Part Four: I lost all but two pairs of underwear and 3 shirts on this tour.
Seriously.
Send money.
 
I did something to my neck…something that, according to Web MD, is going to take several days to heal. I wish I could tell you it happened while doing something like sweating with the lights off or changing the trailer tire that blew just a few blocks from the venue after our last official day on one of the most pleasurable tours we’ve ever been a part of, but alas the reality is I just turned my neck too quickly to look at a noise I heard onstage during our set in Pittsburgh. So here I sit, my neck in what I think is a neutral position with a double dose of Aleve coursing through my veins, attempting to recap the last few days of (because it bears repeating) one of mine and the rest of the guys’ favorite tours to have embarked on to date.

Last I left off, we were heading to play a show on Super Bowl Sunday. This seemingly obvious off day’s show actually went pretty well. Despite having only about 2 and a half to 3 weeks of promotion behind it, the show drew around 100 or so people whom only half cared about the big game. Content with the show’s results we decided that rather than stay the night in a town where surely everyone was partying and yet another night of sleep would be lost to whatever scraps of alcohol the band could find, we would drive a few hours out of the way to Augie’s house in Maryland. It’s a bit of a 2^nd or 3^rd home to me seeing as we spent so much time there while recording the full length, so it was a bit of a comfort for me as well. Something familiar always feels good on a cold night.            

After a decent night’s sleep and a quick load of laundry, we had to hastily make our way down to Vienna, VA for a sold out show at Jammin Java. This unsuspecting venue has become a bit of a favorite of mine due to the quality of their kitchen and selection of beers, namely Dogfish Head’s 60 minute IPA. We arrived without having to deal with much traffic (a change from our usual trips to Northern Virginia) so I took a walk down the street to the grocery to pick up some essentials for the last week or so of tour. The weather as we traveled north had been growing increasingly cold and I was beginning to regret not having an extra layer beneath my jacket. The show went off without a hitch…it’s a show and I don’t think I necessarily need to tell you about each boring details of every show. You’ve seen us play, I hope, and it went just like when you’ve seen us except this time…well I was probably wearing the same thing. I went back to Baltimore after our set, where I indulged in a late night meal of an eggplant sandwich with onion rings. Woke up, rode to Augie’s, and we began out trip to Philadelphia.

It had been a few years but after what I was told (I slept most of the trip) was a lot of traffic and detours, we made back to the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia. This was the coldest night of tour hands down. Between the wind and my lack of another layer as previously mentioned, I was near miserable during our load in. You can assume everyone else had the same thoughts on being outside in general that night. Kyle decided to dress me that night and I took rather well to the shirt he lent me, as I wore it for the rest of the tour. People are always great to us at shows in Philadelphia, but it felt really good to be playing in a church basement again. I miss this kind of show. It’s a very informal kind of show and the most prominent sign of that were the people “brown bagging” various bottles and cans throughout the night. This made for a particularly rowdy crowd, something for which we are always thankful.

While everyone stayed in Philadelphia and delivered Andy (Hellogoodbye’s guitarukelelemandolinkeyboardist) a hangover that left him laid out on the next day’s green room couch until nearly doors, I rode to New York. I was scheduled to be the debut reader on our friend and label guy (truth be told I don’t know the name of his official position) Dave Conway’s new podcast “Conway and Friends”, in which I pick a children’s book to read and discuss. I chose “The Diggingest Dog” by Al Perkins. It was a fun time and I’m looking forward to hearing how it turns out. After what turned into a new $20 cab ride through Times Square traffic, I arrived to find that we had already loaded in (I should have felt worse about not helping) so I just made myself a sandwich and chilled out a while. This show went really well I thought and the crowd was far less tepid for New York than I was expecting. The Doghouse staff was there and it’s always great to hang out with them and I got to meet our new booking agent, Mike, for the first time. All in all it was a great night.

The last few days of the tour were great. New Jersey and Boston are always fantastic to us. Perhaps it was having to sleep sitting up in Boston or maybe the fact that I wake up when anybody else’s alarm goes off and they sleep through them for 5 minutes (a phenomenon that still astounds me), but I found myself quite tired. So, rather than act as the type-a, social butterfly I should be at a show, I instead saved my energy for our 30 minute set each of these last few nights and retired to the nearest couch as soon as we were finished. While I was sleeping in New Jersey a very nice young lady, seeing a few days earlier via twitter that I had lost nearly all my socks in addition to the rest of my clothes on this tour, left for me two pairs of very comfortable, clean, business-style socks. I’m going to have to make it up to her for not being able to thank her in person.

Pittsburgh was technically the 2^nd to last day of the tour for us. We play the Chicago date in a few days, but we needed to head home to start recording a few new songs for something. I remember emailing Mr. Smalls’ promoter years ago in an attempt to play a show there on one of our first tours. Now here we were. Tucked on a hill in Millville, PA, the venue looked to be a gutted church complete with a rectory and monk’s bunks (that rhymed without intention). The show went well and it seemed our inventory for this tour was planned perfectly, as we showed up to the show with less than 10 shirts. Seeing as it was sort of our last night with everyone, Dylan, HGB’s tour manager, bought us a bottle of gin. I came in 2^nd place in a game of Scrabble and then it was time to play. The show went well, but I felt a little off rhythm. I hadn’t had a hot shower in a few days and my neck, as I mentioned at the start of all this, had twisted in a way that made it hard to move as I prefer to onstage. On occasion I would look back throughout the set and it appeared that Kyle was catching hell from Travis and Andy continuously. It looked like he was trying to drive through city traffic. I was very entertained. We loaded out after spending 30 minutes getting the van off a patch of ice and lather, rinse, repeated the night away. We said our “this isn’t goodbye yet, we’ll see you in Chicago”-s and that was that…until a few blocks from the venue we popped a trailer tire 2 minutes into our 8 hour drive. No big deal, it was a fitting ending to a tour for this band.

Now, I’m never quite home…but it’s definitely going to feel good to not be on the move for a few days (JUST a few though). I learned a lot on this tour, mostly things I will internalize and try to use to mine and the band’s advantage in the future but if I’m willing to sing about unknowingly getting a girl pregnant only to be thankful (and then deal with the guilt and conflict over THAT notion) that she drank so much she miscarried, then I suppose I can share one thing I’ve learned which has mostly nothing to do with anything I’ve written about here over the last few weeks: I’ve still got a lot of growing to do. I’m 26 years old with more questions than answers and while that scares the shit out of me, it also excites me to the point of giddiness.

I want to thank Hellogoodbye, Gold Motel, and Now, Now for making the last few weeks such a pleasurable musical and inter-personal experience. I want to thank you for reading this; it means a lot that you care about the band enough to do so. Safe Travels.
 
Gypsy Life,
Ben Liebsch            

Part Three: What was that song that youth minister Ted sang after his sermon? It’s been stuck in my head.
 
I only know how to play two songs on guitar. One of them is “Weak Sister” by Paper Rival. The other is “When The Man Comes Around” by Johnny Cash. I spent my younger years learning endless power chord-soaked pop punk songs, but they’ve long since faded from memory. These songs are the two I learned last year in the 6-month period that I owned my own acoustic guitar. It was a gorgeous jumbo body with some nice ivory inlays (I think that’s what they are called) and having to sell it to get back to Maryland to record the full length just about broke my heart. I need to make it a point to buy a guitar and start learning how to play again.

I’ve been trying to write this for days but between all the drinking, lack of sleep, and lack of inspiration I have typed what must be 7 introductory paragraphs by now. I think it’s been nearly a week and I’m putting an emphasis on the word “think”. You tend to lose track of the days on tour. It’s no more or less of a routine than anyone else’s life and there are plenty of other jobs that involve travelling, but for some reason I still find myself asking people what day it is. The last time we caught up we were driving towards New Orleans, so I suppose we can start there.

The show itself was a good time despite the unfriendly staff and the cramped stage. I was getting pretty sick by then so the stage was probably for the better. I was admittedly a little distracted all night. You see, previous to the show we went to visit our friend Lee in the hospital. Lee had Type 1 Diabetes and things had gotten so bad that he needed a new pancreas. Lee was apparently a big fan our little band, so his wife got in touch with us and explained that despite thankfully receiving the pancreas he needed (side note: become an organ donor please), he was not going to be well enough to attend the show. She was hoping that we could make time for a surprise phone call, but we figured we’d do one better and just show up at the hospital. So after loading in and being not so subtly made to feel like we were idiots by the loading crew and sound “technician” (you figure a guy named Alowicious would be a little friendlier), Augustine, Curran, and myself drove a few miles to surprise Lee.

Hospitals are kind of a strange place for me, personally. Ive been going to emergency rooms and never paying the bills for about 8 years now thanks to not having insurance and I know hospitals are now all owned by just few companies, so it always feels like returning to the scene of a crime I committed.  The visit went really well. Lee was thoroughly surprised and the crazy thing was I knew the guy from the last show we managed to play in Louisiana. We chatted a while about the tour and how good the bands are. Turns out he proposed to his wife at a Hellogoodbye show a few years back. We stayed as long as we could, thanked him and his wife for the kind words and support over the years, and headed back to the show. The visit, however, stuck with me the rest of the day. Thoughts about my health and the way I’ve been treating my body recently swirled around in my head the rest of the night. It also made me realize that I hadn’t called my mom in some time, so I called to check in after our set. The things we take for granted.

Needless to say the guys were ready to really experience New Orleans after the show, so those of us with more boogers than air in our lungs headed to a hotel to get some rest while everyone else roamed the streets with drink in hand. I fell asleep around 1 while watching “The Negotiator” starring Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey and was woken around 6:30 (two hours before we needed to start getting up) to several drunken stories and the news that “we lost Kyle”.  I repeated the words in my head as I wondered where he could be. Being one who has been lost and left before while under the influence of some too many, my imagination was running wild as to the story that would follow finding him ass up with no pants on in an alley somewhere north of Bourbon Street. Thankfully, van call arrived with the news that Mike from Hellogoodbye found him asleep (or crying…we cant get an honest answer out of him) on some random sidewalk near their hotel and brought him back to their floor to sleep the city off. If my mind serves me correctly his first words, which was an apology of sorts, upon us picking him up were, “Curran, I love you. Sorry for partying. Let’s get the fuck out here.”

Florida and the Carolinas were (thankfully) mostly uneventful. We, along with Hellogoodbye, stopped by the Smartpunk Live studios to take part in an interview and play a few acoustic numbers. I was feeling pretty good that afternoon so we broke out “The Next Twenty Minutes” along with some other sick-lung challenging songs. Everyone there was super friendly and they even got a bunch of the guys day-drunk. All in all, the shows were great as usual. I’m very excited to be headed back in March.

One more thing worth talking about happened since my last entry: I played my worst show ever. The Masquerade in Atlanta in my opinion has some of the best catering in the country but it also has some of the worst air quality as well. Maybe it’s just me or maybe it’s the fact that they used to insulate the building with sawdust before that became, for very good reason, illegal, but combine that with me being at my sickest and I just could not gather a full breath all night. So, while the fine people didn’t get to see me sing more than 5 or 6 accurate notes they did get to watch me come the closest I ever have to fainting onstage. Sometimes you have to see the sunshine through the clouds ya know?

Well, I have get back to listening to Strike Anywhere while trying to figure out where I can buy Front Magazine in the United States but I will be sure to let you know how the next few days of tour goes. The Super Bowl is tonight, our show at Jammin Java tomorrow is sold out, and I’m on day one of drying out for a month.
 
Gypsy Life,
Benjamin Liebsch

Part Two: Everything I Own Fits In This Backpack
 
It’s a little past 9 A.M. on what our tour manager Curran tells me is Friday and as we drive through the marshland area of East Texas, I am feeling worse and worse about my breakfast. This requires some explanation and I guess I should just say it plainly: This morning I walked into a Jack In The Box and ordered a number #19 Egg and Cheese Biscuit with Hash Brown…woof. You see, I take very serious issue with fast food and it’s effect on the modern food industry and in turn the environment. Hell, it IS the modern food industry. It’s the entire reason I gave up fast food, then meat, and eventually dairy altogether. Truth be told, I’ve been a pretty lousy vegan as of late, being sick tends to lead me to eat with my eyes and not my brain. I’m sure nobody particularly cares about my struggles with veganism and sustainable eating but with every oil refinery back-dropped McDonald’s we pass my stomach turns a little more.

Alright, I think that’s enough self-pity for the day. It took us two years and two cancelled tours, but we finally got back to Texas and we all agree: it was well worth the wait. Our shows at House of Blues Dallas and Warehouse Live in Houston were great, I mean GREAT, but I think the highlight of the state for everyone was Stubb’s in Austin. I don’t know if the show sold out, but I do know that you couldn’t have stuffed another person in that room on Wednesday. Everybody’s set was phenomenal; it was one of the most welcoming crowds we’ve ever played for in Texas, the food was great, and I think everyone started meshing as a tour at night. Our keyboardist/trumpet player John even hopped on stage to play a few songs with Hellogoodbye. I’m very happy we got this tour. It’s great to be touring with bands we look forward to watching every night.

Tonight we’ll be playing House of Blues New Orleans and in the coming days we will be soaking up some Vitamin D in Florida. I hope I can convince myself to lay low tonight. I really need to ditch this cold. We’re taping some songs with Smartpunk Live before our show in Orlando and we’re not indie enough of a band for it to be ok for me to sing like a dying crow. I’ll be sure to double up on my vitamin C for the next few days.
 
Gypsy Life,
Ben Liebsch

We thought it would be a great idea to have two bands on the same tour to do Road Blogs to show fans the different experiences different bands can have in their touring style. Today we are happy to be posting You, Me & Everyone We Know’s first blog while on tour with Hellogoodbye and fellow Road Blog contributors, Now, Now. Check back in the future for more updates on the road from Ben and the band as they cross the country on one of the best early tours of 2011!

From Ben Liebsch:

As John just put it,”Man, we are really in mountain lion country.” The snow up here in the mountains of Northern Arizona is always a bit of a surprise after spending nearly a week in sunny California. I guess one tends to forget just how much ground we cover in a week’s time. We’re driving 17 hours to Dallas after a show in Scottsdale last night. Only a week ago we left Chicago and drove the 48 or so hours straight to Santa Monica to meet up with Hellogoodbye, Gold Motel, and Now, Now for a tour that, in 3 days, has already far exceeded our expectations. Before the tour started we had two days to just kick back and stretch our legs after a the long haul. Dirk and Dave, two good friends at Doghouse Records, happened to be in town so we met up to discuss some very exciting things we have planned. On Friday, we had the great pleasure of playing a brewery in San Luis Obispo on Friday. The place was packed and despite the fact that it was our first time in the area, we seemed to draw pretty well and those that didnt know us sounded as though they really enjoyed the set. The home brews, especially the porter, were definitely something to write home about. I was starving after having only eaten once that day, so I ventured next door to this Belgian fries shop. I was in heaven. I talked to, shared a beer with, and took some pictures with a bunch of people from the show while I ate my small fries with spicy ketchup. On the drive back to our manager and friend Danny’s place in Santa Monica, we got the news that the show in LA at The Troubadour was sold out…and what at a show is was! There were so many people there singing along and letting loose, not to mention how much fun we had playing. I love a stage with ample room to move. After we managed to pile everyone in the van, we drove overnight to Scottsdale. I slept most of the ride but I recall seeing the sun peaking over the horizon in the morning. It was a sight to behold. It was about 3 years ago as we drove through the same desert area that i saw the clearest night sky in my lifetime and my eyes were suddenly opened up to the beauty of the natural world. I just needed to stop and look around I suppose. We got to our room to find that it sat just 15 feet from an out door hot tub. I couldnt help but soak for nearly an hour while everyone slept in a nice, but pretty cramped room. Last night’s show was pretty cool despite the early load in. As you’ll soon see, life gets pretty repetitive on the road. I’m going to do my best not to bore you over the next few weeks. Thanks for reading my first little blog. Take care!