From Howi Spangler:

Well, it’s been a whirlwind these last couple weeks. We ran through the southwest after the Cali shows. New Mexico was awesome. We’d only played there once with our friends Pepper last fall and we had a great turn out.  The police presence was a little overwhelming. 2 kids were about to take a picture with me before our set when 2 officers stopped them and arrested them right in front of me. They had some weed on them. Pretty ridiculous. Very awkward moment for all. I just sort of slipped away while it went down. There was nothing I could do there. Hope those guys are alright. Texas was muggy as always. Good shows though.

One thing is for sure: We’ve got some really great friends out around the country. We call them “hooligans”. The ones that come to all the shows, buy our music and spread the word. They get Ballyhoo! tattoos and make their friends listen to us. It’s all love, man. 

We hit the Midwest. Apparently, St Louis was the hottest day in the country on that exact day. It was insanely hot. Almost as bad as Phoenix. For me, it takes about 4 hours to recover after a performance in heat like that. I just feel terrible. Water is great friend on those days. Stay hydrated, kids!!

Chicago was killer!! Love it there. We had a big crowd, definitely one of the best shows for us. Lots of first-timers. It feels good to play for new people and see them getting off on it. And then we have the hooligans singing every word. We picked a wonderful career. So glad to be on this tour too.

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Ballyhoo! are out on the 2012 Vans Warped Tour and will be doing a Warped Blog for PropertyOfZack throughout their journey. Check out their first update below!

From Howi Spangler:

We arrived at the Utah State Fairgrounds in Salt Lake City on Friday morning July 15^th, a day early to get checked in and get our credentials and other info. We got our merch tent set up and zip-tied to a few other bands’ tents because the wind was whipping around pretty wildly. What we didn’t think about was that we didn’t have any stakes to pin it into the ground. Sure enough, our tent became an instant wind sail and took off into the air, taking those other tents with it! I felt like an ass. We had to assemble a crew to get all the tents back in place. That was a quick lesson learned early.

The next morning, we got up and started putting up posters everywhere we could. Warped bands don’t find out their set time until that morning, so someone from each band was scrambling to get the best spots where kids would see. Our set was 12:20. Pretty early! Not a lot of time to promote. We made these giant signs to help get the word out and they seemed to work pretty well. Had about 350 people make their way to our stage, The House of Marley.

That night, we headed to Denver and made it in time for our 8am load in the next morning. Another hot day! Lots of sunscreen was applied. We’re learning the routine: Get there. Get up early. Flyer the shit out of the place. Walk around with your signs. Tell people we’re giving out free handjobs. The ultimate goal is to get as many people as possible to come to our stage at the right time…then make them buy shit!

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