Grown up (the punx!) tour

I've been home for a week and still hadn't had the chance to sit down and scribble some thoughts and thank-you's until today. Life just didn't slow down long enough to get it done. Plus, having ten days off of work combined with spending the bulk of those ten days living in a small car, all culminating in a brutal thirty hour drive home, made longer STILL by a huge fucking wild-fire on the grapevine, allows the muscles to atrophy and the operator of said muscles to get wicked lazy. Thus upon returning to work the muscle operator proceeds to have the living shit kicked out of him by the job. Needless to say I've spent much of this week trying to catch up with myself. But enough excuses.....

This was an awesomely successful tour, and the first person I have to thank for that is my brother Kyle. I've told the same thing to everyone I've talked to so far, but Kyle was the wildcard on the tour. At least on the musical side of things, as my brother has calmed down a great deal in recent years, he is no longer the same goddamn nut-bar that we all knew and grew to love oh so many years ago. I have to say the change is refreshing. I digress, you see kyle has focused all his energy and time on the honing of his classical guitar playing and it shows! It was a very different style to showcase in the venues we performed in, and despite that, it was received really really well. I think that is what I'm most thankful for,I'm just so glad that he was able to take this totally new thing he's doing and share it with audiences who have or would've enjoyed his more traditionally punk sounding work with Down We Go. This whole thing has convinced him to continue doing this and writing more originals to share with us dirty classless scoundrels. That makes me happy.

As for my own performance, I haven't felt this confident in playing by myself ever. This was a really scary and daunting task to undertake. Again, I feel like I've already said this to everybody that'll listen, but having no wall of noise to hide behind, after so many years of hiding behind that wall, is fucking unnerving. I did not piss my pants in fear the whole week! I beat the shit out of that guitar, and yelled a lot, and it was good (at least I think it was good). The new record will be up for donation (free, haha) download as soon as I get it finished. I'll keep you posted. In the mean time, go download this compilation to benefit the victims of the nashville flooding. Put together by the great Alex Hudjohn and featuring some of the punk-coustic community's finest badasses... and me.

http://alexanderhudjohn.bandcamp.com/album/a-little-goes-a-long-way-nashville-flood-relief


Before I wrap up, I must make those obligatory thank-you's. To Lisa and The Monkey Grind, to Ryan Remains and Dave and the folks at the zombie house in Portland, to Claire for coming to two shows, to Sean the bastard and Danny Secretion and Shaun Hanna in Sac, to Danny, Leo, Wayne, Trevor, Alexis and Hogarth in San Jose, to Ziggy, happy birthday month brother, and Rev (Aaron, hahaha) and all other Escalera family members in San Diego, to all our friends new and old who came to any show or bought our swag, to the word "and" and to run-on sentences with too many commas, THANK YOU ALL SOOOO MUCH!!!! We had a fucking blast! We'll see ya soon. Until next time kids, keep your heads up and keep moving forward. xoxoxoxo