From Bradley Hale:

So let me take a second to recall the past few days. Everything has been amazing. Stressful? Yes. Fun? Also yes. The three of us are super shy and nervous people, so it took a few days for us to warm up to all the incredible people on this tour, but now that we’re getting over that hurdle, hanging out every night has been the best.

After the Arizona show we drove to El Paso. I got super excited because for some reason I’m obsessed with the borders of countries, and El Paso is right on the border of the US and Mexico. I of course google mapped it when we finally got to our hotel at 6am. That reminds me. When we got to our hotel at 6am, the hotel lobby guy wouldn’t let us check in for some reason, so we had a nice 2 hour nap in the van in the parking lot. I froze. I think everyone else did too. But finally we got into our room and crashed.

We left El Paso after some veggie whoppers that we bought using a Burger King gift card that someone brought us at the Scottsdale show. Thank you for that by the way. After a while of driving our tour manager Chase got us pulled over for something stupid. We, being the nervous people we are got a little freaked out. Especially because for some reason Texas rangers are just more scary than normal cops. He let us go, but not without inquiring if we had a stash of illegal drugs on board. Which is very false. We are the least druggy band on the planet. Even still, he told us he smelled the distinct smell of weed in our van. Okay Mr. Texas Ranger.

All the shows in Texas were amazing. The food at Stubbs in Austin was fantastic. Had some mac and cheese, cheesy spinach stuff, and amazing fries. Austin is just amazing in general. Dallas was good, the House of Blues has some wicked catering. The sound guys were a little scary, but after the show, when one of them was buying a Gold Motel shirt that was WAY too small for him, he said that he enjoyed us. It warmed my heart a little bit. Also, I feel like I’m having many grammar problems in this post, just forget about that.

New Orleans. Fun show. Interesting evening. We walked around the french quarter, Bourbon Street and all that jazz. I tried a drink called a “hand grenade”. You gotta be careful with those. They’re basically a lime slushy. A drunk lady grabbed my yummy slice of pizza with her dirty hands and ran away. That was depressing. Overall the night was very educational. I learned how much people enjoy to be intoxicated at every possible moment. Even if they run around looking crazy and showing too much skin. Our merch guy Mitch got some bead necklaces, so it was totally a legit NOLA experience.

Last night we played Pensacola at a venue that looked like a mixture between a circus tent and a hot air balloon. Hard to explain. After the show the place turned into a night club. Cacie and I watched a couple of middle-aged women dancing on the empty dance floor. I observed long enough to perfect their dance moves, so now I’m a pro at dancing like a fool. Don’t worry, I’ll show you at some point.

And here I am, sitting on the floor in the green room in Atlanta. SUPER fun show. Met a lot of amazing friends tonight. This is tied with LA at the moment for favorite show of tour. The crowd shared our love of cats with us, saying “meow, meow”. Get it? Oh, we hung out with Ryan Russell today in Birmingham. That was a highlight. We recorded some acoustic videos with him, which I’m pretty excited about. He’s the nicest.

I need to brush my teeth.

More to come after a few days of more adventuring! 

PropertyOfZack is extremely thrilled to be debuting our new Road Blog with Now, Now. The band, who have been incredibly nice to us in the past, will be recording the stories of their travels and shows for the next few weeks on their tour with Hellogoodbye across America and we’ll be posting them here every few days. Check out the first entry regarding Now, Now’s first days of travel and shows below!

From Bradley Hale:

Here I find myself in El Paso, TX after the first few shows of tour. I already feel like I’ve been on the road for months, which probably means I’m a baby, or that I just need to get back into the routine of touring. 

The drive out was a bit exhausting, mostly because we drove 10 - 12 hours a day, but hey, I just remind myself of the great stops we made, including the Cherokee trading post somewhere in OK, the place at which Jess and Cacie bought matching Oklahoma pocket knives. They mean business with those, so don’t mess around with them… Totally a joke, don’t take that as a threat, alright? We really wanted to stop at all the Alien themed rest stops once we got close to New Mexico, but alas, we had self control and just stopped for a quick Dairy Queen treat.

This blog may be lengthy, because I feel obligated to cover everything up to this point.

We arrived in LA, or wait, Huntington Beach, I call it all LA, but everyone gets upset when I do that. It all looks the same, so whatever. Anyhow, had a great time finally meeting everyone at No Sleep. The greatest and most kind people ever. Had a few rehearsals to make sure we had our stuff figured out for our first show in San Luis Obispo.

Funny thing is, after two awesome rehearsals, for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to switch up the set up for our backing tracks. I quickly learned, and during our set to make it even better, that it was definitely NOT a good idea. Had some technical problems, but we made it through it and still had a ton of fun.

Next day, LA. Super nervous because it’s LA, lets be honest, LA is just a bit intimidating. I mean. Miley Cyrus lives there for goodness sakes. And they have palm trees lining every street! And restaurants boast about what celebrities have eaten their fine food. Although very much intimidated, I have to admit, that was one of the most fun I’ve had at a show in a long time. Crowd was great, sound was great, played new jams, so good all around. Met a lot of people from the twitterverse that we’ve been chatting with for a while now. It’s so great to finally get to meet all the people we’ve been hoping to be able to play shows for. The people that listen to our music are the nicest people in the world. Fact.

Last night, Scottsdale, AZ. Another fun show. The venue was weird and turned into a strange night club after the show, but that happens. Met some new friends from a magazine based in the area. Discussed our band, being vegetarian, and shoes of course. Cacie and I have matching shoes now. Again, the people we met last night were so amazing. And I hope we can meet them again and play more shows and have more fun, always.

Now, like I said, we are here in El Paso, dead tired for some reason, but excited to move on and meet more people, make new friends, learn how to love sports via our tour manager Chase, have arts and crafts day with our friend/amazing photographer Mitch, have snuggle time with Jess and Cacie, you know, tour stuff.