We’re in LA, pre-positioned for the last day of the tour. Tomorrow will be a huge pain in the ass, basically – we have two acoustic recordings to do and then an early load-in. The show will be fun, as always, but it’s LA, so whatever. I’m just excited to go to Vermont :-)

Last night was amazing – we sold out GAMH, the boys played beautifully, and the crowd was attentive and enthusiastic. And then I slept in my own bed, and woke up in my own house! As it happens, everything in SF was just as I left it, and I don’t think I missed much, which answers a couple of outstanding questions I had. I got to hang out with RICK! and Aimee, which pretty much made my week. I had breakfast at The Grind, coffee with Josh Bluh, and then I got back in the van.

So, it’s almost the end of the tour. It’s been amazing – I love these guys, and I love what they’re doing. I have no idea what my next year of work will look like, or even the next month, but I’m sure it will be amazing as well. The trick will be finding a good balance between away and home, work and friends. I would imagine this isn’t an uncommon issue, and I would imagine I’ll dope it out.

Okay, so my plan of posting every day obviously hasn’t worked out as well as I had hoped. The demands this tour has placed on my time have been ridiculous! Given the choice between blogging and getting an extra 15 minutes of sleep, I have been choosing the sleep – the difference between 5 hours of sleep and 5.25 hours is substantial enough to justify the choice.

We’re doing well. A bit of tour fatigue and homesickness have started to set in, but they’re manageable, and the shows get us through. The audiences have been great – very warm. The weather kicked our ass for a couple of weeks, but now we’re in the Southwest and it’s been hoodie weather for the last few days, so that’s much better. It’s easy to forget how spoiled we are living by the Bay.

We’re ramping up to a strong finish – both the SF and LA shows are looking like they’ll be sellouts, which would be a great way to finish things up.

I’ll write as I’m able – in the meantime, if you need anything immediately, call me :-)

Jesus, it’s cold here!

We stopped at 2024 Records on the way into town to pick up our new merch, which is SO cute. David from 2024 is super-nice – thanks, David!

The boys did an in-studio at MPR early, then we headed over to the venue. We were on time for soundcheck, but the venue, unbeknownst to us, was in the middle of an early show. The long and the short of it was that we waited around for hours, then had to play without a soundcheck. Add this to the fact that we had apparently been tacked onto a completely incompatible bill, albeit as the “headliner,” and the show more or less sucked. Whatever :-)

Tonight’s gig was very low-rent, in a very great way. We played the basement of a VFW hall – the kind with bingo upstairs – to about 85 super-enthusiastic kids. They don’t get a lot of good music coming through Fargo, apparently. One of the kids worked at a local hotel, and he took us back there after the show and rented us two rooms – including the Jacuzzi Suite – for $35 each. His friend who was working the night desk shift was dealing pot from behind the desk. Ha!

It took us two days to get here – almost 1,000 miles. Albums listened to included The Gay, Shave, Pink Mountain Tops, Peter Gabriel, Flaming Lips, Menomena, and Abbey Road. Flaming Lips fit North Dakota particularly well.

Today we had an utterly epic drive, from Vancouver all the way to Calgary in one fell swoop. We went over the Rockies at around 10 AM, in a light snowstorm, listening to Gris Gris and Broken Social Scene. Epic!

Chad van Gaalen opened for us, and he’s awesome. His songs are strange, in the best of ways. We stayed at his house afterwards, and spent some of the next morning hanging out in his heavily-modded short white school bus. Coolest vehicle ever!