From Mitchell Lee:

It’s always great to be back on the East Coast.  Compared to the rest of the country, every major city on the East Coast is within just a couple of hours of each other.  Drives are a lot easier and there’s plenty of time for bands to catch up on sleep.

NY to Philly: ~3 hours
NY to Boston: ~4 hours
NY to DC: ~4 & 1/2 hours
San Francisco to Portland: ~11 hours (woof!)

The other great thing about being on the east coast is the pizza.  If Mov Mou was a children’s television cartoon, we’d definitely be The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for our love of pizza (and traveling through time and parallel dimensions to fight a giant brain).  Pizza’s on our band’s rider but it’s usually never worth getting when we’re outside of the NY, CT, NJ tri-state area.  Chicago deep dish is alright but it’s always such a long wait.  Their pizza is pretty thick and takes a while to bake.

The only thing that we don’t absolutely love about playing the East Coast is playing NYC.  Despite being from NY and loving the city, playing NYC is one of the most stressful shows of any tour.  Loading and parking in the streets and traffic is a nightmare (Greg and I once drove around alphabet city for 45 minutes looking for 2 parking spots next to each other for our van and trailer.  We had to literally sprint back to the venue and start our set 10 minutes late).  On this tour, we found parking spots 2 blocks away from Irving Plaza in under 30 minutes.

The other difficult thing about playing NY is figuring out guest list, tickets, and will call for all of our friends and family and then having to perform a set in front of them.  Ask anybody in our band (or the entire Thrice tour for that matter) and they’ll tell you playing in front of friends and family is absolutely more stressful and nerve wracking than playing in front of complete strangers and fans.  I guess nobody can help but wonder what they’re mom will think of them during a performance when they’re jumping around on stage and screaming to rock music like an idiot, haha.  Other than that, NYC shows are always pretty rad.

We were all really stoked to play a bunch of venues on the East Coast.  The National in Richmond Virginia is one of the most beautiful theaters we’ve ever played.  The stage was big enough to run laps around and the green room came with an oversized flatscreen tv, pool table, and 16 person jacuzzi (cool in theory but probably crawling with STDs and disease from other more sexually promiscuous bands).

The Electric Factory in Philadelphia, PA was so big it almost felt like an Arena.  Greg was pretty stoked to play there after seeing The National perform there about a year ago.  I was able to shoot some great footage of La Dispute on my phone from the balcony level.

I was stoked to play Irving Plaza in NYC.  I must’ve gone to shows there dozens of times in high school and college to see bands like Face to Face, Saves the Day, Alkaline Trio, Sparta, The Mars Volta, Say Anything, Moneen, Dashboard Confessional, and The Anniversary.

Royale in Boston, MA was a pretty interesting venue.  Decorated with chandeliers and gold lions, the whole place had a Scarface, Tony Montana mansion feel to it.  With a very modest and inconspicuous front entrance, I think this place is normally a night club that occasional hosts rock shows.  I got the vibe that there was a thin layer of cocaine and ecstasy on every surface of the club.  I don’t mean to criticize the Royale or anything, I actually really like it for its character.