EDIT: Disclaimer, Laromlab’s music is all stolen. Read here.

It’s warm in Florida, it was quite a change from Georgia at around 70° F and some rain. We got to down town Orlando early at 5:30pm and went to a nearby Starbucks to use the internet. There is no free parking in Orlando even after 5pm when no one is around … which is ridiculous. We waited in the van to make sure it wouldn’t be towed from 7:30 till 8:30 when the bar crew arrived.

There was no flier with our show on the front of venue (The Back Booth) and we were not in their event calendar … not good signs. We brought our gear in and sound checked immediately. The sound guy was overly professional and the stage and sound system were overkill for the amount of people present. Apparently the bar crew receives a text message listing the performing acts when they open the place which indicates that they have no vested interest in the show, they just go through the motions whether there’s a crowd or not. The “promoter” did not bother to make an appearance which makes us wonder why anyone bothered to book us at all … if no one cared whether we played or not, why have us come? Needless to say, we won’t be recommending this place to other bands we meet.

Brandon asked one of the guys why we were not on the show calender or in local the event paper (both the Gainesville and Jacksonville shows are). He responded by saying the we had booked “at the last minute” …. hmmm, Brandon has an email CONFIRMING the show on September 21st. For shame Back Booth, for shame.

We played with Flashlight Party and Algarythm, both of whom are great. Flashlight Party goes for the spacey ambience of the likes of Joy Division and The Smiths with a back beat, although I wondered why there was a keyboard and no keyboardist (where was she?). Algarythm (yo Gar!) is all hardware sequencing and synths including a live television for sampling over the air audio. Thankfully, they brought some friends to the show.

I had mask problems this night: the led mask did not light up for some reason and the monitor lost its signal after the first song. I will fix this before the next show.

I’m not trying to be pretentious and say “oh, if they had promoted us, then the place would be full”, but I just got the feeling that since we were not playing rock music with guitars it was assumed no one would come to the show. Now that’s just lazy … let the public make the decision for themselves and you as a venue stand more a chance of making money for that night. I think the previous shows in Knoxville and NC make this point.

Blahblah, anyway a lighter note. We stayed with Bob (drone operator) and his cat Scooter. I got my first shower in 4 days and a shave.

EDIT: Disclaimer, Laromlab’s music is all stolen. Read here.

I had high hopes for Athens … The B-52’s came from this town.

We arrived early at around 5:30pm and the venue (The GO Bar) was not open yet. It was cold, in the 30’s. I looked through the local event paper and our who was not listed … not a good sign. Brandon had called a week before to confirm the booking and could only get a rude “if you booked it, its booked” response from the bartender on the phone. The owner came at 6:30 to open up the place. He had forgotten about the show until earlier that day and put it on myspace in the afternoon … hurray. With no promotion, we did not expect too much on a cold Monday night.

So we set up our stuff and waited, if no one came by 10 – 11pm, then we would leave. The Democratic Presidential debate was on so we watched the beginning of that, the part where Hillary and Obama ripped on each other’s records, not the issues.

In the end only about 4 people showed up, none for the show. One guy even fell asleep slumped forward on the bar while the debate was going. The same Joy Division record was on endless loop all night, which would make anyone commit suicide after a long enough time. Brandon was sure the bartender was the same rude guy on the phone, so we ignored him. There was one guy who was interested, but he came as we were almost done packing our stuff up. Needless to say, we hit the road after a quick meal and slept in the van on the way to Florida.

I’m not saying The GO Bar is a bad place, it just wasn’t our night. It’s a great venue, looks like it has lots of good shows booked, and the owner is a great guy. If the circumstances were better it probably would have been a good show.

EDIT: Disclaimer, Laromlab’s music is all stolen. Read here.

We played at the Juggling Gypsy Cafe hooka bar and eatery. They have good food and lots of beer to choose from, I had an Oatmeal Stout and we both got a free meal (D: Mexican burrito, B: shrimp quesadilla) for playing (yes!). The Gypsy (thanks Bash) did a great job of promoting the show: there were fliers around, our names on the side of the building, and a blurb in the local event paper.

Somnaphon, 2 members of the 910 Noise Collective, was the opening band and started around 9pm with a dark, ambient electro-acoustic-noise experimental improvisation including ungrounded electronic equipment, shocking. Needless to say it was awesome and relaxing at the same time. There was lots of falling into each other and screaming of “dog in a cage” or something to that effect.

I came up next and my set went relatively well. It was a bit dark and I wasn’t able to see the fret board on the guitar very well, which forced me to pay a bit more attention to my playing. I got some good recordings. Laromlab came next and I danced with the monitor and playing with the visual program. Unfortunately, the power cord on the monitor came unplugged after the first song, so the screen was black most of the time. There were pictures and video taken which may end up on youtube. All of the money came from generous donations, thanks Wilmington and the Gypsy!

Here’s some interesting trivia about Wilmington gathered from conversations with people after the show: Wilmington is “Hollywood East”, there are lots of production companies and studios outside of town. Dawsons Creek was filmed there, etc and Katie Holmes used to walk around town. She’s short in real life.

It was really cold, but we stayed at Bash’s warm house with his dog Cosmo. In the morning, the street down the block was closed off by police cars, there was a swat team walking around, and helicopters buzzing about, but we did not see anything happening as we drive away.

EDIT: Disclaimer, Laromlab’s music is all stolen. Read here.

We played at 21 Eleven Beer & Wine which is a liquor store that seems to have a lot of shows. Greenville is a college town for East Carolina University.

We played with Nicky Click, Diesel Shark (a travelling show with 3 MCs: MC Homeless, PT Burnem’, and Paulie Think), and Princess & the Criminals. Somehow, 2 shows were combined and lots of people came out, there was no cover but everyone donated so in the end we left with some good money. Diesel Shark brought the good bump with mad flow and Nicky Click started out the night by bring the dance. Princess & the Criminals, a great punk band, finished out the night with a great set including Tom Petty and the Weeds theme song covers.

On the road to Greenville, we ran into some snow in the Smokies and even into the flat of North Carolina. There was some sort of auto wreck outside of Raleigh and we could see a large amount of trucks and cars backed up and people standing outside of their vehicles. We quickly reversed and took a ramp before getting boxed in. My parent’s Garmin GPS navigator saved us yet again as it gave us a detour route on a road the ran parallel to the highway and we managed to get around the backup without losing much time!

This was a great night, another good show. I built a visual and used while dancing using Laromlab’s set, I controlled it with the gamepad. All in all, things are going ok even with little snafus, we bounce back and keep it rolling.

EDIT: Disclaimer, Laromlab’s music is all stolen. Read here.

Location: The Pilot Light

Ok, so in attempting to fix the broken string on my digitar I ended up breaking a second string … which means I had to reconfigure some songs … oh, why don’t I just leave things alone! Anyway, I fixed the voice volume problem on my communication system, but I forgot to lower the volume of the quindar tones (NASA transmitter syncing tones, you know, the ones on Apollo transmissions). When I press the button to use the microphone, the beeps are waaay to loud. I’ll fix that.

This was a great show. When we showed up, there was nobody there and it seemed like The Pilot Light was going to be a “sad bastard bar”. The local band cancelled on us, so things were looking pretty grim for a while. We got there around 9pm and started playing at 11 when all of a sudden people came around. They removed the $5 cover and we got some homeless people too!

The show rocked, my monitor dancing to Laromlab’s backing tracks were a hit and I ended up dancing with people including said homeless people. We got paid really well for a FREE SHOW and I have to give huge thanks to Jason and his crew at The Pilot Light!

We hooked up with Sarah and partied at Holly’s house, playing NES, banjo, and Iron Maiden records. Sarah was gracious in lending us some floor space to sleep on and 2 nice cats (one is a midget with short legs, seriously).

EDIT: Disclaimer, Laromlab’s music is all stolen. Read here.

Location: Springwater

First show, everything came out ok. I had been struggling with smoothing out bugs in the system and there are still a few … audio too loud in some parts, not reading the game pad, the network card didn’t connect automatically, and one of the nylon strings on my digitar came loose. So yeah, work in progress on the road.

I added some new songs so the set list was:

1. RunningMan (used as more of an intro)
2. ArpeggiateNow (played fine)
3. MartianPlain (string broke, problems … stopped 1/3 in)
4. BitStomp (worked fine)
5. Velocipede (gamepad not recognized for some reason, skipped it)
6. SpaceLight (played great, even missing string)
7. MyLungsWereAchingForYou (played great)

Laromlab’s set was “rusty but successful”, only missing a few transitions. I did the compudance with the robotcowboy monitor helmet. Unfortunately, the custom sprite visual program I’ve made for the tour is not setup yet, so that was not used.

Ocelots topped out the night with a great set. I haven’t seen them before and I would recommend you catch them in Nashville sometime.

Yo,

The tour blog is ready … buuut we havent left our space station yet.  We will be back on Terra on the 17th of Jan in Nasvhille.