hey hey, a Non-Gig Day

this has been a very normal non-gig day, so here's a snapshot:

today involved delicous eggs & sausage & coffee, NPR, emailing for a few hours, locating a bank of america, locating a place to park tonight, checking the weather for the next few (heavy driving) days, paying bills, finalizing lyrics for the first song on the new EP, practicing Hedwig songs for Saturday's show, driving to Atlanta, brick & mortar banking, turkey sandwiches, some booking, a couple of phone calls, practicing new LF songs, acquainting myself with new Facebook homepage, and finally more coffee, so we can stay up for about 24 hours to get on track for the next few days of shows. (our sleep schedule gets so whacky on non-gig days, like we stay up way too long and then sleep way too long, in normal proportions, but just for much longer durations. it's partly luxuriously freeing and partly annoying.)

here's a good glimpse into the world of RV living via a few of our homepages:

1) Bank of America locations - we operate on a cash economy, playing bars and clubs and small venues at night and turning around and immediately finding a bank into which to put this cash. we need a bank that has locations everywhere we go and discovered quickly that our old regional bank was insufficient for this task, so we've been chasing down Banks of America ever since. (Chase isn't in the south, National City/PNC isn't lots of places, US Bank is around but often in podunk towns off the beaten path that costs us money to track down. etc. So, Bank of America it is.)

2) Google Maps - this is useful for everything from finding clubs and flying j's for propane/dump stations to calculating mileage between shows to zooming in on the satellite image of a location to check out the parking situation. this has saved us a few headaches. so after we find the bank, we make sure we can park there, which we usually can't, so we often have to find the nearest parking lot with 5 empty spaces in a row, which isn't always easy. But it is always fun.

3) Post Office locations - we mail tour posters from the road, in addition to CDs, so we're always hunting for blue collection boxes. even when you have an address, it's often like finding a needle in a haystack (or a blue box nestled somewhere along a sprawling shopping mall).

4) NOAA weather - always always always checking for 3 things: 1) temps below freezing? 2) precipitation? 3) wind direction and speed? Wind is a huge deal in an RV. Gas mileage is affected strongly by head wind vs. tail wind (will we get 10 mpg or 7 mpg?). and it can definitely get worse. our first winter, wind ripped the awning off the side of the RV while we were driving down the highway, and lifted it over the RV, acting like a huge god-awful sail and bashing our A/C cover to pieces until we could pull over onto the crusty ice-covered emergency lane so that David could climb onto the roof and saw off the remainder in a sub-zero blustery death swirl of an afternoon.

5) email - duh. booking shows is 80% of my life.

Superbowl Sunday in Georgia

hey, i'm going to blog about today. there is no significance to today, we've just been getting requests for awhile for some kind of record/blog/whatnot about what we're up to while we're nomading around, and i'm into it, but my big hurdles are/have been 1) point of entry (what's interesting enough to START writing about?...seriously, most of this is very normal and boring, and while we love living it, it's not always the most interesting thing to share) and 2) keeping it going (who consistently has time for this?). but today is as good a day as any, so i'll try. maybe i'll keep it up. for starters, we had a great time at our show Saturday night in Carrollton, GA at Alley Cat with stupendous local band Howl Ye. still one of the happiest places i've seen, this time with an exceptionally drunk girl spending lots of time laying on the bar, doing back-bends, dancing, etc, after handing out a bunch of cut-outs of her face glued to popsicle sticks. i didn't catch the occasion, but it was pretty awesome to behold. i believe a raffle was involved. a wig was the prize, maybe? perhaps these were unrelated? i don't know, but it was festive, and she was adorable and she gave me $10 ceremoniously, and double-checked later that she'd given me $10. we were given (to borrow) a shimmery pink cowboy hat as a tip jar, and everyone was generous, and we enjoyed some super hoppy local(?) IPA. we seriously love this restaurant/bar, and it's obvious Carrollton & West Georgia U. loves it too. it's nice to find a place where you are positive that you'd spend all of your free time and money if this was your city. any musician (or bar-goer) finding themselves in western Georgia should check out Alley Cat.

then we stayed up way too late - we're prepping for recording our new EP, laying down demos, and checking off a madhouse to-do list. a ridiculous to-do list. an uncompletable list involving our recording, our subsequent tour & promotions, and all things "next". but we've gotten good at tackling the impossible, biting off more than we can chew and then finding a way to swallow anyway. so to speak. also been practicing a set of Hedwig songs for our performance in Evansville this Saturday with Bulimia Puree. Three more shows before we disappear in the studio til mid-April: Lenny's in Atlanta w/ Layman's Envy this Wednesday, Bullocks in Evansville w/ Bulimia Puree this Saturday, and Valentine's Day at Lanhucks in Evansville w/ The Dead Livers on Sunday, with a few surprises up our underarmor'd sleeves.

we woke up just in time to root for my hometown in the Super Bowl, with a breakfast of Mt. Dew and pizza (couldn't bring ourselves to drink the beer we'd picked up for the occasion - impossible until at least 4 hours of wakefulness). notable entertaining discussions today have involved evangelical fight clubs (final verdict: bad), the lingerie football league (final verdict: good), and Guns, Germs, and Steel (final verdict: yeah man, why IS Haiti so poor?). finally, i'd like to note the hilarious similarities between all local news coverage. we're in Georgia right now, and we could be anywhere. Anchorman nails it. Stay Classy, interwebs.

David (exploring his Islamic feminine side?) watching football with Tuco: