Thursday, June 15, 2006
Atlanta, GA

I find it nearly impossible to say Atlanta instead of Hotlanta. I don’t even really like the term Hotlanta; it just seems nearly unavoidable. So we played Atlanta Fest in At-lan-ta and boy was it hot. I abandoned all sense of decency during the warmest parts of the day and decided to wear some Old Navy Cargo Shorts instead of jeans. What a good move.

Atlanta Fest was supposed to be the debut of Merle the Squirrel on a backdrop, but the suits (see also The Man) put the ol’ kibosh on his happy, smiling face. If you aren’t yet acquainted with Merle the Squirrel, check out our terribly executed flash animation here. So to cheer ourselves up we thought it best to play a new song, titled “Bite My Tongue”, that we’ve been working on for our upcoming album. It’s about Thiessen’s proclivity for a nice slab of English Guernsey cow tongue. I’ve never had it and so cannot comment on said delicacy. I guess we’ll all have to take his word for it. John Warne

 

Friday, June 02, 2006
Catching up

Sorry for the lag in time from when our last few shows were played to them being written about now. I think the tour journal has seemed to fall by the wayside because we’ve been brewing up some special RK goodness in the form of music and other media this summer (we even added eye of newt for that zesty kick). I’ll catch you all up to speed, though.

Agape fest in Greenville, IL, was the rocky start to our summer festival season. The day started off just swell with a bitter-cold early morning sound check in a biting gale (a henry gale, you might say). The day progressed and grew warmer and more acceptable as we whiled away the time with Guitar Hero for the PS2. As a side note, I saw someone’s post on the message board about how she looked into the bus and saw us “practicing” by playing the guitar and watching the tv. Good for a giggle. Lunch was good, dinner was great, but the winds started picking up increasingly. By the time we went on stage it was blowing somewhere in the area of 160 mph. The second song into our set it started drizzling, which in those kinds of winds can really sting. By the third song it was raining. By the fourth I saw household pets coming down from the clouds. By the fifth we were officially rained out and so retreated to the shelter of a huge metal truck, which we found the best place to be in a storm. Sorry to everyone who had to watch all that craziness. We’ll be back.

 Next weekend we went out to the Bamboozle and Flipside festivals. They moved Bamboozle from Asbury Park, and I think we all found the change to be a good one. Our set was again cut short due to a band on a different stage going longer than the time allotted. So punk rock :/ The day’s highlight for most of us was that we were given free shoes from Etnies. The low-point for me: I forgot to pick mine up. Grr…

Flipside in VA the next day was fun, but like an overbearing Aunt our friend The Rain decided to drop on by unexpectedly for an extended visit. Again. We got to hang out with our friends in Over It and Mae, so that was cool. Oh, and they served us spaghetti. And blankets.

Next weekend was Cornerstone FL and a show at Wild Adventures in Valdosta, GA. The weather in Orlando was surprisingly mild. It was a great day to be outside and wrestle alligators. On our way back from lunch Thiessen and I happened to walk by a sinking Titanic. It’s one of those blow up rides where you climb to the top and, because of the angle at which that tragic ship sunk, you slide down and talk about you and some other people. We spoke with a girl that was helping out with the ride and started brainstorming other tragedies and catastrophes to make rides out of. My vote went to the “Massacre at Wounded Knee” ride.

The day in Valdosta, GA, was unfortunately neither wild nor an adventure I’m not sure that any of us rode any coasters, which is just plain sad. I stayed in the bus for the most part and was playing around with a music program I got from Ethan Luck. If you don’t know Ethan he used to play guitar for the Supertones, now plays and sings in My Red Hot Nightmare, and is a tall person. If I recall correctly we somewhat stuck it to The Man that night during the show. They wouldn’t let anybody out of their seats to come down to the front except during an “encore”. So to slightly bypass this we made a three-song encore. This was only tarnished by the fact that during those three songs, and for quite some time afterward, there was a distinct odor of rotten eggs. Like the smell of a stinkbomb on the last day of school. So maybe that was The Man getting back at us. John Warne