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Thursday, 22 October 2009 00:00 |
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“Skeletons in the Closet Tour 2009” - October 22nd, Iowa City, Iowa
By: Derrick Nau of Skeletonwitch
Colorado Springs to Iowa City is a long drive. We had a day off yesterday and I think we spent around 11 hours in the van. That was kind of rough. I drained the battery on every gadget I have with me to pass the time and still had about an hour and a half to two left in the drive. The last leg of a long drive can be very tedious.
Once we stopped, we did get a huge Papa John’s pizza feast and watched Footloose so the day wasn’t all bad. I think I ate a couple pieces and immediately passed out because I was so tired from doing nothing all day. Weird.
So here we are back in Iowa City. The Picador would be a cool venue if it wasn’t up a ton of stairs and if it hadn’t been raining and windy as shit. Trying to load up what is essentially a fire escape covered in water isn’t exactly my idea of a good time. You gotta pay the cost to be the boss I guess... I will add that the ceiling was leaking by the men’s bathroom so there was a huge puddle in the middle of the venue. Heavy metal RULES!
The show was a lot of fun and I think we played pretty well. Trap Them had some van trouble so they weren’t able to make this show. Kind of a bummer. I hope they get their van fixed asap. Nothing is more disheartening than van trouble on the road. Bye bye hard earned money! Yikes!
We stayed with a friend tonight, which we rarely do. Normally we just hit the road toward the next town. The house we stayed at had two awesome kitties and a few bull dogs. One of the bull dogs was a little tiny thing with ears so Nate started calling him “little baby bat dog” which I found hilarious. I liked little baby bat dog a lot. There was some beer drinking going on and I had one of my late night worry moments. Every so often, I wake up in the middle of the night, go out to the trailer and touch each piece of my drum kit to make sure I didn’t forget anything. I have been known to forget things at a venue. Luckily everything was there.
Until I forget again!
D
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Tuesday, 20 October 2009 00:00 |
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“Skeletons in the Closet Tour 2009” - October 20th, Colorado Springs, Colorado
By: Derrick Nau of Skeletonwitch
Our triumphant return to the Black Sheep! We have been playing at the Black Sheep here in Colorado Springs since one of our early tours with Dying Fetus and Cephalic Carnage (talk about some super drummers AMIRITE!?) It is a cool place with a nice staff. I like playing there.
After being in California and the surrounding states being in Colorado is like living in a goddamn freezer. It’s only like thirty-something degrees out but I am just not ready for it. I guess I’m just a pussy because I saw kids waiting in line with just t shirts on. However, winter is to heavy metal like strings are to a guitar. I learned that when I took my SATs.
Colorado Springs is pretty close to Denver and Cephalic Carnage lives in Denver. So to our surprise, lo and behold, our old friends Leonard (singer) and Nick (bassist) show up to hang out. Fuckin A! I haven’t seen those dudes in a while, what a pleasant surprise. We have done a US tour with these guys and a close quarters European bus tour with them. Much bonding has been achieved. John Merryman is one of my favorite drummers. A lot people can play fast, but I’ve never seen anyone who can play like John. If you ever get a chance to see Cephalic Carnage, you must do it.
I dropped a stick today. Goddamn it, I think I have to be the stick drop king of the Midwest. I even have that Vic Firth grip tape that I use religiously. Usually the stick drop occurs when I am returning to a beat from the floor tom and I catch the stick on the bottom of my ride. Stupid, stupid, stupid! When I get home from this tour, I’ll need to figure out something to do about that. I think I am also going to adjust my pedals and reduce some of the tension (I have them pretty tight right now). I think that will make it easier to play with speed. I like the good rebound with a tight pedal but I think loosening it a bit will let me have more control. I am always tinkering with my stuff, some kind of weird obsession; I guess I can’t help it. Not the worst OCD behavior I guess.
D
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Monday, 19 October 2009 00:00 |
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“Skeletons in the Closet Tour 2009” - October 19th, Salt lake City, Utah
By: Derrick Nau of Skeletonwitch
Here we are arriving in Salt Lake City after a day off yesterday. It was a bit of a long drive but not too terrible. We stayed in some little town in Nevada named Elko. There wasn’t much around the hotel except for a pizza shop and Chinese carryout. We passed on the Chinese food, although they did have Coca Cola flavored chicken wings. Interesting.
During a day off I usually just look forward to smoking a cigarette every four hours when we get gas, what kind of food we will get when we stop for the night, trolling around on the internet, and most of all, drinking a cold (or warm) beer . We ended up settling on the pizza joint. I looked up the number, gave them a ring, and asked two questions: “How late are you open?” and “Do you sell beer?” "10 p.m." and “yes.” Excellent. Turns out the "Pizza Barn" was more of a family type place. Family or not, they had pitchers of Budweiser.
It was a pretty pleasant drive into Salt Lake today. We caught a few minor rainstorms and it was pretty windy but it wasn’t too cold and the weather wasn’t too fierce. We saw a double rainbow above the salt flats sometime this afternoon. That would be a one half circle rainbow on the horizon with another larger rainbow above it. Ronnie James would be proud.
Funny, we have been playing in Salt Lake City for years but I have never paid attention to the route there. I had never noticed the salt flats of the Great Salt Lake. Someone get my head out of my ass, huh?
Show was good if somewhat unremarkable. The stage sound was a little lacking but there was plenty of space and I thought we played pretty well. Sometimes after a day off I get nervous we are going to suck but it’s never happened.
Tonight we are off to Colorado Springs. Another long drive. Yuck.
D
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Saturday, 17 October 2009 00:00 |
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“Skeletons in the Closet Tour 2009” - October 17th, Sacramento, California
By: Derrick Nau of Skeletonwitch
Apparently the place we are playing tonight is a well known club, similar to the Whiskey or Troubadour in LA. It seems this theory is correct. There are posters everywhere for upcoming shows (including the mighty Nile! Hell Yes!) and there is a lot of cool graffiti in the men’s room (which I visited four times. Yikes!) The Red Chord, Decapitated, and many other band names are crudely scrawled about the place. I am a part of history right now! Haha!
Another cool thing: the show is sold out tonight. Sold out and full of hot girls. Can my night get any better? Well, probably, but it surely can get worse. The sound man here is a nice dude, but he also has a tendency to act crazy. The show ran WAY behind. I think between Toxic and us there was a forty minute change over (it’s supposed to be fifteen) and most of that time was the band standing around on stage ready to get started but with cables and mic’s strewn about the stage unassembled. Sigh, we ended up having to cut two or three songs to be sure we didn’t cut into BDM’s time. Very aggravating seeing as how it wasn’t our mistake.
Lets talk about something positive, and how about this, drum related. Shannon showed me a cool and very effective warm up exercise today. I am always very excited to learn new things from the great drummers I have the pleasure of touring with. Shannon picked this up from someone else but his name slips my mind right now. This is primarily a finger exercise but it helps gets your entire arm warm up. It is pretty simple. It starts with two sets of 4’s on each hand, moves to 3’s and then two counts of a double stroke roll. So it’s, 4 right, 4 left, 4 right, 4 left, 3 right, 3 left, 3 right, 3 left, and then immediately two counts of double stroke rolling leading back into the beginning of the exercise.
“Sounded out” it sounds like, dadadada dadadada dadadada dadadada, dadada dadada dadada dadada, brrrrrrrrdadadada. Perhaps that sounds silly but I have found it to be helpful to think about/sing what you’re going to play before you do it. Having that mental preparation makes it easier to execute whatever you are attempting to play.
So, although there were some technical difficulties, today turned out to be a good day. I’ll see you tomorrow.
D
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Friday, 16 October 2009 00:00 |
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“Skeletons in the Closet Tour 2009” - October 16th, Reno, Nevada
By: Derrick Nau of Skeletonwitch
We have been playing in Reno for about three years or so and it has always treated us well. Today was no exception. Today was another show at the Underground. I believe the last time we played at this venue was with Job for a Cowboy and The Red Chord back in 2007. I remember that show being cool. Except the weather. That entire tour was plagued by horrible weather. There was a constant stream of bad luck, ranging from mandatory snow chains, being snowed out of shows, to breaking down, all the while, freezing our asses off in the van.
Fast forward, 2009. We had an easy load in and the stage sound turned out to be pretty good. Presales were good, as usual, and the crowd was ready to go nuts for heavy metal! Funny thing, someone showed up with a big ziplock bag of various rubbers for our use I guess. She also brought a bag of smashed Halloween cookies and a few foil wrapped pot cookies.
As for the rubbers, I took them back into the dressing room to look at them and pass them out to the fellas in the other bands who might want them. There was definitely an assortment of types, sizes, and flavors. Mint, coke, chocolate, extra large, extra sensitive, and… a rubber package with no rubber in it. No rubber!? It had already been used.
I returned the package to her and stated, “How is this one going to work?” Her glib response, “Oh, I have that one inside me in case I get lucky.”
WHOA! WHOA! WHOA!
Don’t worry loyal fans, I didn’t get lucky.
Today I made a pretty horrible mistake during the set. We played our first song “Upon Wings of Black” and Chance called out the second song “Fire from the Sky.” We had been playing “Beyond the Permafrost” second the entire Bodom tour and for some reason my dumb brain decided we were playing “Beyond the Permafrost” so I counted it off. Totally the wrong song. Wrong speed, wrong drum, wrong everything. Everyone in the band was looking at me very strangely and then all of a sudden I realized. We recovered quickly and I don’t think anyone but the band knew, but I felt really, really, really stupid.
D
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Thursday, 15 October 2009 00:00 |
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“Skeletons in the Closet Tour 2009” - October 15th, San Luis Obispo, California
By: Derrick Nau of Skeletonwitch
Central Coast ya heard!?! This is the second time we have been to SLO town and the first was only three-ish months ago maybe. It’s kind of a nice little weird town filled with travelers, beach bums, and a surprisingly high number of thoroughbred metal heads. The last time we were here (with Saviours and Trap Them) was great and tonight was even better.
We are at Downtown Brew which is a cool little venue that holds 400 people maybe. They have a pretty tasty restaurant upstairs and a selection of beers brewed right there in the venue. They have some pretty exotic stuff on the menu (most bars don’t offer shrimp scampi and award winning ribs) but I ended up just getting a plain old cheeseburger. And I know it sounds gross, but if you’ve never tried dipping a French fry in ketchup AND mayonnaise I think you should. I love it, and so does my heart.
I’d say the place was pretty close to sold out tonight, which always kicks ass. A really energetic crowd with a lot of familiar faces (including some former Athenians from back in the day. I told you they are always popping up in weird places) made for an excellent show. I think these central coast kids love to smoke weed. I got a lot of offers and the smell seemed to be everywhere. Skeletonwitch wasn’t complaining I can assure you of that.
So after a while at the bar, it was time to load out. There was a DJ competition immediately after our show. UGH! Apparently there was a kid who was demanding free merch from one of the crew guys (who shall remain nameless) and the poor kid ended up getting choke slammed into the wall and slapped in the face! Don’t fuck with a band’s merch! Haha! The kid was not injured, don’t worry.
All right. Until next time!
D
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