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116 Days of Summer Guests: Days to Come

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Touring

Justin – I love traveling and touring is pretty much the same thing. I love being on the road, meeting new people, and experiencing different cultures. I grew up in a military household and that probably created the enjoyment I have for traveling. 

Brandon – Touring is pretty nifty if I do say so myself. You get to chill in a small space with your fellow bromosexuals which causes for some choice bonding time. You get to visit cool cities and attractions that are relatively foreign to you in your natural habitat. The only thing that causes disarray is the spooky lads and ladettes you see at walmart around 2 in the morning.

Jalen – I’m a sucker for video games and medieval related anything. If I could, I’d bring my PS4 every time we went on tour. We have yet to install a t.v. in our van and we never stay in one place long enough for too much recreation, so I just stick with mobile games.

Tour Food

Brandon – I like to eat only the most exquisitely prepared peanut butter sandwiches crafted within our own confines.

Jalen – Taco bell. It’s cheap and usually all that’s open after our shows.

Justin – We try to go to a local grocery store and load up on food while we’re on the road. It’s much cheaper than eating fast food everyday and also healthier.

However, Taco Bell is typically on the menu. It’s like the only thing open after a gig and sometimes, those peanut butter crackers just don’t cut it.

Social Issues

Jalen – I’m not saying anything about social issues.

Justin – My eyes were recently opened to the incredibly negative effects that our waste products can have on our environment. I try to keep my footprint small and avoid using single use plastics as often as I can. 

We typically go through a lot of water on tour, so this was a challenge. Currently, I’m bringing a few glass bottles with me on the road and I refill them with water.

Brandon – Don’t get me started on three way stop signs. They’re a menace and they need to be eradicated. They’re not making anything safer. They’re just being annoying over cautious.

Song Link: https://youtu.be/gS839Rzpg-U

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116 Days of Summer Guests: The Boleys

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Ismael Quintanilla III Photography

Hey, thanks for having us (The Boleys) on your blog. We have some stories from the road and from playing the weirdest city in Texas all the time.

Our first story is based in Houston, TX after the last show of our 2017 tour through Colorado, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. A couple friends of ours came to see our show but their truck had broken down about 15 min away, so we came to pick them up in El Toro (our van). We get there, get back, play the gig and one of our friends was lookin a lil fucked up and kinda woozy but he says he’s cool to get in the PACKED van and ride back to their truck afterwards.
So, we’re a little ways into the trip and its pretty quiet, and then a stench started floating around. We then realize this dude has been silently puking all over the floor and everyone starts freakin’ out. We make it back to their truck (throw up guy ain’t driving, of course) and the vomit’s like Nickelodeon orange and is all over Em’s (our drummer’s) shoes. We thought it was pretty funny and I mean who hasn’t been there.
Our next story comes from none other than Austin, the greatest city in Texas. It’s 2015 and The Boleys are playing their first shows at Red Eyed Fly on. So we unload, do our deal, and we’re ready to play 30 minutes before we need to be. We decide to take a smoke break, so we retreat to the alleyway between Beerland and Red Eyed Fly (currently Sidewinder).
If you’ve had the pleasure of seeing and or smelling this alleyway; ya know its a pretty smelly one. Homeless folks go back to do their business, crack heads roam around talking to themselves, its a dark, dank place.
There we are ‘bokin a smoley, hangin, talkin, having a good ole time in the crack alley. Joe (our Bassist) takes the first steps to head back in and slips on something in his brand new shoes. IT WAS A BIG OLE HUMAN DOOKIE!! Oh, the perils of playing on Red River!
Our final story hits close to home for us. The setting: out on a country road around our hometown in Florence, TX. We were taking some pictures with one of our good friends and a great photographer Chelsea Marshall, we had just gotten done with some pictures of us being HARDCORE and breaking a TV. We hit it with baseball bats and put fake blood all over it, the works.
As we were putting it back into the trunk of our car; being green and all. Then tooting down the road, two fellas in a golfcart with a fuckin s-h-o-t-g-u-n roll up; “Get the fuck outta here” was his greeting to us on this fine afternoon. We replied by letting him know that we’re cleaning up our mess and that we’re taking some band pictures. “I dont give a fuck” he said n so we got outa there and they followed us allllll the way to the end of the road. We thought we were gonna die.

Music, Uncategorized

116 Days of Summer Guests: Curse of Lono

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Please enjoy the following guest post regarding Travelodge from Neil Findlay – drummer with Curse Of Lono. 

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Overseas musicians may not be aware of one of the UK’s most important tour necessities – the Travelodge. These are roughly equivalent to the fabled Motel 6’s, the cheap and cheerful roadside refuge to many an asphalt abused musician. Put aside any grandiose visions of swimming pools and rock n roll excess in late-night rooftop bars, the Travelodge is the home away from home to musicians touring on a budget.

 

In London, they say you’re only ever 10ft from a rat. Similarly, on the UK’s motorway network you’re only ever 10 miles from the nearest Travelodge.  Having been up and down the UK on tour more times than I can shake a drumstick at, I’m personally vying to stay in every single one of their hotels before my career as a traveling musician is up. According to their website, they have over 560 hotels in the UK but, judging by my steadily-growing collection of plastic entry cards and the fact that I’m on first name terms with an ever-increasing number of hotel staff in every major city, I must surely be getting there.

 

I have no idea what prize I may win for staying in them all – a free night’s stay, a T-shirt or possibly a stab at the £8.95 all you can eat breakfast buffet. I hope there is a prize, but somehow I doubt it.

 

To the touring musician, however, a Travelodge provides a lot more than just a simple but comfortable bed to rest in, a nice cup of tea at the start and end of the day and a bathroom to flood every morning, courtesy of the complimentary broken shower attachment. Travelodges are the unspoken late-night hub for up and coming rock stars and bands touring the UK.

 

Easily recognized by hats, hair and the mutual post gig discomfort of having to unload music valuables from the van in a car park at 3am, I have met countless other likeminded nocturnal musical types in these hotels over the years. It’s the real musicians’ hotel of choice and you honestly haven’t lived until you’ve tried surviving two weeks off the varying bounty of a late night Travelodge vending machine.

 

Like business cards, I have exchanged CD’s, smokes, suspicious-looking cigarettes and views on the current state of the music industry with fellow musos in receptions and over breakfast in their restaurants all over the country. It’s also fair to say that I have been in attendance at some pretty wild after show parties in Travelodge rooms, all of which look 100% identical. All 40,000 of them.

 

These hotels are the last stop sanctuary for the gigging musician and I’m willing to bet that every night of the week there’s at least one band partying alongside a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken in a Travelodge room within 10 miles of you.

I’m also willing to bet that many a future hits will be penned in the flickering TV ambiance of their generic hotel rooms as well as many a musical career bent, broken and forged within the roadside walls and corridors of this secret and unspoken UK music fraternity.

In the meantime, I’m off to check in – I have a Tshirt to win…

 

Curse of Lono website