From Mitchell Lee:

Our tour with O’Brother, La Dispute, Thrice, and the dudes from Invisible Children is over. Without getting overly sappy or cheesy, I’ll just say that this tour has been one of the greatest experiences we’ve ever had as a band.  We’ve had a ton of fun just hanging out and playing music but we also got pretty deep at times talking about music, touring, life, families, relationships, happiness, careers, and faith.  Traveling the country with these guys has been an inspiration.  

Here are some tour highlights:

-Dojo Gelato in Cincinnati makes some scrumptious Sriracha/peanut butter gelato.  This flavor was custom made for O’Brother and given to the whole tour.
-We finally got to see Wrigley Stadium in Chicago and play the Metro.
-Sauget, IL must be the strip club capital of the world. There were 3 clubs and an OTB within walking distance of the venue.
-Everybody on the tour dressed up in costume for Halloween in Denver.
-The Invisible Children dudes were a Juggalo and some sort of weird Fu Manchu coconut bra wearing thing.
-Greg, Josh, and I were demons while Nick was a Werewolf.
-O’Brother were Prisoners.
-La Dispute were Cops (Vass wore a woman’s adult “naughty officer” costume complete with miniskirt while Jordan wore a little boy’s police costume that was skin tight and much too short).
-La Dispute’s tour and merch managers, Dave and Lazur, were Gumby and Pokey, respectively.
-Thrice were Party Animals.  Think Beastie Boys’ “Fight for Your Right” music video with everybody wearing various animal masks (lion, zebra, chicken, sheep, etc.).

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From Mitchell Lee:

As a band on tour, we’ve probably had to enter and exit Canada about 5 times.  After all those times, we’re still not 100% sure what we have to do in order to not get sodomized by Canadian and U.S. customs agents with a baseball bat wrapped in nails and barbed wire. If you ever manage, tour manage, or play in a band and you’re trying to get into Canada without post traumatic stress disorder or dismemberment, here’s what I can tell you:

1) Everybody on the tour needs a U.S. passport or enhanced driver’s license.  New York State offers enhanced driver’s licenses for getting into Canada but I’m not sure about any other states.

2) If anybody on the tour has had any previous convictions, i.e. DWI, shoplifting, etc., you’re probably best off leaving that person behind in the states.  If you try to cross, Canadian customs agents will hold up your whole party to do a background check on anybody that has had any previous run-ins with the law.  I’ve heard of a band having to wait for 5 hours at the border while customs agents did a background check on a crew member.  Apparently he got arrested for getting into a drunken fight years ago.  Even after agents do a background check on a dude, they may refuse him entry into their country anyway.

3) Dump all the drugs.  This isn’t a problem for our band but it’s still a pretty interesting topic since there are plenty of other bands and people in this industry that dabble in the Devil’s lettuce or that frosty white snow.  I once heard a story where customs agents found a very tiny amount of weed on a band’s bus at a border crossing.  Every person on that bus was stripped searched including a female member of the crew.  Apparently customs agents conduct cavity searches since drug smugglers (both male and female) are known to stash goods in various “private part” orifices.

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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.

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From Mitchell Lee:

Texas and Florida are done.

Firstly, let me state that the picture from the BBQ restaurant in Dallas is a bird’s eye view of a field.  In the field is a couple getting “romantic” in the grass next to a parked car. They must’ve thought no one was looking, but apparently they were wrong. Moving on…

Texas has always been great to us. The crowds are always good and getting to hang with our southern friends is a treat. Texas also seems to be big on Vinyl.  It’s always cool to see people who prefer to own tangible forms of music and artwork, although I must admit, digital is the future. Love vinyl but hate its lack of mobility? Vinyl with downloads cards are the way to go, you get the best of both worlds. We always try to get download cards included in our records and encourage other bands to do the same.

In Austin, we played the brand new Emo’s East. We were told we were the 7th or 8th show to happen there since it opened. It’s a pretty huge venue that’s been updated and modernized but it’s on a road surrounded by strip malls (gross). The old Emo’s was located in downtown Austin. We also got to hang with some old tour mates in Pompeii and Benji from Bad Rabbits (Bad Rabbits had played Emo’s the night before on the Taking Back Sunday tour).  Apologies to anybody that wanted to see us and missed our set. There was a big mixup with the show start time and we were pretty bummed to hear that a bunch of people showed up to the show after our set.

This tour is the first time we’ve ever played club shows in Florida. Florida is such a lush and green state but it seemed like the entire time we were there, it was either raining like hell or it was just blistering hot and humid.  There’s nothing worse than unloading gear in a tropical storm and playing in soaked socks and shoes.  We also had a chance to hang with our Warped bus buddies and Florida natives, There For Tomorrow.

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Moving Mountains just kicked off their largest tour yet with Thrice, La Dispute, and O’Brother. The band is being kind enough to document the tour on PropertyOfZack with a brand new Road Blog, and we’re very happy to have them. Check out the first update and come back for more soon!

From Mitchell Lee:

Tonight is our 3rd show with O’Brother, La Dispute, and Thrice at The Door. All the bands (and dudes) on the tour are first-rate, grade AAA.  

We arrived in Dallas early enough that Nick and I were able to get some authentic Texas Style BBQ. These places always smell fantastic, have great tasting food, and have a rustic wood appearance with retro signs, pictures, and random knickknacks hanging on walls. Unlike your local chain Applebee’s or TGI Fridays, the junk on the walls is real and was probably put up by the owners over the decades they’ve had their BBQ pits.

The most interesting thing we found was an old black and white, bird’s eye photograph hanging on the wall of the dining room. See if you can see what’s going on here.

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