sip?" he asked me. I was about to give him a look that would only ever say "Yeah right", but before the glower could be gazed, he was already chugging down the devil drink with one hand, the other hand extended, finger pointing skyward, signifying something unthinkable was happening. The consumption of the entire drink took about thirty or forty seconds, and the moment he was done, he slammed down the empty cup and growled out a demonic sound that ended in the words "RRRRRRREEEEEDD DEVIL!!!!!!" He then instantly began to sweat profusely, and complained of dizziness, but it was a small price to pay for the beginning of the legacy and practice that is RED DEVILING. It can now be said that across this world of ours, when someone drinks a beverage in a charged, emphatic way, and the beverage is consumed without stopping to breathe (in one gulp), they do not merely drink said beverage, they RED DEVIL it. Now all you naysayers and ne'er-duh-wellsers can just take a step back before you start thinking up images of keg stands and frat boys, because alcohol is not the focus of RED DEVILING. The focus is to do more than you initially imagined you were capable of, and to amaze yourself with something simple and beautiful. Last night Betty almost RED DEVILED an entire pitcher of water. There was maybe a little left, but in one felled sip (after a late-night meal, no less) she drank about 2 liters of water!! This gets us into the different grades of RED DEVILING, because she did not technically RED DEVIL the pitcher, but had a respectable MAROON DEVIL situation going. Drinking about half of what you intended to RED DEVIL is PINK DEVILING, and is best for duo RED DEVIL tag-team grudge matches. Failing to even get much more than a few paltry drops down before pausing for breath is a dreaded and disrespected GREY DEVIL. It's really a science, an art, a world view.

So, where were we? Tour is good. We played San Diego, had a cool show at Modified Arts in Phoenix, had a hellacious two-day drive out to North Texas, marked by a stay at a hotel with mosquitoes the size of golf balls. They were hungry for blood, and swarmed in a weird horror movie style. There was a hail-storm on the way, too!! That night in the hotel Sellwood executed some of the best mixed-drinks I've ever had. A few nights earlier, he and Steve were introduced to a cousin of the White Russian known as the Colorado Bulldog. Same ingredients but also with Coca Cola for a new fizz vibe. We took it a few notches over and invented the Vegan Raw Dawg. Kaluha, Vanilla Vodka, Soy Creamer in place of milk and Coca Cola, all mixed over as much ice as possible. Fantastic. Three nights later in Houston, after visiting the Dr, Pepper museum, the Vegan Raw Doctor was born, replacing Coke with Dr. Pepper. Unbelievable. Our show in Fort Worth was a drunken dance party, and we stayed with Alex Goldman, gristling and griming into the night. I love that man. In Austin we played indoors at Emo's and And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead played outside, so a bunch of people wandered in on our set, were confused, were happy for maybe the first time in their lives. Just kidding. A great thanks is owed to everyone coming to these shows, and it's amazing to see people for a second or third time, and play requests, hear people singing along. It is humbling and flattering and overjoyifying. Everyone who has been making long drives or going otherwise out of their way to show support and love, please know that we appreciate it very much. That night we split up camp a little bit, some of us staying with Mike, me and the Scotts stayed with Esme (and not Esme the photographer from Michigan, but the Texas chapter of the worldwide Army of Esmes) and it was quite literally a walking party. In Houston we had technical problems, resulting in a semi-bummer show. But we played with the Old Tymerz, who were funny and stayed with Erik and Virginia, who ruled our life. Erik is the man who books all these fucking ridiculous shows for us, and he is like a zen father figure to our little band. I love that man. Awesome shows and haunted, abandoned houses to sleep in for both Jackson Mississippi and Birmingham Alabama. In Alabama we played at the first of two sushi bars we'll be hitting on this tour. Yesterday was the last show of the tour with Sunshine Fix, in their hometown of Athens Georgia. I've never had a bad time in Athens, even back in the Lovesick days, sleeping in the broken down van on the street. I would do it anytime. It was sad to part ways with the Fix, who we have spent the last month playing with and growing to love more and more. But it's not goodbye, it's just goodnight. There is always more to come. We did have a massive family jam encore with a psychedelic mishap that morphed into a shaky cover of "Rain" by the Beatles. A better monday night has never happened. We have about two weeks left of this tour, then another three in November coming up, then more after that. The slow-burn period is either over or just beginning as everyone is getting over being sick or getting sick. Tired? All the time. The shows are still fantastic for the most part, and we're back in Michigan's time zone, headed towards CMJ land, then Canada, then the rest of our lives.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2004

La la la la la la lightning. We're in Los Angeles traffic, headed towards our San Diego show, totally blowing off soundcheck. I think we've done a total of like two soundchecks so far this tour. Somewhere in the history of the band, it became apparent that getting to the club/bar/castle/showspace by the scheduled time to do your soundcheck meant two things; 1)You arrive at an empty club and wait one to four hours for a soundperson to show up. 2)Your soundcheck sounds nothing at all like your show does, and doing one actually makes you sound worse. So we've opted for a more mellow route this time out. Today we cruised around Beverly Hills listening to "Rocket To Russia" by a little group called the Ramones on repeat, spotting starlets. We took a trip to the J. Paul Getty Center at the top of the hills in west LA. I'd heard Getty's name before, but I'd never heard of this magnificent complex. Part art museum, part public garden, part architectural monolith. The center is a billion dollar project that houses Van Ghoh paintings, puts on concerts and dance recitals, has a dozen different unbelievable and surreal gardens and fountains and serves as a free-to-the-public resource of beauty and imagination. Cactus diagrams and underground waterfalls. We took an elevator to a long line of people calmly waiting to board a monorail to ride half a mile into the heart of the center. The perfectly maintained landscaping and all-white stone architecture made me feel like we were in a movie scene, waiting in line to enter Heaven or some peaceful post-life arena. Dizzyingly beautiful. We also had a couple of really awesome shows the past few nights. San Francisco was amazing, our third and best time in the city. Seeing Ben, Aidan, Caleb, Katie, Jessie, Laurie, Nedelle, JJ, Mac, Eve, and all our beloved friends who've found their way to the left was great in and of itself, but the reception and response from everyone was just awesome. Thanks for the flowers and the true love. We also had a cool radio interview/jam session/phone-in mesmerization earlier that day at Sonoma State College. I think our hosts thought they would get a few rushed minutes of Q & A, but while Sellwood, DeRoche and Steve were out getting the electric piano fixed, me, Betty, Elliot & Justin went nuts in the tiny studio, playing songs and staging farcical and serious conversations. They made us cupcakes and nothing could have been better. For every sweetheart cupcake we're given, there is also a spider bite or leery sadness. Justin dropped off the tour in San Fran, with commitments back in Michigan. We miss his mad stare and uproarious laugh. Ethan was going to come along and roadie from SF to Texas, but hurt his ankle the day he was supposed to meet up with us. This also brings us down. Yesterday was good, however. The drive to LA is a brown and boring one. Some trees, but mostly hay. We made up a game that began with the players naming a fruit for every letter of the alphabet. When this proved limiting, we extended the rules to include vegetables, then candy bars. Then we just started saying every word we could think of that began with the letter in question. You would be surprised how many words start with "G"! Later at dinner we went over the candy bar list again, coming up with a candy bar for each letter except E, J, I, U, X and Q. If you can think of any that we forgot, please e-mail it to us. This is an urgent debate in the van right now. DeRoche says there's one called "Energy Bar", but I'm not sure it counts. The rules of what counts as a candy bar are something that can only be understood, never discussed. Our show at Spaceland was super fun and loose. Many thanks to those who asked for songs and sang along. Also thanks to the lovelies who made us the little lychee candies. Betty wants the recipe. They were vegan, right? I told her and Steve they were. After the show some of us went to another bar and dee-jayed for a little while. It was super fun and upbeat dance party. Alexis had invited us, and was in heightened party mode by the time we got there. We jammed the Equals, New Order, Tommy James, Belle & Sebastian, Electric Six, Adult, Rapture, Smiths, Ravonettes, Prince, Kinks and more. Elliot threw on a Talking Heads jam and the floor totally cleared. WTF!!! What's wrong with LA? We took off as soon as we ran out of worthwhile jams, and Alexis' computer had busted, so we just left the Miami funk compilation CD behind to play out the night. The Libertines were supposed to DJ, too, and they were showing up as we left. Hope they brought some sweet jams.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2004

Midnight at the pool-hall and the air is dense with shaky smoke and unmendable lives. Outside, a person could easily mistake the rattling of a chain fight in the parking lot for the docile flapping of bat or bird wings. Last spring's bat wings still resonate with the power of cold, historical facts. When you're from Michigan and going out west, I think the real heavy homesickness sets in around South Dakota. By Boise I was calling all my friends, asking what was going on at the old cornerstore, who was running around with who and if maybe any buildings had burned down in the last two weeks. But let me tell you about the last little bit of tour... It's been a full and drastic time. We played a real dance party jam at the Kilby Court in Salt Lake City. Gunshy also played that night, a really cool one-man band, trembling out desperate folk songs in a Waitsian growl. The drive to Boise Idaho was slightly rough, if scenic, but the show didn't actually occur. The downtown bar didn't really have it together to flyer or get people out on a Sunday night, so the promoter suggested we try to hop on either another show going on or this house party on the other side of town. Neither panned out. The not-playing part was a true drag, but everyone in Boise was totally nice and cool, just kinda hanging out. We contemplated chain-fighting the promoter over the bummer show, but he was on the phone setting up a door-deal with the 2 Live Crew for next month. Swear to god. We left for the Pacific Northwest, spending our day off in beautiful Olympia Washington. Within about ten minutes of walking around Olympia (incidentally the drifter mecca of the west) we ran into our friend Kanako from the Liarbird who we played some shows with last summer. We hung out at her awesome vintage shop Dumpster Values for a while, drinking Olympia beer (sadly no longer available in bottles, only cans) and tearing apart a wall. We also took a walk around the river, the full moon shining down and sending romantic messages. There's an awesome fountain in Oly. that shoots water up in eight-foot jets from the sidewalk. We ran and jumped through that for a little while like toddlers after a serious Pixie-Stix binge. Earlier that morning, Scott Sellwood had woken up with a sore and aching back, and promptly proceeded to join Steve and Justin in a vigorous Yoga jam. The stretches proved extremely detrimental to Mr. Sellwood's back muscles, almost immediately sending him into a world of pain. He was out of commission for the majority of the day, and actually went to the doctor the next morning. Doctor diagnosed extreme sleep deprivation and a tattered muscle, prescribing Vicodin and pure rest. He slept the day off while we rummaged around the city. There were schools of salmon in the river and even a seal! A fucking seal! After breakfast there was a cool family jam in Kanako's living room. We might have a chance to be her backing band at CMJ. Our Seattle show went off well, save the bar being really uptight about Betty being underage. We stayed with Chicken and Megan, two cool sisters with scooters, and I got to ride home from the club on the back of a scooter, zipping up and down hills, the driver both drunk and beautiful. We played with the Minders in Portland the next night, right next door to a vegan donut shop. Last night was a surprisingly awesome show at a VFW hall in Eureka, California. Despite a bad start, our performance turned around something magical, with a heavy dance and fun vibe for the set, then a secret encore of Bob Dillon songs and unamplified SLGTM versions for the few folks who wanted to close down the bar with us. So much happens in the vacuum of a tour. Many an inside joke, many an intricate story or detailed understanding which makes less sense the more it's retold. Sketchy dudes leaning down to smoke crack by the van that they don't know someone's inside of. Eating a bag of baby carrots Fear Factor style with a five minute time limit. Whipping a chain around cause everything's alright tonight. The trees on the winding road, the rocks you might crawl down to a secret lair. The couch, the floor, the respectful burrito and the disrespectful veggie wrap sandwich. The dream you can't remember all of, but it changes the way you feel all day anyhow.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2004

First bummer show last night in Denver, and not even because it was a bad show so much as the drive out west demands at least one or two days of nonstop travel. We woke up at 8 AM and drove through the badlands, on to Mount Rushmore, then drove another 7 or 8 hours to the gig. We got to eat at the creepy religious co-op in Rapid City that Steve discovered on the Threathener tour, but even with that heavenly experience, everyone was a little burnt by the time we played. We had a strange show with Frog Eyes in Fargo, last night with Dressy Bessy. Somewhere in-between was a hotel experience with Sellwood's portable bar "The Executaire". The edited-for-television version of "House Party" was the last thing I remembered before falling asleep. Last night we stayed at Joel's house on the 17th floor of a tall apartment building. From the balcony you could see the entire city. A building was on fire in the distance, and there were lights on the mountains behind it.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2004

A rose encrusted in fake jewels, an open book in a fabricated language, two hobos fighting on the off-ramp of any major highway. We played in Minneapolis last night at the 7th Street Entry, where "Purple Rain" was filmed! We always play in the smaller room, and last time we played Yo La Tengo was in the big room. Last night The Cuts & The Black Keys were in the big room, so I got to saunter over and check out parts of their sets. MPLS is also home of some sweet ass restaurants, including the beloved Pizza Luce. The days burl and bristle by, with much driving through many a cornfield, many an inspired set of songs. We played in Des Moines Iowa on Monday, and it was fantastic. The room was dark and simple, and the sound was brilliant. People danced and Elliot went up to the balcony to play his sax solo. We stayed with Devin at his amazing and huge house and hung out drunkenly with him and The Sunshine Fix guys, They will henceforth be lovingly referred to as "The Fix". Our Champaign show was cool, but cut a little short by the five-band bill. The next day we got to check out the Polyvinyl offices and see where it all takes place. Have been listening to nothing but Mates of State and American Football in the van ever since. Tonight we play in Moorehead Minnesota, a twin city with Fargo North Dakota. Where are we? What is happening? This afternoon I did an amazing telephone interview with my old boyhood friend Alex for the music magazine he now edits, and the primary topics of conversation were girls he used to date, lyrics that should have made it onto the records and fake words we made up when we were younger. Swizzle, Brimstock, Cambasting.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2004

Leaving Chicago listening to Joanna Newsome, as it should be. Highlights abound this weekend. We played with Kiddo in Cleveland, they ruled. The cook at the Beechland Ballroom also ruled, making us a great meal, being hilarious and enthusiastically checking out our whole set. The last time we played there was the first night of the NOMO/SLGTM tour in May, and immediately following our set I came down with the worst fever and flu I'd ever experienced, staying sick for that entire tour. It was so bad an illness that when we watched the video footage from that show a few months later, I got kinda nervous and queasy just from the association I had with the room. Being there again was similar, but luckily we both played a good set and no one got sick. My guitar came untuned a few times, so I just tambourined for the last song. As anyone who's heard our records can tell, I hate tuning guitars. We decided to drive back to Ann Arbor that night, to sleep in familiar beds and have a full day to tie up any loose ends before we start traveling further and further away. Our record release show was something else. The venue sold out and so many friends and loved ones were in attendance. A sincere thanks and happiness to everyone for making it to the show, for singing along, and for probably having been in the band or my roommate at one point. Also to The All-Night Push for opening up the show. There was a party later that night and the next morning at breakfast we saw this sweet basset hound walking around with no owner. We decided to scoop him up as the official tourdog. The role of the tourdog is multi-faceted and with an oblique historical significance. Tourdogs were first implemented in 1974 by American rock band "Foghat" on their "Fool For The City" tour. Bassist Chuck Dennis had grown weary of his somewhat benign non-musical duties on tour, and during downtime trained his adult Beagle dog "Tizzo" to perform menial tasks such as fetching beer, setting up T-Shirts and merchandise, unloading the amps, etc. The idea of the tourdog caught on like virtual wildfire, and before you knew it, a tourdog wasn't just a four-legged servant, but a status symbol of gratuitous laziness in the rock elite. We named our tourdog "Charmelton" (In part after my beloved grandfather Charleton Thomas, and in part after a gooey sugar substance) and put him right to work. Justin also joined on in Ann Arbor, bringing our traveling party to a headcount of 7, 8 including Charmelton. Last night we played at the Abbey Pub, always a fun time. Communicating love to the universe and sneaking in minors to our shows are the main themes of this tour so far. Rickie and Vickie danced like every song was their favorite, and Emily made a sweet step herself. Chicago is cool on Sunday mornings. Me and DeRoche checked out some museums and walked around town. Now we're almost to Champaign, home of our record label and hopefully some sweet vegan restaurants, cause I could fuck up a pumpkin pie right about now.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2004

Allegedly the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame offers free admission to traveling musicians. We're about to test this possible urban legend. In Pittsburgh we played one of our better sets ever to a very appreciative audience of twelve or thirteen folks. Evenings & Weekends opened the show, they were sweet. Soon they'll add singing to their presently instrumental sets, and then look out! We stayed with the Eric and his hounds Hobo and Lee. Equal parts of vodka & cranberrying, e-mail checking and campfire sing-alongs ensued. Now driving to Cleveland following a necessary visit to P-Burgh's Mattress Factory Museum. They were in transition from one show to another, so the majority of the museum was under construction, but exhibits in the permanent collection by James Turrell and Yayoi Kusama were still up, still amazing. We took some photos in a room full of mirrors and orange polka-dots, got a cool six-person harmony going in an echoey hallway, me and Elliot went in together on a book of Cuban poster art and we hightailed it out of there.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2004

Driving up Highway 69, en route to Pittsburgh. Last night we began our tour at The Firehouse in North Manchester, Indiana. A truly amazing place to play. The space was started a few years back by some high school kids who were bummed that their town was so small and there was no place for their band (or any band) to play shows. So, as some pretty astute and forward-thinking youths, they applied for some sort of grant, got it, renovated this old disused fire station, and now there's free punk shows there four times a month and the kids who live in a small rural town in Indiana have something cool to do. Jabin is one of the organizers of the place, and a more enthusiastic and sweet dude you would be hard pressed to find. Plus you get there and there's a refrigerator literally stuffed full of hundreds of cans of Coke and Dr. Pepper, and it feels like you won some ridiculous lifetime supply sort of contest, and you can't be sad. We met our tourmates the Sunshine Fix for the first time, and they are lovely, kind folks. They played psychedelic pop music while movies were projected onto them, it was sweet. We also played with rock and roll's Kissinger and the gentle, wonderful Lewis & Clarke. Our first set of tour was not without technical problems, but the energy was high and Betty told a story about my sister while I tuned up my guitar. We're playing longer sets this tour than ever before, which means we play 16 songs in 45 minutes instead of 10 songs in 25 minutes like usual. After the show all the bands were directed to some strange hotel that nobody worked at. You just go in and there are keys on the desk with a note for you to put them back after your stay. It turned out all the doors were unlocked anyway. Very strange. Some wild partying went down where we all watched a documentary on the life-cycle of the red crab, and then me and Elliot walked through drive-ins at both Burger King and Hardee's, learning you must be in a car or they'll just ignore you. I slept with Steve (naturally) and when I woke up in the middle of the night he was talking in his sleep. Always a highlight of tour for me, but usually it doesn't happen so soon into the journey. He said in a slightly southern accent, "You done been lied to."

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